Tax Zeroed, Registry Kept: Missouri Attorney General Sues ATF to Strike NFA Registration for Suppressors and Short-Barreled Rifles

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JEFFERSON CITY, MO — Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway filed a federal lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on September 8, 2026, asking a court to strike down the National Firearms Act’s registration requirements for suppressors and short-barreled rifles. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Case No. 4:26-cv-01430, by the State of Missouri, appearing ex rel. its Attorney General, meaning the state is the plaintiff and Hanaway is bringing the case on its behalf, along with individual plaintiff Dave Marshak. It names the ATF, the Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, and ATF Director Robert Cekada as defendants, the two officials in their official capacities.

“Law and order and the Second Amendment go hand in hand. A government that respects the Constitution has empowered, law-abiding citizens who can protect themselves and their families. It does not paper over rights with red tape,” Hanaway said in the Attorney General’s Office announcement. “The ATF’s heavy-handed restrictions on suppressors threaten lawful firearm use and undermine the rights protected by the Second Amendment.”

The suit rests on two arguments. The first is about taxing power. Congress passed the NFA in 1934 as a tax measure, imposing a $200 tax on the making and transfer of certain firearms, and the Supreme Court upheld it on that basis in Sonzinsky v. United States in 1937. The complaint says that foundation is gone. On July 4, 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act zeroed the making and transfer taxes on nearly every NFA-regulated firearm but left the registration requirements and the restrictions on manufacture and transfer in place. Missouri contends a provision that collects no revenue cannot be justified as a tax, and that the NFA cannot be rescued under any other power in Article I. As to the untaxed firearms, the complaint argues, the NFA is now unconstitutional.

The second argument is the Second Amendment itself. Under Bruen, the complaint says, the Second Amendment presumptively protects all arms, and once an item qualifies as an arm the government carries the burden of showing a historical tradition that supports the regulation. Missouri argues that firearms equipped with suppressors and short-barreled rifles are arms as a matter of plain text, that they are neither dangerous nor unusual, and that there is no historical tradition of requiring Americans to register protected arms. The Attorney General’s Office adds that these items are commonly used for lawful purposes, including safer training, hunting, and self-defense, and that the federal government continues to enforce extensive registration and data-collection requirements, backed by criminal penalties, that the state says no longer have a valid constitutional justification. Missouri asks the court to declare those requirements unconstitutional as applied to suppressors and short-barreled rifles.

Missouri is not walking into this fight alone. The complaint leans directly on Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, a ruling out of the Northern District of Texas on August 5, 2026, in which the court held that Congress enacted the NFA under the taxing power and nothing else. According to Gun Owners of America’s release on that case, Judge James Wesley Hendrix ruled the challenged NFA provisions unconstitutional for untaxed firearms and permanently blocked the ATF from enforcing registration, Form 1 and Form 4 applications, fingerprinting, and photography mandates against the plaintiffs, their members, and their customers. The plaintiffs included GOA, Gun Owners Foundation, Silencer Shop Foundation, several manufacturers, and a coalition of 15 states. Missouri was not one of them. That is the gap this new suit fills. “Efforts to render the NFA constitutional must come from Congress, not this Court,” Hendrix wrote, per GOA. The court stayed its order, meaning it paused the effect of the ruling, for seven days so the Justice Department could seek appellate review.

The Second Amendment Foundation announced the same day that a ruling in Jensen v. ATF, a case it supports in that same Texas district, went the same way. “Without the tax, the remaining requirements for the affected arms under the NFA have no constitutional basis,” SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said. SAF says it is a named plaintiff in Brown v. ATF and is backing Roberts v. ATF as well, so the Texas ruling was the first of several tests of the same theory, and Missouri’s complaint is now one more.

To be clear, the Missouri filing is a complaint. Everything in it is an allegation, and the Eastern District of Missouri has not ruled on any of it. The federal government will get its chance to answer, and the Texas ruling binds only the parties it protects.

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Nothing in this suit touches Missouri state law. Suppressors and short-barreled rifles are already legal for Missourians to own. The fight here is over the federal paperwork that comes with owning one. The question is whether that should still require fingerprints, a photograph, and a permanent federal paper trail now that the tax the entire scheme was built on collects nothing. Part of a serious mindset around these tools is knowing exactly what the law requires of you and why, and right now the why has a hole in it that Congress opened in 2025 and never closed.

I will continue tracking Missouri’s challenge as it moves through the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.