NFA tax after the midterms: budget reconciliation could restore it

Key points: NFA tax midterms budget

• The November 3 midterms gave Democrats the House and Senate, and Antiso's report on the socialist left's next targets notes that the Democratic Socialists of America now counts eight House members as its own, up from two, inside a Progressive Caucus of more than 100 that is the largest ideological bloc in the Democratic majority.
• DSA has put its position in writing, from a 2013 essay titled "There Is No Second Amendment Right To A Gun" to a 2018 follow-up, "The Second Amendment Is a Threat to Us All," and Antiso sets those essays beside a 2026 platform that calls for redirecting police funding "as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system."
• Antiso's rundown of the bloc's gun record shows Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Casar cosponsoring the Assault Weapons Ban of 2025, which would outlaw many semiautomatic rifles and pistols not already lawfully owned and new magazines over 15 rounds, while newcomers Chris Rabb and Donavan McKinney voted for 2023 background-check bills in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
• Kirk's near-term worry is budget reconciliation, not new gun bills that still face a veto Democrats cannot override: even a $1 tax on the NFA items now taxed at $0 would collapse the premise of the Silencer Shop Foundation case, and with no line-item veto the president would have to reject the whole package to stop it.
• If a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, Antiso expects the ATF to be the first weapon, with a president who owed the left able to restore the braced-pistol and "engaged in the business" rules with a pen, and Kirk notes that the soonest the ATF could reverse course on the NFA changes is after that election.
• With a Democrat in the White House, Antiso calls the filibuster the last wall standing: Manchin-Toomey won 54 votes in 2013 yet failed under the 60-vote rule, Democrats will hold at least 54 Senate seats in January, and without the rule an assault-weapons ban, a magazine limit and universal background checks would need only a simple majority.
• The Supreme Court hears challenges to the Connecticut and Chicago-area assault-weapons bans on December 2, and Antiso notes it may rule by next summer on whether states can ban the most popular rifles, but DSA's platform, as the Associated Press summarized it, calls for a new constitution that would replace the Court with leaders picked by Congress.

About this Drama and Gripe video

NFA tax after the midterms: Washington Gun Law president William Kirk explains how a Democratic House and Senate could use budget reconciliation to restore a tax on NFA items now taxed at $0. Even a $1 tax, he argues, would collapse the premise of the Silencer Shop Foundation case, and with no line-item veto the president would have to veto the entire package to stop it. He walks the budget calendar, Senator Chris Murphy's call for a far higher tax, why the next few months may be the time to buy, and the amnesty period and entrapment-by-estoppel defense he expects for owners.

Transcript: NFA tax midterms