A federal judge in Texas ruled last Wednesday that the federal government can no longer enforce specific registration and background check rules for short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, silencers, and certain other items under the National Firearms Act (NFA).
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix ruled that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) lost its legal authority to enforce those requirements after Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025. That law officially lowered the federal transfer and making taxes on those specific items from $200 down to $0, effective January 1, 2026.
When Congress created the NFA in 1934, it did so using its constitutional power to collect taxes. Judge Hendrix explained in his 66-page opinion that because the government no longer collects any tax money on these specific firearms, the regulations created to protect that tax revenue are no longer constitutional.
“By zeroing out the transfer and making taxes for most NFA firearms, Congress eliminated the constitutional basis for the regulations that formerly supported the taxes for those firearms,” Hendrix wrote. “No longer can the challenged NFA provisions be justified—as they have been for nearly 90 years—under Congress’s taxing power.”
The Department of Justice argued that the regulations should remain in place under Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce. However, the court rejected that argument, stating that Congress wrote the NFA strictly as a tax law and never invoked its commerce powers when drafting it.
“Congress passed the NFA under its taxing power only,” Hendrix noted. “Efforts to render the NFA constitutional must come from Congress, not this Court.”
The lawsuit was brought by a coalition of individual gun owners, firearms retailers, advocacy groups like the Silencer Shop Foundation and Gun Owners of America, and 15 state governments, including Texas.
Because the court ruled that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority, Judge Hendrix did not rule on the plaintiffs’ additional claims regarding the Second Amendment.
The permanent injunction issued by the court applies directly to the parties involved in the lawsuit, including member organizations, state agencies, and customers buying directly from the named retail businesses. The judge declined to strike down the law nationwide, noting that federal courts must limit their remedies to the specific parties involved in the case.
The ruling does not affect fully automatic machine guns or destructive devices, which are still subject to the $200 federal tax and registration requirements. It also does not change the annual occupational taxes paid by commercial gun manufacturers and dealers.
Judge Hendrix stayed the decision for seven days from the August 5, 2026 ruling to give the federal government time to file an appeal.
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