JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, joined by plaintiff Dave Marshak, has sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to stop federal registration requirements that restrain law-abiding Missourians who want to own suppressors and short‑barreled rifles.
“Law and order and the Second Amendment go hand in hand. A government that respects the Constitution has empowered, law‑abiding citizens who can protect themselves and their families. It does not paper over rights with red tape,” said General Hanaway. “The ATF’s heavy-handed restrictions on suppressors threaten lawful firearm use and undermine the rights protected by the Second Amendment.”
The complaint argues the federal government’s restrictions are unconstitutional as applied to suppressors and short‑barreled rifles because they are protected arms under the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court’s decision in Heller strongly affirmed an individual right to keep and bear arms for self‑defense. Consistent with the framework later articulated in Bruen, the complaint asserts that there is no historical tradition of requiring Americans to register protected arms and that suppressors and short‑barreled rifles are commonly used for lawful purposes, including safer training, hunting, and self‑defense.
General Hanaway argues that when Congress zeroed the National Firearms Act (NFA) making taxes and transfer taxes for suppressors, short‑barreled rifles, and short‑barreled shotguns, the law’s constitutional basis as a tax measure dissolved. Even so, the federal government continues to enforce extensive registration and data‑collection requirements, backed by criminal penalties, that Missouri argues no longer have a valid constitutional justification and conflict with the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
Missouri is asking the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri to declare that the NFA regulations for these untaxed firearms exceed Congress’s dispensation of powers and violate the Second Amendment as applied to suppressors and short‑barreled rifles. Missouri also asks the court to block the ATF and DOJ from enforcing those provisions and related regulations.
Read the filed complaint here.