Americans in more than a dozen states can now buy and sell silencers and certain firearms without registering them with the federal government, submitting photos, or providing fingerprints. A federal court ruling last week made that possible, and it took effect after the Justice Department declined to file an emergency appeal.
Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas invalidated key components of the National Firearms Act, a nearly 100-year-old law that regulated the sale and registration of silencers, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. Hendrix gave the Justice Department one week to file an emergency appeal. The DOJ did not. The agency has more than a month to submit a non-emergency appeal, but NPR reported that such an appeal is unlikely, as the department has been making a broader push to restore gun rights.
The National Firearms Act was established in the 1930s following Prohibition-era gang violence. When Congress passed it in 1934, the intent was to restrict weapons seen as particularly dangerous. The law imposed a $200 tax on the manufacture and transfer of those weapons and required owners to register them.
The legal situation shifted in 2025 when Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. A provision in that legislation cut the tax to $0 for the transfer and manufacture of short-barreled shotguns, short-barreled rifles, and silencers. Gun rights groups and several states then sued the federal government, arguing that without a tax, there was no constitutional basis for the remaining registration requirements.
Hendrix sided with that argument. In his decision, he wrote: "By zeroing out the transfer and making taxes for most NFA firearms, Congress eliminated the constitutional basis for the regulations that formerly supported the taxes for those firearms. No longer can the challenged NFA provisions be justified — as they have been for nearly 90 years — under Congress's taxing power."
Gun Owners of America, one of the groups that brought the case, celebrated the ruling. "This is truly one of the greatest Second Amendment victories in the last 100 years," said Erich Pratt, the organization's senior vice president. "It's something that we have wanted since we were first incorporated in 1976."
The ruling does not apply uniformly across the country. It currently covers only plaintiffs in the Texas case, creating what NPR described as a confusing patchwork of rules and regulations depending on where a person lives.
Gun control advocates have sharply criticized the decision, arguing it puts the public at greater risk.
