Murphy Tries to Re-Impose (and Hike) NFA Taxes After Congress Zeroed Them Out

We’ve been reporting on a rider inserted in the House Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill that would force Washington, D.C. to recognize valid concealed carry permits from all U.S. states and territories (as well as end the District’s “no guns allowed” policy for public transportation, but pro-gun Republicans aren’t the only ones trying to use the appropriations process to change gun laws.

Thank you @ChrisMurphyCT for introducing this critical amendment to strike the provision in the big UGLY bill that removed taxes on deadly silencers & other uniquely lethal weapons, and instead adjust taxes to reflect inflation today.https://t.co/1ofv0xBUVx

— Brady | United Against Gun Violence (@bradybuzz) July 23, 2025

Murphy’s trying to insert a rider into the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill with language to undo the NFA reform included in the OBBB and instead raise the transfer tax on NFA items from $200 to $4,709 for each transfer. 

As Brady indicates, the nearly $5,000 that Murphy wants to impose essentially indexes the original $200 transfer tax imposed in 1934 to the rate of inflation over the past 90 years. Still, that’s much higher than what we’ve heard proposed from other anti-gun Democrats in Congress, who’ve talked about tripling the $200 tax once they have hte numbers to do so. 

And therein lies the problem for Murphy. He can propose any kind of tax increase he wants, but he basically has zero chance of seeing his proposal included in the MCVARA appropriations bill (which has already passed the House). The Republican majority that voted to zero out transfer taxes on suppressors, short-barreled firearms, and “any other weapons” a couple of weeks ago isn’t going to turn around and vote in favor of dramatically hiking the taxes instead. 

Murphy’s offered a couple of other amendments to the appropriations bill as well. 

Amendment 2972 would require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to issue a quarterly report on “the number of veterans who should have been reported to the national instant criminal background check system… if such reporting by the Secretary was permitted, and of those veterans, the number of suicides by firearm that occured in the previous quarter”. 

That amendment is a response to another rider that would extend the VA’s prohibition on submitting the names of those veterans who’ve had a fiduciary appointed to handle their affairs to NICS. A temporary provision in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 and its extensions (including the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act of 2025) prohibited the VA from making these NICS reports without a judicial finding. That provision, though, is set to expire on September 30 unless Congress includes similar language in this year’s appropriations bill. 

And Congress has included that language. Section 412 of the MCVARA bill states: 

None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs under section 5502 of title 38, United States Code, in any case arising out of the administration by the Secretary of laws and benefits under such title, to report a person who is deemed mentally incapacitated, mentally incompetent, or to be experiencing an extended loss of consciousness as a person who has been adjudicated as a mental defective under subsection (d)(4) or (g)(4) of section 922 of title 18, United States Code, without the order or finding of a judge, magistrate, or other judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such person is a danger to himself or herself or others.

Murphy’s also offered an amendment that would simply strike that language from the appropriations bill so that veterans who’ve had a fiduciary appointed to help manage their financial affairs to be deemed a prohibited person without a judicial finding of dangerousness. 

I doubt those amendments are going to fare any better than Murphy’s attempt to jack up NFA taxes by more than 2,000 percent, but gun owners should still be in contact with their Senators to encourage their opposition; both to these amendments and any others that would negatively impact our Second Amendment rights that might be introduced by anti-2A senators.  

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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