1. The Tax Law That Now Finds Itself Without a Tax
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In the recent discourse around the potential removal of suppressors and short barrel rifles from the provisions of the National Firearms Act (NFA) and its tax and registration requirements, a point made repeatedly was that if the tax was repealed but the registration stayed, the latter would be illegal as it was only ever justified by the former.
This is indeed correct, as from its inception, the NFA was justified as a tax, with the registration being incidental to that tax and only existing ostensibly to ensure the tax was properly paid for each NFA item sold. Then-Attorney General Cummings was clear about this in his testimony to Congress during the debates over the bill in 1934:
Courts have consistently upheld the NFA, and its registration provision, on the grounds that it was a tax. Some who tried to challenge the law even argued that the tax was a pretext, with the real aim being to unconstitutionally restrict the arms included in the NFA. The Supreme Court rejected this argument in 1937, just a few years after the NFA was first enacted in Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U.S. 506, 512-514 (1937):
Click the link to read the whole article: Special Taxes on Firearms are Unconstitutional
