92-Year Gun Law Gutted — Trump APPROVES

A federal judge just tore a 92-year-old gun law in half, and President Trump’s Justice Department let the deadline to fight back quietly expire.

Quick Take

A Texas federal court struck down key parts of the National Firearms Act as applied to untaxed firearms and permanently blocked enforcement against the plaintiffs.
The judge ruled the challenged provisions went beyond Congress’s constitutional taxing power.
Nearly 50 Republican lawmakers urged Attorney General Todd Blanche not to appeal and to apply the win nationwide.
Reports say the Justice Department let its appeal window pass, though the ruling only directly covers the parties in the case.
New York’s governor and gun-control groups are pushing back, warning of public safety risks.

A Texas Courtroom Delivers The Biggest Blow To Gun Registration Since 1934

Judge James Wesley Hendrix entered final judgment on August 5, 2026, in Silencer Shop Foundation v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He ruled that key National Firearms Act provisions covering registration and approval of untaxed firearms went beyond what the Constitution allows Congress to do. The court permanently blocked the government from enforcing those rules against the plaintiffs, their members, and their customers.

The judgment named exact sections of law that no longer hold up: parts of Title 26 covering the making, transfer, and registration of items like suppressors and short-barreled rifles. The court gave the government just seven days to seek help from a higher court before the order took full effect. That short window was a clear signal. The judge expected Washington to fight this in the appeals court, not drag it out in his courtroom.

Republicans Push The Justice Department To Stand Down

Congress didn’t wait to see what the Justice Department would do. Representative Andrew Clyde led nearly 50 House and Senate Republicans in an August 12 letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche. They asked him to skip the appeal entirely and use rulemaking to apply the ruling to gun owners nationwide, not just the people who sued. It was a direct request to turn a narrow court win into a broad policy shift.

By mid-August, reporting confirmed the government still had time to appeal but hadn’t filed anything. The injunction took effect anyway around August 13, according to multiple accounts. Gun owners and dealers connected to the case describe it as the first time since 1934 that suppressors have changed hands without the old registration process standing in the way.

The Legal Fight Was Never About The Second Amendment

Here’s what gets lost in the celebration and the outrage alike: this case was decided on taxing power, not gun rights. The 1934 law survived for decades because the Supreme Court called it a revenue measure, not a gun ban. Congress zeroed out the actual tax on these items in 2025, and that move gave challengers their opening. Once the tax hit zero, courts had to ask what was left to justify the paperwork and background checks. Judge Hendrix said the answer was: not enough.

That distinction matters for anyone trying to predict what happens next. The ruling doesn’t declare a Second Amendment right to skip background checks. It says Congress can’t use a tax law to run a permanent regulatory scheme once the tax itself disappears. That’s a technical, disciplined argument, and it’s exactly the kind of constitutional restraint conservatives have asked for on federal overreach for decades.

Gun Control Advocates And State Officials Are Not Standing Down Quietly

Giffords and the Center for American Progress both point out the law was built specifically to track dangerous devices through fingerprinting and law enforcement notice. New York Governor Kathy Hochul cited an ATF warning that deregulation risk “may be considerably greater up to and including potential mass casualty events”. She’s vowed to keep enforcing New York’s own stricter gun laws regardless of what happens at the federal level.

That pushback deserves a fair hearing, but it doesn’t change the legal math. States remain free to pass their own suppressor and short-barreled firearm rules under their own police powers. What they can’t do is lean on a federal tax law that a court has now found doesn’t tax anything. If Washington wants this kind of oversight, Congress can write a real regulatory statute instead of hiding behind a zeroed-out tax.

What Remains Unsettled As The Clock Keeps Running

The injunction technically covers only the plaintiffs and their customers, not every gun owner in America. No public Justice Department statement has explained the decision not to appeal, leaving reporters and advocacy groups to fill in the gaps. The government could still ask for a stay or file late paperwork, though every day that passes makes that less likely and gives gun owners more reason to expect this stands.

For a law that outlived nine decades of court challenges, going down over an Article I technicality feels almost anticlimactic. But that’s often how big constitutional shifts happen. Not with a bang, but with a deadline nobody bothered to meet.