President Trump reportedly stepped in personally to keep his own Justice Department from reviving a 90-year-old federal gun-control regime that a Texas judge found unconstitutional.

The decision leaves a major ruling against federal registration requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns standing while the case moves through a fast-changing legal landscape.

It is a consequential victory for gun owners, but the boundaries matter.

The injunction is not nationwide. It protects the plaintiffs, the gun-rights groups that brought the case, and their current and future members or customers.

CBS News broke the news Thursday night:

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CBS News reports that President Trump directed the Justice Department not to appeal U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix’s August ruling. Several people familiar with the matter said Trump also told Republican lawmakers in recent calls that DOJ would not contest the decision.

A Justice Department official said the department intends to notify Congress that it will not appeal. An ATF spokesperson said the agency will issue guidance to implement the order.

The report says some career and political lawyers inside DOJ recommended an appeal, arguing that the department ordinarily defends laws enacted by Congress when reasonable legal arguments remain. Trump chose the other course.

That choice matters because the underlying case attacks the constitutional foundation of the National Firearms Act as it now exists.

Congress passed the NFA in 1934 as a tax law. It imposed a $200 tax on making or transferring covered firearms and built registration, fingerprinting, recordkeeping and approval requirements around collecting that tax.

Last year, the Republican Congress and President Trump eliminated the transfer and making taxes for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and a defined category called “any other weapons.”

Judge Hendrix ruled that when Congress removed the revenue-producing tax, it also removed the constitutional basis that had sustained the accompanying regulatory machinery.

A detailed gun-rights update explained what Trump’s reported order means for the case:

The federal court’s 66-page opinion says Congress invoked its taxing power when it enacted the NFA. The judge found no sign in the law’s text, structure or history that Congress relied on another constitutional power for the challenged provisions.

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The court therefore barred ATF from enforcing those provisions against the plaintiffs, their members and their customers. It expressly refused to issue a universal injunction for people who were not before the court.

The ruling covers suppressors, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns in the challenged scheme. It does not legalize machine guns or destructive devices, erase ordinary background checks, or allow convicted felons and other prohibited people to possess firearms.

That is a crucial correction to the panic already surrounding the decision.

A suppressor reduces the sound signature of a gunshot; it does not turn a firearm into a silent movie prop. Short-barreled firearms remain firearms, and every separate federal prohibition on who may possess them still applies.

The loaded phrase “gangster weapons” quickly drew a public rebuke from Texans following the case:

The Associated Press reported last month that the order took effect after DOJ did not seek an immediate appeal or stay. Gun Owners of America said two members then acquired suppressors through Silencer Shop without federal registration.

The AP also stressed that the injunction benefits the parties who brought the lawsuit rather than every American. Some states maintain their own suppressor bans, and separate challenges are proceeding elsewhere.

Federal prosecutors have already felt the effect. CBS reported that DOJ dismissed one unregistered-silencer count in Alabama after the defendant argued that he had joined a plaintiff gun-rights group covered by the injunction.

Other charges in that case remained, including an allegation involving a machine gun that the Texas order does not protect.

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The Justice Department’s formal appeal deadline is October 5, according to CBS. Trump’s reported directive means the administration plans to let that deadline pass.

Congress could try to rebuild the law on another constitutional foundation or restore a tax. Other parties could also seek permission to intervene, and similar lawsuits may produce different rulings in other courts.

None of that changes what happened here.

Congress removed the tax that justified a tax-enforcement system. A federal judge said the government could not keep the regulatory burden after its constitutional foundation disappeared.

President Trump then reportedly told his Justice Department not to rescue that burden through an appeal.

The executive branch is declining to defend a system a federal court found Congress no longer had constitutional authority to enforce against these plaintiffs.

For gun owners who have spent decades navigating fingerprints, federal registration and long approval delays, the ruling is a breakthrough.

Trump’s decision may be what allows it to survive.

 

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