Overview
- A federal injunction issued Aug. 5 by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix took effect Thursday after the Justice Department did not seek a stay before the judge’s seven-day deadline, allowing the order to apply to the lawsuit’s named plaintiffs, their members, customers and covered dealers.
- Hendrix found that Congress’s 2025 law that reduced the NFA’s making and transfer taxes to $0 stripped the National Firearms Act of its taxation-based constitutional basis for registration and paperwork for suppressors and certain short-barreled firearms.
- Gun-rights groups and some dealers immediately carried out transfers of suppressors without submitting NFA registration forms, creating on-the-ground changes in some states while leaving background checks and state bans intact.
- The injunction is party-specific rather than nationwide, which has produced confusion about who can lawfully buy and possess affected items and left room for the DOJ to file an appeal within the longer appellate window.
- The ruling revives a nearly century-old legal debate: the NFA was enacted in 1934 under Congress’s taxation power, Congress altered that tax in 2025, and the next steps likely include a Justice Department appeal, new litigation in other courts, or possible Congressional action to restore federal controls.