The Trump Justice Department will not appeal a Texas ruling ending National Firearms Act paperwork for suppressors, a move gun-rights groups hail as historic.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer formally notified Congress that the Department of Justice will let the decision stand. In a Thursday letter, Sauer wrote that the department “has determined not to file an appeal,” closing off a path that could have restored the old bureaucracy.
The Daily Caller reported the notice after United States District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee in the Northern District of Texas, struck down key National Firearms Act registration and processing rules for suppressors on Aug. 5. Hendrix held that cutting the transfer tax to $0 left those paperwork mandates without a valid constitutional footing.
The stay on that order expired Aug. 12. From that point, the practical effect for covered parties was immediate: the long Form 4 process no longer barred every transfer the way it once did.
For decades the National Firearms Act leaned on a $200 transfer tax to justify registration, fingerprints, photographs, and ATF pre-approval. Congress later zeroed that tax out. Once the tax hit $0, the registration scheme lost the taxing-power rationale courts had accepted since 1934.
National Review noted the Texas court found registration for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns “no longer ‘within the national taxing power.’” The same coverage stressed the present relief is limited in geographic and party scope even as it removes a mandate some Americans had faced for generations.
Rep. Andrew Clyde framed the shift in plain terms. “So here we are removing the taxation on a constitutional right from a bill that was passed in 1934. And once you remove the tax aspect of it, then you remove the constitutionality of the registration aspect,” Clyde said. He called the result “the greatest restoration” of Second Amendment rights in almost a century.
Fox News carried Clyde’s assessment alongside the administration’s decision not to slow the order with an appeal. Gun-rights advocates had waited for exactly this kind of follow-through after the tax change opened the constitutional challenge.
That pattern of decisive executive action has shown up in other corners of policy, including when Trump signed executive orders letting ranchers process and sell their own meat across state lines.
Breitbart reported Sauer’s notice to Congress in the case captioned Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF. Sauer informed lawmakers the Justice Department “has determined not to file an appeal” in that litigation. The non-appeal decision left Judge Hendrix’s holding in place for the parties before him.
Gun Owners of America, which helped drive the challenge, treated the letter as finality for its members. The group posted that ATF “cannot force GOA members to register suppressors or short barrels EVER AGAIN,” calling the outcome permanent.
Aidan Johnston, GOA’s director of federal affairs, told reporters the choice not to appeal “is a great one.” The Washington Examiner described a limited path now open for covered individuals to obtain suppressors and certain firearms without NFA registration or ATF preapproval, relief that began with GOA’s filing in the Northern District of Texas.
White House moves that reset old institutional habits have become a recurring theme, much like when Trump barred CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House over contested coverage.
After the stay lifted, at least two suppressors changed hands without the ATF Form 4 process. Silencer Shop conducted what advocates described as the first unregistered suppressor transfer since 1934. The Justice Department did not immediately answer questions about those transfers.
Just The News reported Clyde’s confirmation that the Trump DOJ would not appeal, alongside GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt’s statement that “the era of federal registration for constitutionally protected arms must end.”
Scale helps explain why the paperwork fight mattered. As of Sept. 3, more than 6.9 million suppressors sat on the ATF’s registered rolls. The National Shooting Sports Foundation had reported in June that at least 6.1 million suppressors were already in private hands.
Court fights over sudden federal policy shifts are familiar terrain for this administration, including when the Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court seeking to unblock a USPS mail-ballot rule.
On June 18 the Fifth Circuit ruled in Comeaux v. United States that suppressors count as “arms” protected by the Second Amendment. The same panel said the NFA functions much like a “shall issue” concealed-carry permit regime and still allowed a conviction for possession of an unregistered suppressor to stand. Hendrix’s later district-court order went further on the zero-tax problem and the commerce-clause theory the government tried to keep alive. Sauer’s letter noted the district court had also foreclosed commerce-clause justification for the registration and paperwork rules.
Taken together, the tax repeal, the Texas holding, and the decision not to appeal removed a thick layer of federal process that ordinary owners and dealers had treated as mandatory for generations. Short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns sat in the same legal bucket under the district ruling’s logic once the tax disappeared.
Litigation posture inside the executive branch has cut both ways this term, as when the Trump team asked the Supreme Court to let federal prisons restrict inmate sex-change procedures.
Critics of the old NFA process long argued that turning a constitutional right into a months-long fingerprint-and-photo ordeal served political control more than public safety. Supporters of strict registration warned that easier transfers would weaken tracing. The Texas court did not note a national statute; it applied the Constitution to a tax that no longer existed and to paperwork that tax once supported.
What remains is implementation, party-specific relief, and the chance of fresh legislation or later appellate clarification. For now the Justice Department has chosen not to rewind the clock.
Lawful gun owners should not need a permission slip from Washington to own equipment that makes hearing protection and safer range practice easier. When the tax basis vanished, the honest move was to stop defending the red tape, and the administration did.