Trump orders Justice Department not to appeal ruling that deregulated silencers and short-barreled guns

President Trump has ordered the Justice Department not to appeal a federal court ruling that stripped away registration requirements for silencers, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns, according to sources who described the decision to CBS News. The order lets stand an August ruling by a federal judge in Texas that found key provisions of the 1934 National Firearms Act unconstitutional, and it came over the objections of career and politically appointed lawyers inside the department.

The underlying case, Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, was consolidated with a related suit, Jensen v. ATF, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, ruled on August 5 that the National Firearms Act's registration and approval requirements for those weapons could no longer stand once Congress eliminated the associated $200 transfer and manufacturing taxes in last year's budget law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Hendrix wrote that "the challenged NFA provisions are unconstitutional," adding that "Congress's choice to eliminate the transfer and making taxes matters, and the defendants cannot save the NFA's regulatory scheme by referring to a power that Congress never invoked."

The categories Hendrix's ruling covers trace back to the National Firearms Act's original target: Prohibition-era organized crime. Congress passed the 1934 law after Al Capone, John Dillinger and other gangsters armed themselves with weapons like the Thompson submachine gun, marketed at the time as "ideal ... for the protection of large estates, ranches, plantations, etc." and capable of firing 1,500 rounds a minute, according to a CBS News account of the law's history. Silencers and short-barreled shotguns and rifles were swept into the same statute alongside machine guns.

What the ruling changes

The decision applies specifically to silencers, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns — firearms federal officials and gun-safety advocates have long referred to as favored by organized crime, giving rise to the "gangster weapons" label often attached to the National Firearms Act's 1934 origins. It does not touch semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15 or handguns such as Glock pistols, which fall under separate statutes, and existing background-check disqualifications for convicted felons and other prohibited buyers remain in force. The Justice Department's position, relayed to CBS News, is that "anyone who would have been prohibited from buying a firearm under the old structure is still prohibited."

The plaintiffs, which included Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation, Silencer Shop Foundation, Palmetto State Armory, SilencerCo, B&T USA and a coalition of 15 Republican-led states, had argued the registration scheme could no longer be justified once its tax basis disappeared. In a statement after the ruling, Gun Owners of America's senior vice president, Erich Pratt, called it "a historic victory for the Second Amendment," saying "the federal government cannot keep its registry of guns after Congress has eliminated the gun tax."

A deadline, and internal dissent

The Justice Department had until October 5 to appeal the ruling to the Fifth Circuit. A department official told CBS News it does not plan to do so and that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives "will issue guidance soon to implement the court's order." Trump reportedly told Republican members of Congress in a series of calls in recent weeks that he would make sure the department did not contest the decision, a step that some career and politically appointed lawyers inside the department privately opposed. Those lawyers warned that the ruling was already interfering with ongoing federal firearms prosecutions and that walking away from the case cuts against the department's traditional practice of defending federal statutes in court regardless of the administration's policy preferences.

• Weapons affected: silencers, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns only
• Not affected: AR-15-style rifles, handguns, and existing buyer prohibitions for felons and others
• Appeal deadline the administration is allowing to lapse: October 5
• Plaintiff coalition: Gun Owners of America and allied groups, joined by 15 states

Congress weighs in

The decision has drawn attention on Capitol Hill since Hendrix's original ruling. Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, a gun-store owner who has pushed to eliminate the National Firearms Act, wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi's deputy, Todd Blanche, in August urging the department not to appeal the ruling or seek a stay. Blanche had told senators during his confirmation process that he would "defer to the measured judgment of Congress on whether the NFA should be repealed or weakened," a position gun-rights advocates say foreshadowed Friday's outcome.

"The Trump Administration could bring us back to the days of Al Capone."

That warning came from Emma Brown, executive director of the gun-safety group Giffords, who argues the ruling removes a licensing and registration system that has restricted access to weapons associated with organized crime for nine decades. Brady, another gun-violence prevention group, has made a similar case; its president, Kris Brown, said when the deregulation first took effect last month that "uniquely lethal weapons and devices — including silencers, short-barreled rifles, and shotguns — were deregulated for the first time in nearly a century."

What happens next

With the Justice Department declining to appeal, Hendrix's ruling stands as the final word in the Fifth Circuit's jurisdiction unless a separate legal challenge emerges elsewhere or Congress moves to rewrite the underlying statute. The ATF has not yet issued the implementation guidance the department says is coming, leaving gun dealers, manufacturers and buyers in the affected states to operate under a court order rather than a formal federal regulation in the interim. Because the ruling rests on the tax provision Congress removed in last year's budget law, any future Congress could in theory restore the National Firearms Act's constitutional footing simply by reinstating the transfer tax — an option gun-control advocates say they intend to press lawmakers on, while gun-rights groups are already citing the decision as a template for challenging the law's remaining machine-gun registration provisions.