President Trump ordered the Justice Department not to appeal a federal ruling that struck down key National Firearms Act restrictions on short-barreled rifles, shotguns, and silencers, a decision gun-control groups call a threat to public safety but the White House says changes nothing about who can legally buy a firearm.
The directive means the government will let pass an October 5 deadline to challenge U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix's ruling, which found that most of the NFA's regulatory framework is unconstitutional now that Congress has eliminated the $200 transfer tax that once funded it. Trump made the decision personally and told Republican members of Congress in a series of recent calls that he would ensure the Justice Department did not contest the ruling, CBS News reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
A Justice Department official said the department intends to inform Congress it will not appeal. A DOJ spokesperson added that the ATF "will issue guidance soon to implement the court's order." The injunction has already been in effect since August 13, after the department failed to seek a stay.
The NFA, first enacted in 1934, created the federal oversight regime for firearms Congress originally labeled "gangster weapons", sawed-off shotguns, short-barreled rifles, silencers, and similar items. For nine decades, anyone who wanted to buy or make one had to file a detailed written application with the ATF, submit fingerprints, register the weapon, and pay a $200 tax on every transfer or manufacture.
Then Congress, through a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, zeroed out the $200 tax. Judge Hendrix, a Trump appointee sitting in the Northern District of Texas, ruled that the tax was the legal foundation holding the rest of the NFA's regulatory structure in place. Without it, the remaining restrictions had no constitutional basis.
His ruling was direct. In the permanent injunction he imposed on the ATF, Hendrix wrote:
"Because today's NFA does not generate any revenue from untaxed firearms, its regulatory provisions cannot be upheld under the taxing power. And there is no sign in the NFA's text, structure, or statutory history that Congress invoked any other power in crafting the NFA provisions at issue. Thus, the regulatory provisions must be enjoined as unconstitutional because they exceed Congress's enumerated powers."
The injunction covers all but two categories of NFA-regulated firearms. Machine guns and explosive devices remain under federal regulation. AR-15s and Glock pistols are not affected either, they fall under a separate federal law, not the NFA.
Fifteen red states, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, and other Second Amendment groups brought the consolidated cases. The injunction extends not just to the named plaintiffs but to the gun groups' members and customers, "both current and future." Gun Owners of America charges $25 for annual membership.
Inside the Justice Department, the decision not to appeal has generated friction. Career and politically appointed lawyers at DOJ disagree with the court's opinion, CBS News reported, and have warned that letting it stand will adversely impact federal firearms prosecutions. Their core legal argument: even without the tax, the government retains authority to regulate these weapons under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. DOJ attorneys also contended that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act left intact a separate tax on businesses that manufacture, distribute, or deal in NFA-covered weapons.
Those arguments will now go unheard in any appeals court. One source familiar with DOJ discussions characterized the lawyers' warnings as a scare tactic, suggesting some DOJ attorneys are more worried about their win-loss record than about the president's gun policies.
The broader Trump DOJ has been aggressive in other enforcement areas, from noncitizen voting prosecutions to immigration crackdowns. But on this question, the administration chose to stand down and let a favorable ruling take root.
Some DOJ sources also raised the department's longstanding "duty to defend" principle, the idea that the Justice Department should defend laws enacted by Congress as long as reasonable arguments can be made on their behalf. By declining to appeal, the administration is effectively agreeing with the court that Congress undercut its own law.
The practical impact is already visible. Earlier this month, DOJ dismissed an indictment against Cameron Silmon in the Middle District of Alabama. Silmon had been charged with knowingly receiving a silencer without a serial number. His defense lawyer argued that Silmon joined some of the plaintiff gun rights groups after Judge Hendrix issued the injunction, bringing him under its protection.
The government pushed back initially. Bren McMaken, the assistant attorney general prosecuting the case, wrote that the government "disagrees with Silmon's position that a District Judge in the Northern District of Texas has the power to stop the United States Attorney in the Middle District of Alabama from enforcing the criminal laws of the United States." But DOJ ultimately dropped the silencer charge. Silmon still faces other charges, including illegal possession of a machine gun, a category that remains regulated under the NFA and was not covered by Hendrix's ruling.
The Silmon case illustrates a tension the administration will face repeatedly. The Trump DOJ has invested heavily in enforcement across fraud, immigration, and public corruption. Letting a ruling stand that strips prosecutors of tools they have used for decades is a different posture, one driven by policy conviction rather than prosecutorial instinct.
The White House pushed back against the suggestion that the ruling opens a free-for-all. A spokesperson issued a statement framing the change as procedural, not substantive, in terms of who can legally possess a firearm:
"Anyone who would have been prohibited from buying a firearm under the old structure is still prohibited from buying a firearm under the structure that now exists after the federal district court's decision. All federal criminal statutes imposing additional charges or penalties for the unlawful possession of a firearm remain in place and will continue to be enforced by federal law enforcement."
In other words, the administration's position is that the ruling removes paperwork and registration requirements, not the underlying prohibitions on felons, domestic abusers, and other barred individuals from possessing firearms.
Gun-control advocates see it differently. Emma Brown, executive director of GIFFORDS, a pro-gun control organization, told CBS News that declining to appeal would amount to a "failure to defend public safety." Brown went further:
"The Trump Administration could bring us back to the days of Al Capone, where silencers and short-barreled shotguns were used to recklessly kill people."
Brown's reference to the Capone era is historically loaded, the NFA was enacted in 1934 specifically in response to Prohibition-era gang violence involving those weapons. But the law's practical relevance has narrowed over the decades. An ATF report covering 2017 through 2021 found that NFA-covered firearms accounted for about 5% of closed gun-trafficking investigations.
Jeffrey Cohen, a former associate chief counsel at the ATF, offered a blunt assessment of what Congress set in motion:
"The 'Big Beautiful Bill' provision that quietly zeroed out the tax may ultimately do what no court, no Congress, and no administration has done in ninety years eliminate: the National Firearms Act, one of the primary American gun laws."
Cohen's concern is structural. If the NFA's regulatory provisions rest on the taxing power, and Congress removed the tax, then the legal scaffolding collapses, not because a court overreached, but because Congress pulled the foundation out from under its own statute. Judge Hendrix simply recognized what the legislative text already accomplished.
The administration's broader DOJ enforcement posture has been marked by willingness to use dormant legal authorities and push jurisdictional boundaries. Here, the approach is the mirror image: letting a court strip away authority the executive branch no longer wants to wield.
Gun-control groups raised the case of Luigi Mangione, who pleaded guilty last month to shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk. Mangione used a silencer on his weapon. The implication from critics is that loosening silencer restrictions endangers public safety, though the White House maintains that existing criminal statutes still apply to anyone who uses a firearm unlawfully.
The ruling does not prevent Congress from passing a new law to regulate these firearms under a different constitutional authority, such as the Commerce Clause. But doing so would likely require Democrats to regain majorities in both the House and Senate, a political reality that makes legislative reversal unlikely in the near term.
States or counties that were not parties to the original lawsuit could potentially seek to intervene and appeal the ruling themselves. Whether any will attempt that remains an open question. The October 5 deadline applies to the federal government; other interested parties may have different procedural options, though none have publicly signaled intent to act.
The Trump DOJ has shown it is willing to use enforcement power aggressively when it aligns with the administration's priorities. On firearms deregulation, the priority is clear: let the court's work stand and move on.
Meanwhile, DOJ lawyers who spent careers building NFA cases are left with a narrower toolkit. The department that pursues some investigations for months without charges now faces the opposite problem, charges it built under a law the courts say Congress itself dismantled.
Congress pulled the financial plug on a 90-year-old gun law, a federal judge noticed, and the president told his Justice Department to accept the result. If gun-control advocates want the NFA back, they will have to win elections, not lawsuits.
