A federal judge's ruling deregulating silencers, short-barreled rifles and shotguns took effect after the Trump administration declined to appeal, ending a 92-year-old registration scheme.
A landmark Second Amendment ruling took effect Thursday after the Trump administration declined to appeal, ending a 92-year-old federal registration scheme for silencers, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. The decision hands gun owners their biggest legal victory in nearly a century and marks the first time since 1934 that Americans can lawfully acquire suppressors without registering them with the federal government.
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas issued the 66-page opinion on August 5 in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, a case consolidated with Jensen v. ATF. The judge ruled that the National Firearms Act (NFA) registration machinery is unconstitutional as applied to those firearm categories once Congress eliminated the $200 transfer and making tax that had anchored the law for generations.
The NFA was enacted in 1934 as a tax statute, not a gun-control statute. Congress used its constitutional power to tax as the legal foundation for the law, and the $200 fee on transfers and manufacturing of regulated firearms was the engine that made registration enforceable. The Supreme Court upheld the NFA in 1937 precisely because the registration requirement existed to collect that tax.
That foundation collapsed last year. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump, zeroed out the transfer and making taxes on silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and other weapons known as AOWs, effective January 1, 2026. With the tax at zero, the registry kept running while the revenue stopped.
Judge Hendrix concluded that a registration scheme built on the taxing power cannot survive when there is no tax left to collect. "By zeroing out the transfer and making taxes for most NFA firearms, Congress eliminated the constitutional basis for the regulations that formerly supported the taxes for those firearms," he wrote. "No longer can the challenged NFA provisions be justified--as they have been for nearly 90 years--under Congress's taxing power."
The Department of Justice argued the rules could survive under Congress's interstate commerce authority. The court rejected that argument, noting the NFA was passed strictly as a tax measure and Congress never invoked its commerce powers when drafting it. "Efforts to render the NFA constitutional must come from Congress, not this Court," Hendrix stated.
The judge entered a permanent injunction blocking the ATF from enforcing the registration provisions against the plaintiffs, their members, and their customers, then stayed the order for seven days to give the government a chance to appeal. That window expired at 12:01 a.m. Thursday with no appeal filed and no stay motion submitted.
The Trump administration's decision not to challenge the ruling was deliberate. In a statement released just before the deadline, the Justice Department said it respects Americans' Second Amendment rights and is currently assessing the impact of the court's decision. The administration retains roughly 52 days to file a formal appeal in the case, but as of Thursday morning the injunction is live and operating.
Congressman Andrew Clyde announced Tuesday that the administration had confirmed the Department of Justice will not appeal. The practical effect is immediate: the first unregistered suppressor transfer in 92 years took place at 12:01 a.m. Central time Thursday, with notification sent to the ATF and the Justice Department.
The scope of the ruling is significant but not unlimited. Because federal courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions under current Supreme Court precedent, relief applies to the parties in the case: members of the six plaintiff organizations, including Gun Owners of America, the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, the Texas State Rifle Association, FPC Action Foundation, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms; customers of the plaintiff companies, including Silencer Shop, B&T USA, Palmetto State Armory, SilencerCo, and Hot Shots Custom; and law-enforcement agencies of the 15 plaintiff states.
Several safeguards remain in place. Background checks are unchanged--a suppressor is still a firearm under the Gun Control Act, so dealer transfers still require the standard federal form and a NICS check. Short-barreled rifles and shotguns still face a separate statutory requirement that dealers obtain federal authorization before transfer, which keeps the paperwork process alive for now in every state.
Machine guns and destructive devices are untouched by the ruling. Those categories still carry the full $200 tax and the complete NFA process, and the annual occupational taxes paid by commercial manufacturers and dealers remain in force.
The ruling represents a fundamental shift in how federal courts view the NFA. For generations, the law was treated as settled precedent--a Prohibition-era statute that survived Supreme Court review and decades of enforcement. The decision reframes the debate around a simple question: if the tax that justified registration no longer exists, what constitutional basis remains for the registry?
The answer from the bench was clear, and the administration's decision to respect it has energized the gun-rights community while drawing sharp criticism from gun-control groups, which denounced the lapse of what they described as foundational federal safeguards.
The legal fight is not necessarily finished. The government could still file an appeal in the coming weeks, and the case could climb toward the Fifth Circuit and potentially the Supreme Court. What is certain is that the landscape has changed: the registration scheme that governed suppressors and short-barreled firearms for 92 years is no longer enforceable against those covered by the injunction, and Congress--not the courts--would need to act to rebuild it on a new constitutional foundation.
For now, the practical impact is historic. Americans covered by the ruling can acquire silencers and short-barreled firearms without the federal registry for the first time since the New Deal era, and the decision sets the stage for the next round of the national debate over the Second Amendment.
A federal judge's ruling deregulating silencers, short-barreled rifles and shotguns took effect after the Trump administration declined to appeal, ending a 92-year-old registration scheme.
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