41 Members Of Congress Demand DOJ Halt Gun Control Defense In Fiery Letter

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

Gun owners’ number one fighter in Washington, D.C., Representative Andrew Clyde, along with five senators and 35 other House members, have sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

In this letter, they’ve made it clear that the DOJ is out of line with Congress’ intent.

🚨BREAKING🚨@Rep_Clyde just led 5 Senators and 36 House Representatives in condemning @AGPamBondi‘s mishandling of GOA’s Big Beautiful Lawsuit.@TheJusticeDept should not be defending federal gun registration now that Congress reduced the NFA “tax” to an unconstitutional $0. pic.twitter.com/mjOPzOAKpq

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) December 18, 2025

Specifically, they cite the Justice Department’s recent defense of the National Firearms Act in the Gun Owners of America case that we’re affectionately calling the “One Big Beautiful Lawsuit.”

The case itself, Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, centers around the recent removal of the $200 tax from items regulated by the National Firearms Act. Specifically, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, AOWs (short for “any other weapons,” a catch-all term for items that don’t fit neatly into the other categories of regulation), and silencers.

Previously, purchasing one of these highly regulated items would require a $200 tax payment, a background check including fingerprints and passport photos, and a lengthy wait.

But thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Trump in July, that $200 tax payment was removed from those aforementioned items.

Unfortunately, the registration requirements of the National Firearms Act remain. That’s why we at Gun Owners of America are suing ATF and the Department of Justice to remove the registration requirements on these items.

The National Firearms Act and its registry, the NFRTR or National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, have been declared a legitimate use of Congress’ article 1 power of taxation.

Keyword: “Taxation.”

The NFA registry is a registry of tax payments, and those tax payments are associated with firearms. This is a sneaky way to get around calling it a gun registry, instead – it’s a tax registry.

But what do you do when the tax has been decreased to zero dollars?

Well, the Department of Justice wants to keep the registration requirements in place, along with the penalties for noncompliance.

That’s like if the IRS abolished the income tax but demanded that you still complete your W2 or 1099 tax forms every year, otherwise face prison time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

To make matters worse, the DOJ used common anti-gun talking points to justify their defense of this unconstitutional registration scheme.

Here are some of the highlights:

• DOJ Referred to NFA regulated firearms as “Weapons of War” a meaningless gun control lobby term meant to strike fear into the minds of those uneducated on firearms policy. The reality is, any weapon is a “weapon of war,” and the Second Amendment was specifically written to protect those same types of weapons!

• DOJ stated that NFA items were “especially susceptible to criminal misuse,” a line taken straight from Biden-era Justice Department briefs meant to justify bans of certain firearms.

• Finally, DOJ is claiming that because other parts of the NFA still generate revenue, the entire act along with the registration requirements for untaxed items is constitutional.

Rep. Clyde and 40 other members of Congress disagree. In fact, here’s what they had to say:

The registration requirements under the NFA are, in fact, inseparably linked to its taxation provisions. Registration serves as the mechanism by which the ATF accounts for the tax paid on each firearm, identified by its serial number.

The tax stamp affixed by the ATF to an NFA transfer and registration application reflects both the firearm’s serial number and the amount of tax paid for the transfer.

Moreover, the NFA’s criminal provisions pertain exclusively to the failure to pay or register the payment of this tax with the ATF. Any reinterpretation of the NFA that allows registration to persist once taxation has been removed contradicts the statute’s text, its structure, and Supreme Court precedent.

Following the OBBBA’s elimination of the tax on a broad class of firearms regulated under the NFA, the constitutional foundation for applying the NFA’s transfer and registration requirements to those $0-tax firearms no longer exists.

These requirements now operate without any corresponding exercise of Congress’s taxing power. As the Supreme Court upheld the NFA’s provisions only as “in aid” of that power, and since the relevant excise taxes have been repealed, the transfer and registration requirements should likewise be understood as repealed with respect to firearms now subject to a $0 tax.

The Department’s recent filing ignores this reality and instead offers a theory that would convert the NFA from a tax statute into a free-standing federal gun registry – an outcome Congress has never authorized and has repeatedly rejected.

In our lawsuit, we establish that thanks to two Supreme Court cases from the 1930s, US v. Sonzinsky & US v. Constantine, the Supreme Court has said that the NFA is an exercise of Congress’ taxing power, and in addition, a tax that generates no revenue is therefore not a tax at all.

Rep. Clyde also states this plainly in his letter, saying:

As you are well aware, Congress enacted the National Firearms Act in 1934, imposing an excise tax of $200 — equivalent to nearly $5,000 today — on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms. The NFA also established burdensome registration requirements for gun owners seeking to transfer NFA-regulated firearms…

Congress enacted the NFA pursuant to its taxing power under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The Supreme Court, in Sonzinsky v. United States, held that the NFA’s registration provisions were “supportable as in aid” of Congress’s proper exercise of the taxing power. Furthermore, the Supreme Court in United States v. Constantine held that a tax that doesn’t generate revenue cannot be justified as a tax.

The National Firearms Act’s legal foundation is that it’s an outgrowth of Congress’ taxing power. But when that tax is removed, does the federal government still get to maintain a registry?

The answer is obviously no.

We want to work with the Department of Justice to abolish unconstitutional gun control, not fight them tooth and nail as they defend it. At any time, they can decide if they want to be on the side of the Second Amendment.

Maybe this letter from Congress will help the DOJ see that!