Suppressors Hit Supreme Court

The Second Amendment Foundation and a coalition of national gun-rights groups have petitioned the Supreme Court to take up a constitutional challenge to the National Firearms Act's suppressor rules.

State of play: The case, George Peterson v. United States, centers on whether the NFA's registration requirements and historically $200 tax stamp violate the Second Amendment. Peterson entered a conditional guilty plea after ATF agents seized an unregistered suppressor from his Louisiana home and business — then appealed the pretrial rulings that went against him.

Catch up quick:

• The Fifth Circuit assumed suppressors are protected arms, then upheld the NFA's registration structure anyway (December 2025)
• Congress zeroed out the making and transfer tax on most NFA items as of January 1, 2026 via Public Law 119-21
• The rest of the NFA machinery — registration, background checks, approval wait times — remains fully intact
• Peterson applied for certiorari March 9, 2026; the case was slated for the April 17 conference

The brief, filed April 2, was submitted on behalf of SAF, the NRA, the American Suppressor Association, and several state-level organizations. SAF's legal research director Kostas Moros argued there is "no historical precedent for such restrictive government oversight." SAF founder Alan Gottlieb called it a direct challenge to "the government's efforts to financially burden and regulate the exercise of Second Amendment rights."

The legal question: The coalition's argument runs on two tracks. First, suppressors are "arms" under the Second Amendment's plain text. Second, American history offers no tradition of per-arm registration or targeted taxes on firearms — which is exactly the kind of historical tradition test the Supreme Court mandated in Bruen. The Fifth Circuit sidestepped the second track. SAF wants SCOTUS to answer it directly.

Reality check: Congress eliminating the tax doesn't moot this case. The non-tax regulations — registration, the approval process, the wait — are still fully enforced. Zeroing the stamp price is the easy part. The paperwork and federal permission structure is what SAF is actually fighting.

What to watch: If the Court grants cert, the justices would likely need to decide two things: whether suppressors qualify as constitutionally protected arms, and whether the NFA's registration framework survives the Bruen historical tradition test. A ruling on either question would have consequences well beyond suppressors — it would set the standard for how courts evaluate every other NFA-regulated item.

The bottom line: Nothing changes at the counter today — the NFA rules are still fully in effect. But this is the most favorable legal environment for a suppressor challenge in decades, and the groups filing this brief know it.