A federal judge in North Texas has blocked the ATF from enforcing major firearm restrictions, after President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” removed the provisions’ underlying constitutional basis.
The order will not take effect until next week on August 13, allowing the government an opportunity to appeal the decision.
Background
The National Firearms Act (NFA) was enacted by Congress in 1934 as a scheme to constrict the market for firearms. The law was premised on Congress’s taxing power and was upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court on that basis.
The law required individuals to pay a $200 tax (approximately $5,000 in today’s dollars) before transferring or manufacturing particular classes of firearms. In addition to producing revenue for the government, it included burdensome regulatory provisions to aid the collection and enforcement of the taxes.
Notably, to aid in collecting NFA taxes, Congress imposed “comprehensive requirements” involving registration, reporting, and record keeping.
When the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) was enacted on July 4, 2025, the manufacture and transfer tax was zeroed on nearly all NFA-regulated firearms. This meant the NFA no longer imposed any tax on the vast majority of firearms it purported to regulate.
According to the OBBBA, the transfer and manufacture tax on machine guns and destructive devices remained at $200. But the transfer and manufacture tax was now set to zero dollars for silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and the NFA’s “any other weapons” category.
In effect, the constitutional foundation on which the NFA rested had been dissolved. Nonetheless, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives continued to enforce the law’s transfer and registration requirements.
This led to a federal lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas by a coalition of pro-gun interests and states—on the same day the OBBBA was enacted.
The lawsuit was brought by Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Silencer Shop Foundation, Palmetto State Armory, SilencerCo, B&T USA, the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, individual plaintiff Brady Wetz, and a coalition of 15 pro-gun states: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Plaintiffs sought an order declaring that the NFA is unconstitutional with respect to the untaxed firearms it purported to regulate. They also sought to block the government from enforcing the unconstitutional provisions.
The government attempted to argue that they have the authority to continue enforcing the regulations under the Commerce Clause—despite never having invoked this authority in the NFA.
The Ruling
On Wednesday, District Judge James Wesley Hendrix agreed with the plaintiffs—holding that Congress had wiped out the constitutional basis for federal gun registration when it zeroed the transfer and manufacturing taxes on NFA items in the OBBBA.
“The challenged NFA provisions are unconstitutional,” wrote Judge Hendrix. “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 [under the Commerce Clause] that Congress never invoked. Efforts to render the NFA constitutional must come from Congress, not this Court.”
Hendrix concluded that the plaintiffs are entitled to a permanent injunction against the challenged NFA provisions, but not the requested declaratory judgments, as “they would provide no further relief.”
This means that the federal government—namely the ATF—will be permanently blocked from enforcing the challenged provisions against the plaintiffs, their members, and their customers.
Specifically, the injunction stops the ATF from enforcing federal gun registration requirements, Form 1 and Form 4 applications, fingerprinting, and photography mandates against the protected parties.
Judge Hendrix has delayed this Final Judgment from taking effect for seven days from the date of entry to allow the defendants time to appeal the order, should they choose to.
Gun Owners of America (GOA) released a statement celebrating the decision.
“This is a historic victory for the Second Amendment. The federal government [kept] its registry of guns after Congress has eliminated the gun tax,” wrote GOA’s Senior Vice President Erich Pratt. “The court correctly recognized that the ATF cannot continue enforcing the NFA’s unconstitutional restrictions against law-abiding Americans. GOA will never stop fighting to protect the right to keep and bear arms.”
Aidan Johnston, GOA’s director of federal affairs, added that in 2025 “GOA worked with Congress and President Trump to eliminate a nearly 100-year-old tax on suppressors and short-barreled firearms. Today’s decision affirms what GOA members have been saying all along: the archaic National Firearms Act of 1934 and its federal gun registry is unconstitutional.”
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