Trump Orders DOJ Not to Appeal — The NFA Ruling Is Closer to Permanent

Online   Sep 18, 2026

The news broke this morning, confirmed by CBS News: President Trump personally directed the Department of Justice not to appeal the landmark Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF ruling — the most significant Second Amendment win in over 90 years.

This one is worth understanding fully, because there's a lot of noise out there and the details matter.

How We Got Here

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act — signed July 4, 2025 and effective January 1, 2026 — zeroed out the $200 NFA tax stamp on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and AOWs. Machine guns and destructive devices kept their tax. The registration bureaucracy — the Form 4, the fingerprints, the wait, the federal registry — stayed in place even though the tax it was built to collect no longer existed.

That's the contradiction that blew the whole thing up.

On August 5, 2026, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas entered final judgment and a permanent injunction in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF. His reasoning was as clean as it gets: the NFA was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1937 as a tax. A tax that generates zero dollars is not a tax. Therefore the registration requirements built on top of it can no longer stand — at least for suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs. The court permanently enjoined the ATF and DOJ from enforcing those registration provisions against the plaintiffs.

Judge Hendrix stayed his ruling for seven days to give the government time to seek emergency appellate relief. That window expired August 12. The DOJ never made a move.

Today's Confirmation

CBS News is now reporting — citing multiple sources — that Trump himself made the call. He told Republican members of Congress in recent weeks that he would ensure DOJ did not contest the decision, and career lawyers inside the department who pushed for an appeal were overruled. The DOJ has until October 5 to file, and by all accounts, that deadline will pass quietly.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), one of the loudest voices pushing for this outcome, put it plainly when the news first broke last month: "The most significant Second Amendment win in over 90 YEARS."

We're not going to argue with that.

What It Actually Means — And What It Doesn't

The injunction covers the named plaintiffs and their customers. That includes Silencer Shop and Palmetto State Armory — both of whom we have direct dealer relationships with. Members of the Second Amendment organizations involved in the lawsuit — GOA, Gun Owners Foundation, TSRA, and others — are also covered when purchasing from plaintiff manufacturers and distributors.

For everyone outside that group, the practical picture is still developing. Even if DOJ stops defending the registry requirements broadly, suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs are still federally defined firearms — which means any retail purchase still requires a NICS background check. That does not go away.

There are also a few other things the ruling does not change: SBR and SBS transfers from an FFL to a non-licensee are still regulated under 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(4), independent of the NFA ruling. The Form 4 transfer requirement for those transactions doesn't evaporate on its own.

The Bigger Picture

Anti-gun groups are already calling this "the return of Al Capone." That framing is absurd, and we'd encourage anyone who hears it to push back. The ruling doesn't eliminate background checks, it doesn't hand NFA items to prohibited persons, and it doesn't create some lawless free-for-all. What it does is recognize a legal reality: Congress legislated away the constitutional foundation of a registration scheme, and a court noticed.

What happens next depends on several factors — whether other parties attempt to intervene and appeal, what guidance ATF eventually issues, and whether Congress acts. For now, the injunction stands, the DOJ is standing down, and the legal landscape for NFA items is the most favorable it has been since Franklin Roosevelt signed the original Act in 1934.

We'll keep you posted as ATF guidance develops. If you have questions about what this means for your specific situation, come in and talk to us — that's what we're here for. We are not lawyers, and nothing in this post should be taken as legal advice. For questions specific to your circumstances, consult a qualified firearms attorney.

— M&M Guns and Supplies | 5578 Salt River Road, Saint Peters, MO | 636-387-1199 | mmguns.com