DOJ Won’t Appeal Ruling Against NFA, Handing Gun Owners Historic Win

In a decisive blow to decades of federal overreach on firearms, the U.S. Department of Justice has allowed a landmark court victory for Second Amendment rights to take full effect.

The administration declined to file any emergency appeal of a ruling that guts key registration mandates under the National Firearms Act.

The move hands law-abiding American gun owners what supporters are already calling the most significant restoration of constitutional protections in nearly a century.

U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix delivered the pivotal decision on August 5, determining that the NFA’s longstanding registration and transfer requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns could no longer be enforced.

The reason was straightforward and rooted in the Constitution: Congress had already eliminated the law’s $200 tax through legislation, stripping away the original taxing power that had propped up the entire regulatory scheme since 1934.

The Justice Department had a tight seven-day window to seek an emergency stay.

It let that deadline expire without action.

At midnight on Thursday, the ruling became operative, and almost immediately a Texas firearms dealer completed the first lawful unregistered suppressor transfer in 92 years.

Rep. Andrew Clyde, the Georgia Republican and gun store owner who has long championed this fight, wasted no time declaring the outcome a monumental achievement.

Clyde, whose Clyde Armory business has given him firsthand insight into the burdens placed on everyday Americans, spearheaded the successful push last year to zero out that punitive $200 tax as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Once the tax vanished, Gun Owners of America and other plaintiffs took the next logical step in court, arguing that the registration, fingerprinting, and ATF approval processes built atop that tax authority had lost any constitutional foundation. Judge Hendrix agreed.

The Trump administration listened. Clyde confirmed the Department of Justice would not challenge the decision, locking in the win.

In a statement provided to the New York Times, the DOJ noted that it “respects Americans’ Second Amendment rights and is currently assessing the impact of the court’s ruling.”

The original 1934 National Firearms Act imposed a $200 tax—an enormous sum in the depths of the Depression—on the manufacture and transfer of suppressors and short-barreled firearms, pairing it with mandatory federal registration and ATF scrutiny.

For 92 years, successive administrations leaned on the taxing power to justify that bureaucracy.

Clyde explained to Fox News why killing the tax collapsed the whole structure:

“If you can tax something legitimately, then you can actually destroy it through increased taxation. You might, quote, ‘have a right on paper,’ but you don’t really have a right because you can’t afford the right. Is that really a right? It’s not.”

He continued: “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.”

The ruling ends the federal fingerprinting, registration, and approval hurdles that had shackled these categories of firearms since the Franklin Roosevelt era.

Restrictions on machine guns, which rest on a different legal footing, remain in place.

Gun rights advocates moved swiftly to turn the legal victory into reality.

Silencer Shop, a key plaintiff in the case known as Jensen v. ATF, completed that first unregistered suppressor transfer just after the ruling took effect.

The company posted on X: “Proud to be making history with you!” Aidan Johnston, Gun Owners of America’s director of federal affairs, captured the historic weight of the moment:

“This is the first time in 92 years that any gun owner has been able to do this.”

Clyde himself described the breakthrough as “literally, the greatest Second Amendment win in the history of our country.”

Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, echoed the sentiment: “The era of federal registration for constitutionally protected arms must end.”

It represented a concrete change for ordinary Americans—someone walking out of a gun shop with a suppressor and no federal paperwork trail for the first time since the NFA took effect on June 26, 1934.

The sequence—from the tax zero-out taking effect January 1, 2026, to the August 5 court decision, to the DOJ’s decision not to seek a stay, to the first unregistered sale within hours—shows how powerful coordinated action by Congress, the executive branch, and the judiciary can be when they work together to restore constitutional limits.