Rep. Andrew Clyde’s coalition of nearly fifty lawmakers is doing more than asking the DOJ to stop defending a dead-letter provision; they’re spotlighting how the NFA’s registration regime has outlived its original revenue-raising purpose and now functions as a de-facto national gun registry. By zeroing out the making and transfer taxes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress removed the constitutional hook the Supreme Court relied on in Sonzinsky v. United States; without that revenue justification, the registration mandate is left standing on nothing more than bureaucratic inertia. Clyde’s letter forces the new attorney general to confront whether the Justice Department will keep litigating to preserve a list that serves no fiscal end and chills the exercise of a fundamental right.

For the 2A community, the stakes are both immediate and precedential. Every day the registry lingers, law-abiding owners of now-tax-exempt items remain catalogued by name, address, and firearm or accessory serial number—an open invitation for future administrations to flip the switch from “compliance” to “confiscation.” If Blanche drops the defense, the resulting vacuum could trigger expedited challenges that finally test whether the post-2024 NFA can survive intermediate or strict scrutiny. Even a narrow ruling striking down the registration requirement would send ripples through other federal registries and licensing schemes, proving that once the tax justification disappears, the paperwork justification cannot stand on its own.