The Justice Department will no longer enforce major National Firearms Act limits after a Texas judge struck them down, and after President Trump directed the agency not to appeal.
Federal regulators released fresh guidelines Friday that scrap the old federal pre-approval system for making or transferring short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, suppressors and certain other firearms long controlled under the 1934 statute.
CBS News reported that the Justice Department decided last month it would not challenge the Texas ruling, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives then told current and future gun owners the federal government will no longer demand applications and regulatory sign-off before those transfers or builds.
The shift lands after U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee in the Northern District of Texas, ruled in August that most of the National Firearms Act restrictions on all but two categories of specialized firearms are unconstitutional. Congress had eliminated a $200 tax on the covered items last year, and that change undercut the law’s original foundation.
Hendrix put the legal problem in plain terms.
"Because today's NFA does not create any revenue from untaxed firearms, its regulatory provisions cannot be upheld under the taxing power,"
The National Firearms Act dates to 1934, when Congress moved to regulate weapons often linked to Prohibition-era mobsters. For decades it forced detailed written applications to the ATF just to sell, possess, or make the covered firearms and devices. Once the tax disappeared, the judge held that the remaining regulatory scheme could not ride on the taxing power alone.
Two consolidated cases against the government were brought by 15 red states plus Second Amendment groups and individuals, including Gun Owners of America and the Gun Owners Foundation. The court’s wording blocked ATF enforcement of large parts of the law for the parties in the lawsuit and extended the relief to “current or future” members of the gun groups that sued.
That membership detail matters. Basic membership in Gun Owners of America costs $25. Lawyers tracking the case noted the practical opening that language created for people who join after the ruling.
President Trump had already ordered the Justice Department not to appeal the Texas decision, a step CBS News exclusively reported last month. The administration’s choice fits a pattern of decisive White House moves on contested fights, much as when Trump formed a panel to weigh a high-stakes personnel dispute inside the federal government.
ATF’s Friday guidance tracked the court’s core holding. The bureau said it will not enforce the National Firearms Act provisions at the heart of the lawsuit against “any person as applied to the domestic manufacturing, possession, and transfer of short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, silencers” and other applicable devices or weapons.
The new legal guidance does not override state and local laws that still restrict those categories. Because many states still require registration, ATF said it will keep processing those applications on a voluntary basis so owners can satisfy local rules.
Inside the Justice Department, the non-appeal decision was not unanimous. Many department lawyers urged an appeal. They argued the Texas ruling was already hurting ongoing criminal cases and conflicted with the department’s duty to defend statutes Congress passed.
The administration rejected that advice. Trump’s order left the August ruling in place and cleared the path for ATF’s non-enforcement notice. That same willingness to lock in a hard call has shown up in other arenas, including when Trump said the Fort Hood shooter should face the death penalty and when he has moved quickly on enforcement priorities that career ranks preferred to slow-walk.
For lawful gun owners, the practical change is straightforward. The federal paperwork choke point that once sat in front of short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and suppressors no longer applies under the provisions ATF has now set aside. Manufacturing, possession, and transfer of those items on the domestic side fall outside the enforcement posture announced Friday.
State rules still matter. Owners in jurisdictions that kept their own registration mandates will still deal with those local requirements, and ATF’s voluntary processing lane exists for that reason. The federal layer that treated the old $200 tax stamp and application maze as the main gate has been pulled back.
Congress built the National Firearms Act around weapons it viewed as especially dangerous and concealable in the gangster era. The application-and-approval machine became the daily reality for anyone dealing in the covered categories. After lawmakers dropped the tax, the Texas court said the regulatory leftovers could not stand on taxing-power grounds.
Hendrix left two categories of specialized firearms under restriction. The rest of the challenged limits on the listed short-barreled guns, silencers, and related devices lost their federal enforcement footing for the covered parties and, under ATF’s Friday reading, more broadly for domestic manufacturing, possession, and transfer.
Gun-rights plaintiffs framed the case as a direct Second Amendment and structural constitutional fight. The 15 red states joined groups that have spent years challenging federal firearms paperwork regimes. Their win now carries national effect because the Justice Department chose not to keep litigating and ATF chose not to keep enforcing the struck provisions.
Political fights around Trump rarely stay quiet for long. Democrats have already signaled fresh probes after the midterms, a climate in which Trump has prepared PAC resources for legal defense work. The firearms decision will feed the same partisan split: one side sees restored rights and a statute that lost its tax anchor; the other sees a retreat from tools prosecutors liked.
Republican pressure on legacy federal power centers has been a steady feature of the last several years, including episodes such as when Rand Paul released Fauci diary pages that revived old impeachment-era conflicts. The NFA non-enforcement fight sits in that larger contest over how far Washington’s administrative reach should run when the underlying legal theory collapses.
ATF’s own notice makes the enforcement line explicit for the categories named in the lawsuit. Short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and silencers sit at the center of the new posture. Other applicable devices and weapons covered by the same challenged provisions follow the same non-enforcement approach for domestic manufacturing, possession, and transfer.
The department still faces the practical mess its own lawyers flagged. If the ruling is already complicating active criminal files, prosecutors will have to adjust charging and proof strategies around the provisions ATF will no longer police. That is a downstream cost of defending a tax-based regulatory scheme after Congress zeroed out the tax.
Lawful owners who once waited on federal forms for suppressors or short-barreled rifles now operate under a lighter federal hand. States that kept stricter codes remain free to enforce them. The federal government has simply stopped pretending the old NFA machinery still rests on a live taxing power the court said no longer exists.
When a Depression-era gun law loses the tax that justified its red tape, the Constitution does not require the paperwork to live on forever, and this Justice Department finally stopped pretending otherwise.