The gun-confiscation lobby is furious that the Department of Justice did not obtain another stay before a major federal court injunction involving the National Firearms Act took effect in Texas.
On Thursday, GIFFORDS joined Everytown for Gun Safety and Brady in attacking DOJ over the ruling involving suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and other NFA-regulated firearms.
GIFFORDS Executive Director Emma Brown accused DOJ of putting “the gun industry’s profits” ahead of public safety and demanded that the administration appeal.
Brady President Kris Brown went further, warning that supposedly “uniquely lethal weapons and devices” had suddenly been deregulated.
But that rhetoric leaves out some important facts about what the Texas court actually did.
What the Court Actually Ruled
On August 5, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix held that key NFA provisions could no longer be sustained under Congress’s taxing power after Congress eliminated the federal making and transfer taxes on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and Any Other Weapons.
The injunction is not a nationwide repeal of the NFA.
It protects the plaintiffs and, where applicable, their members, customers, agencies, and political subdivisions — not automatically every gun owner in America.
Texas Gun Rights has already published a detailed breakdown of who may be protected, what the ruling means for buyers and FFLs, and the important limits of the injunction.
But the bottom line in Hendrix’s ruling was straightforward:
Once Congress eliminated the taxes at issue, the federal government could no longer rely on its taxing power to sustain the challenged regulatory provisions attached to them.
The court did not need to reach the plaintiffs’ separate Second Amendment claims.
That is a much narrower reality than the gun-confiscation lobby’s rhetoric would have Americans believe.
The “Uniquely Lethal” Rhetoric Doesn’t Match the Hardware
The gun-confiscation lobby is now talking about the ruling as though machine guns were suddenly being handed out over the counter.
That is not what happened.
Suppressors reduce the sound generated by a firearm. Research published through NIOSH found that suppressors can substantially reduce firearm noise exposure, although suppressed gunfire can still present a hearing risk.
They do not make gunshots silent.
And they do not turn a firearm into a machine gun.
Short-barreled rifles and shotguns are not machine guns either.
ATF distinguishes short-barreled rifles and shotguns largely by barrel and overall length, while federal law defines a machine gun by its ability to fire more than one shot automatically, without manual reloading, through a single function of the trigger.
A semiautomatic rifle does not become a machine gun because its barrel falls below a government-selected length.
And a suppressor does not fire a projectile at all.
Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt said the gun-confiscation lobby is treating fundamentally different firearms and devices as though putting them under the same federal statute made them mechanically equivalent.
“‘Silencers’ are hearing protection devices. Short-barreled firearms and shotguns do not make firearms any more dangerous or deadly than long guns. Yet they were all regulated under the NFA like machine guns,” said McNutt.
The NFA may have placed these items under the same federal regulatory umbrella.
That does not make them the same thing.
GIFFORDS Wants an Appeal. Texas Gun Rights Wants the NFA Gone.
GIFFORDS, Brady, and Everytown want DOJ to appeal and keep the federal restrictions alive.
Texas Gun Rights believes DOJ should do the opposite.
Let the injunction stand.
And then Congress should finish the job.
The current ruling remains limited in scope. Gun owners can still face a maze of federal restrictions depending on the firearm, the transaction, the purchaser, and whether the injunction actually protects them.
That is precisely the problem.
Americans should not have to determine whether their name, membership, dealer, or transaction falls within the wording of a federal court order before exercising a constitutional right.
The permanent answer is not another round of litigation designed to rescue the NFA.
It is repeal.
Let the ruling stand.
Let the NFA fall.
If you want to help Texas Gun Rights fight back against the gun-confiscation lobby and keep the pressure on Washington to dismantle the NFA, chip in today.
