NRA, FPC & SAF Just Put the $200 SBR Tax Stamp on Trial

The NRA, Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and American Suppressor Association filed a joint amicus brief Monday in *United States v. Machamer* — a coordinated, surgical strike on the National Firearms Act's SBR registration and tax-stamp regime.

The argument is clean and devastating. Under the *Bruen* text-and-history standard, the government must produce a real historical analogue for any gun restriction it enforces. For the NFA's short-barrel rules? **There isn't one. There never was.**

Short-barreled rifles — any rifle with a barrel under 16 inches — are functionally identical to their longer-barreled cousins. Millions of Americans own them. They are portable, effective defensive weapons with roots deep in American history. By every honest legal measure, they are exactly the arms the Second Amendment exists to protect.

None of that stopped the federal government from treating SBR owners like applicants for a federal security clearance. A $200 tax stamp. Months — sometimes over a year — of wait times. Mandatory federal registration. **All of it, just to exercise a constitutional right.**

That is the regime these four organizations just put on trial.

This is not a fringe play. FPC and SAF have driven post-*Bruen* litigation nationwide, stacking wins from the Fifth Circuit to the Northern District of Illinois. The American Suppressor Association brings direct standing across a parallel NFA category — suppressors face the same tax, the same wait, the same registration chokehold. The NRA, back in federal court where it counts, adds institutional weight that circuits notice.

The geography matters. The Sixth Circuit covers Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. A ruling striking down SBR restrictions does not just free gun owners in four states — **it detonates a direct circuit split and rockets the question to the Supreme Court.** The same Court that handed down *Bruen*. The same Court that recently took up the pot-gun ban. The same Court the gun-control lobby is now genuinely terrified of.

If the Sixth Circuit rules for Machamer, the downstream effect is seismic. Millions of Americans could own short-barreled rifles without NFA registration, without $200 in permission fees, without wait lists stretching past a year.

**That is not a procedural win. That is structural demolition of one of the ATF's most lucrative enforcement tools — dismantled with the Constitution it was always violating.**

Watch the Sixth Circuit's response timeline. Watch whether DOJ fights on the historical record or quietly folds. Watch whether SCOTUS grants cert if a circuit split lands — because if it does, the NFA's 1934 framework goes before the same justices who already told the government it cannot win on vibes alone.

The clock on the $200 tax stamp just started ticking. **This time, the government is the one running out of time.**