Gun rights groups capitalize after judge reverses decades-old restrictions: ‘Monumental’

Gun-rights advocates are wasting little time putting a “huge” federal court victory into action after a judge struck down decades-old firearms restrictions as unconstitutional.

Gun Owners of America (GOA) and Silencer Shop, a federal firearms licensee covered by the ruling linked to the sale and transfer of silencers, notified the Trump administration that they planned to begin transferring firearm silencers Thursday without going through the National Firearms Act registration and approval process that has governed such transactions for decades.

Just after midnight Thursday, two gun owners walked out of a Texas firearms dealer with silencers without first completing the federal registration and approval process that has governed such transfers for generations, according to Gun Owners of America. GOA said Brandon Herrera and Texas state Rep. Wes Virdell acquired the suppressors from Silencer Shop in Leander, Texas, in what the gun-rights group called the first lawful transfers without National Firearms Act registration since the law was enacted in 1934.

“This is the first time in 92 years that any gun owner has been able to do this,” Aidan Johnston, Gun Owners of America’s director of federal affairs, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “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.”

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Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., who attended the midnight transfers and helped write the legislation that set the stage for the ruling, called it “literally, the greatest Second Amendment win in the history of our country,” adding that it marked “a monumental day for the country and a monumental day for the Second Amendment.”

The ruling also appears poised to stand without a challenge from the federal government. Clyde said Wednesday that he had received confirmation from the Trump administration that the Justice Department would not appeal the decision.

“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,” said Erich Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America. “The era of federal registration for constitutionally protected arms must end.”

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The legal fight traces back to Republicans’ 2025 reconciliation package, which initially included broader efforts to roll back National Firearms Act restrictions on suppressors and short-barreled firearms. After the Senate parliamentarian blocked portions of the deregulation push under reconciliation rules, the final One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump instead reduced the NFA’s longstanding making and transfer taxes to $0 for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and certain other weapons, effective Jan. 1, 2026.

Gun-rights groups seized on that change almost immediately. The same day Trump signed the law, Gun Owners of America, the Silencer Shop Foundation and other plaintiffs sued the federal government, arguing that the NFA’s registration and approval requirements could no longer constitutionally stand for weapons on which Congress had eliminated the underlying tax. Fifteen states later joined the challenge. The Justice Department countered that the remaining regulations could still be supported by other NFA taxes and Congress’ authority over interstate commerce.

“Congress didn’t fully repeal the law. They just reduced this 1934 tax from $200 to $0,” Johnston told . “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.”

U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, sided with the challengers Aug. 5, ruling that once Congress eliminated the making and transfer taxes, the regulations that had existed to help collect those taxes lost their constitutional footing. Hendrix permanently blocked federal officials from enforcing the challenged requirements against the plaintiffs and, where applicable, their members and customers, while declining to issue a nationwide injunction. 

However, while the plaintiffs had separately argued that the NFA’s registration and approval requirements violated the Second Amendment, Hendrix said that “Efforts to render the NFA constitutional must come from Congress, not this Court.”