Gun Owners of America and Silencer Shop completed the first lawful suppressor transfers without National Firearms Act registration since 1934, a direct result of a federal judge's ruling that the law's registration requirements lost their constitutional basis once Congress zeroed out the underlying tax.
Just after midnight on Thursday, two gun owners walked into Silencer Shop in Leander, Texas, and walked out with suppressors. No NFA registration form. No months-long federal approval wait. No $200 tax stamp. Brandon Herrera and Texas state Rep. Wes Virdell acquired their suppressors under the protection of a federal court order that permanently blocked the government from enforcing the old NFA process against the plaintiffs, their members, and their customers.
Until last week, that same transfer would have carried a penalty of up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine per violation. The midnight event marked the practical end of a registration regime that had governed silencer ownership since Franklin Roosevelt signed the NFA into law in 1934.
The chain of events began with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Trump signed into law. Among its provisions, the legislation reduced the NFA's making and transfer taxes to $0 for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and certain other regulated weapons. That tax cut took effect on January 1, 2026.
Gun Owners of America and the Silencer Shop Foundation filed suit against the federal government the same day Trump signed the bill. Their argument was straightforward: the NFA's registration and approval requirements existed to help the government collect a tax. Once Congress eliminated the tax, the regulatory scaffolding built around it had no constitutional leg to stand on.
Fifteen states joined the legal challenge.
On August 5, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, sided with the challengers. He permanently blocked federal officials from enforcing the NFA's registration and approval requirements against the plaintiffs, their members, and their customers. He declined to issue a nationwide injunction, keeping the ruling's reach limited to the parties in the case. And he declined to reach the plaintiffs' separate Second Amendment argument, finding the tax-power question sufficient to resolve the dispute.
Hendrix put the reasoning plainly: regulations that existed to help collect taxes no longer had constitutional footing once the taxes themselves were gone.
"Efforts to render the NFA constitutional must come from Congress, not this Court."
That line, from Hendrix's ruling, left the door open for Congress to pass new legislation, but made clear the judiciary would not prop up a regulatory framework whose original justification had been legislated away.
The Justice Department defended the NFA regulations in court, arguing that remaining NFA taxes and Congress's authority over interstate commerce could still support the registration requirements. Hendrix rejected that reasoning.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, the Georgia Republican who helped write the legislation zeroing out the NFA taxes, told Just The News he received confirmation from the Trump administration that the DOJ would not appeal the ruling. That confirmation came Wednesday, one day before the midnight transfers.
Breitbart reported that GOA formally notified the DOJ and ATF of its plans to transfer suppressors without NFA registration at 12:01 a.m. CDT on August 13, noting that the government's window to appeal the ruling in the consolidated cases, Jensen v. ATF and Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, expired at the end of August 12, seven days after the ruling was issued.
The timing was deliberate. GOA and Silencer Shop moved the moment the legal window closed.
Rep. Clyde attended the midnight transfers in Leander. He did not mince words about the significance.
"Literally, the greatest Second Amendment win in the history of our country."
Clyde called it "a monumental day for the country and a monumental day for the Second Amendment." Whether that assessment holds up over time, the practical impact is already measurable: GOA members and Silencer Shop customers covered by the ruling can now purchase suppressors through a standard background check, bypassing the NFA's registration process entirely.
Aidan Johnston, GOA's director of federal affairs, framed the legal logic in plain terms in an interview with the New York Post.
"Congress didn't fully repeal the law. They just reduced this 1934 tax from $200 to $0. And I think all of us could understand there's no such thing as a $0 tax. It doesn't raise any revenue. It's not a tax."
That distinction matters. Congress did not vote to repeal the NFA outright. The Senate parliamentarian blocked portions of the broader deregulation push under reconciliation rules. But by reducing the tax to zero, lawmakers gave gun rights plaintiffs the opening they needed to argue, successfully, that the registration regime had lost its legal foundation.
Johnston emphasized the speed and the stakes.
"This is the first time in 92 years that any gun owner has been able to do this. Previously, this would have been punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine per violation. So, this was a big federal law. We took a really big bite out of it."
GOA senior vice president Erich Pratt told Fox News the organization intended to keep pushing.
"GOA fought to crush the NFA's unconstitutional restrictions through the One Big Beautiful Bill, but we didn't stop there. We promised to keep fighting until these restrictions were gone, and now our members are putting the historic victory into action. The era of federal registration for constitutionally protected arms must end."
Judge Hendrix's decision carries real weight, but its reach has boundaries. He declined to issue a nationwide injunction, meaning the ruling applies only to the named plaintiffs, GOA, the Silencer Shop Foundation, and their members and customers. Gun owners outside that umbrella remain subject to the NFA's existing registration process unless and until another court extends the reasoning or Congress acts.
Hendrix also declined to rule on the plaintiffs' Second Amendment argument. That leaves a broader constitutional question unresolved, one that could surface in future litigation if other gun rights organizations bring similar challenges on different grounds.
And while the DOJ reportedly will not appeal this particular ruling, the precise nature of that confirmation, whether it was a formal announcement, a written communication, or a verbal assurance relayed through Rep. Clyde, remains unclear from available reporting.
Still, the practical effect is immediate. Silencer Shop, a federal firearms licensee, is already processing transfers under the new framework. GOA's membership base now has a legal path to suppressor ownership that bypasses a registration system that stood for more than nine decades.
Silencer Shop itself responded to GOA's announcement with a two-word post: "Proud to be making history with you!"
For 92 years, the federal government treated suppressor ownership as a privilege to be registered, taxed, and approved. Congress took away the tax. A federal judge took away the registration. And the Justice Department chose not to fight. When the government itself stops defending a restriction, the restriction was never as necessary as its defenders claimed.
