DOJ Declines to Appeal Ruling That Guts 92 Years of Suppressor Regulation

For 92 years, buying a suppressor meant fingerprints, a photo, a federal form, and months of waiting on the ATF. As of this week, that's no longer true for a specific group of people. Everyone else is still waiting to find out if it applies to them too.

The change traces back to a ruling issued August 5, 2026, by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas, a Trump appointee. Hendrix found that the National Firearms Act's registration and paperwork requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and items classified as "any other weapon" are unconstitutional, according to CBS News. His reasoning: the NFA was built on Congress's taxing power, not a straight prohibition, because lawmakers wanted to avoid a direct Second Amendment fight back in 1934. When Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025 and zeroed out the $200 transfer tax on those items, Hendrix ruled it knocked out the constitutional foundation the whole registration scheme sat on.

"By zeroing out the transfer and making taxes on 'any firearm' except for 'a machinegun or a destructive device,' the One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated the constitutional basis for the NFA's regulation of those firearms," Hendrix wrote, according to CBS News.

The case, Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, consolidated two lawsuits from B&T USA, the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Palmetto State Armory, SilencerCo, Silencer Shop Foundation, 15 Republican-led states, and individual plaintiffs, according to CBS News.

Hendrix gave the Justice Department a one-week window to seek a stay. That deadline expired at midnight Thursday, August 13. The DOJ didn't file one. Georgia Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde announced the news on X: "I've received confirmation from the Trump Administration that the DOJ will NOT appeal our historic court victory against the NFA. THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP and Attorney General Blanche," according to the Daily Caller. A DOJ spokeswoman told the Daily Caller News Foundation, "The Department respects Americans' Second Amendment rights and is currently assessing the impact of the court's ruling." A department spokesperson gave CBS News an identical statement.

A narrow win, for now

The ruling doesn't apply to everybody. It only covers the named plaintiffs and, as the injunction spells out, "their agencies, political subdivisions, members, and customers, both current and future," according to The Federalist. Practically, that means GOA members and customers of Palmetto State Armory, Silencer Shop, SilencerCo, and B&T USA can skip the ATF paperwork right now. Everyone else technically still needs a Form 4.

Outdoor Life and Yahoo, running near-identical reporting, laid out the practical mechanics: buyers still fill out ATF Form 4473, the standard background-check form under the Gun Control Act of 1968. Twenty-seven states allow suppressors outright and will see this play out at the counter. Eight states ban suppressors entirely, and those state bans aren't touched by a federal ruling about federal registration. Some states still require NFA-style registration on top of federal law regardless of what Hendrix ruled.

Gun Owners of America says it's not stopping at its own membership. "We don't fight for just the rights of our members," GOA's 2A Hunters Outreach Chairman David Gibson told Outdoor Life. "We fight for the Second Amendment rights of everybody." GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt put it more bluntly in a statement to the Daily Caller: "We promised to keep fighting until these restrictions were gone, and now our members are putting the historic victory into action. The era of federal registration for constitutionally protected arms must end."

Gun-control groups see the opposite outcome. Brady president Kris Brown said, "Today, our government is failing us. At midnight, uniquely lethal weapons and devices, including silencers, short-barreled rifles, and shotguns, were deregulated for the first time in nearly a century," according to CBS News. Giffords executive director Emma Brown argued the safeguards existed for a reason: "Congress put these safeguards in place nearly 100 years ago. As a result, silencers, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns are rarely used in crimes today.