Here’s a piece of good news that doesn’t come along often. President Trump has ordered the Justice Department to stand down and let a federal court ruling loosening restrictions on suppressors and short-barreled firearms take effect. That’s according to CBS News reporting from Sarah N. Lynch and Jennifer Jacobs, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter.
What the Ruling Does
The decision is Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, handed down August 5 by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix in the Northern District of Texas. It affects the three categories of firearms the government has long labeled “gangster weapons”: short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and silencers.
Hendrix’s reasoning was as clean as it gets. The National Firearms Act was upheld back in 1937 in Sonzinsky v. United States as an exercise of Congress’s taxing power. Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act zeroed out the $200 NFA tax stamp on suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs. “Because today’s NFA does not generate any revenue from untaxed firearms,” Hendrix wrote, “its regulatory provisions cannot be upheld under the taxing power.” No tax, no NFA. That’s the whole legal theory the Silencer Shop Foundation and its co-plaintiffs — GOA, Palmetto State Armory, SilencerCo, B&T, and Gun Owners Foundation — have been pushing since they filed on the same day Trump signed the OBBBA.
One important caveat: the way Hendrix’s order was written, the relief currently applies only to members of the plaintiff organizations — current and future GOA members, plus PSA and SilencerCo customers. If you’re not covered by one of those, you’re still working under the old NFA rules for now, even as the underlying regulatory basis has collapsed for everyone else.
For anyone who’s ever waded through the NFA paperwork, fingerprints, and months-long wait for a can, the significance is obvious. These are items that never should have carried the regulatory baggage they do in the first place, and a federal court agreed.
The President Made the Call
The detail that stands out here is who pulled the trigger on the decision. According to CBS, the president himself decided against appealing the ruling. Trump also told some Republican members of Congress in a series of recent calls that he would personally ensure the Justice Department did not contest the decision.
That’s a meaningful distinction, and it’s sharper than it looks in the CBS story. Just last November, the same DOJ filed what GOA called an “outrageous brief” in this exact case — defending the NFA on Commerce Clause grounds and arguing that OBBBA’s tax repeal didn’t undermine the statute’s constitutional footing. AG Todd Blanche told the Senate at his confirmation hearing that DOJ’s duty was to defend the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress, “presently defending the NFA against constitutional challenges.”
So Trump isn’t just declining to appeal. He’s personally overriding his own Justice Department’s stated legal position. That’s a commitment, and it means the administration isn’t looking for a quiet way to walk this back later.
Gun control groups aren’t taking it well. GIFFORDS executive director Emma Brown told CBS the decision amounts to a “failure to defend public safety” and warned the administration could “bring us back to the days of Al Capone.” Given GIFFORDS’ $10 million midterm ad blitz launching this week, expect that framing on cable news through November.
The Bottom Line
The formal appeal deadline is October 5. An appeal would have kept the NFA restrictions on these firearms tied up and enforceable while the courts sorted it out. By declining to fight the ruling, the administration is letting it stand.
The one caution worth flagging comes from Stephen Gutowski at The Reload, who noted that a DOJ decision not to defend the NFA is a short-term win but a long-term risk: if Democrats retake the White House, “they can just reverse the policies and go back and start prosecuting people again, because the law was never found unconstitutional or invalid.” The durable fix runs through the Supreme Court or through Congress actually repealing the NFA — not through executive-branch non-enforcement.
For now, though, the ruling stands. For gun owners who’ve argued for years that the NFA’s treatment of suppressors and short-barreled guns is indefensible, this is a win worth watching — and, if you’re a member of one of the plaintiff organizations, worth acting on.
The problem remains that even without a successful appeal, it only applies to a select few.