NFA Go Away: Broadcast, Cable News Oblivious to Major Gun Rights Win

Nicholas Fondacaro
August 13th, 2026 1:53 PM

Text to Speech

00:00 00:00
Font Size
MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro

The liberal media have been so preoccupied this week with the Air Force One switcheroo story (because they’re so obsessed with themselves), that a massive win for Americans’ gun rights was just scored right under their noses and they barely noticed. The Thursday morning flagship news programs for ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as the morning cable shows of CNN and MS NOW completely missed the National Firearms Act being essentially gutted overnight as the Trump administration declined to appeal a major court ruling.

Following an August 5 ruling out of a federal district court in Texas (Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF), suppressors, short barreled rifles (SBRs), and short barreled shotguns (SBSs) were no longer considered “NFA items” and thus no longer needed to be registered with the ATF. All that was required at purchase was to pass a background check. The ATF had seven days to file an appeal, and they declined to.

With time running out on Wednesday night, Georgia Republican Congressman Andrew Clyde posted on X: “BREAKING: I’ve received confirmation from the Trump Administration that the DOJ will NOT appeal our historic court victory against the NFA. THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP and Attorney General Blanche, for delivering the most significant Second Amendment win in OVER 90 YEARS!”

 

 

Other parties to the lawsuit included Gun Owners of America (GOA) and Palmetto State Armory (PSA), among others.

The thundering blow to the left’s civilian disarmament agenda came about thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill.

As part of the law, Congress repealed the tax stamp payment required for those NFA items listed above when registering them with the ATF. The federal court in Texas found that since the NFA was principally a taxing scheme under Congress’s taxing power (as noted throughout the language of the law), and since they were no longer collecting those taxes; it followed that the registration requirement was unconstitutional.   

As of publication, because of the way the order for NFA relief was put into effect, it only applied to GOA members (both current AND future), and PSA and Silencer Co. customers.

 

 

Additionally, there were still important legal questions surrounding what the ruling meant for states with their own laws that required ATF registration of NFA items, the paperwork gun stores were required to keep, the expected relief for those outside the relieved groups, and what it meant for other gun rights litigation making its way through the justice system.

Over the course of Thursday, the liberal media were slowly coming to the realization that something major had just snuck by them.

NBC News senior Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley seemingly tried to suggest that by letting the ruling go un-appealed, Attorney General Todd Blanche had lied to Congress. “AG Todd Blanche talked up his commitment to defend the law in question during his confirmation process,” he wrote on X.

 

 

Hurley shared an excerpt from Blanche’s confirmation hearing testimony he thought was evidence of the lie. “I defer to the measured judgment of Congress on whether the NFA should be repealed or weakened. The Department’s duty is to defend the constitutionality of the laws passed by this body,” Blanche said. “To that end, the Department is presently defending the NFA against constitutional challenges.”

Blanche was clearly stating that it’s the Department’s duty to defend the constitutional laws enacted by Congress. If the law was unconstitutional, then there was no reason to defend it.

The New York Times mourned the Second Amendment victory with this sub-headline: “The retreat by the Justice Department effectively allowed a pillar of the Prohibition-era National Firearms Act to lapse.” Adding:

The National Firearms Act of 1934 had instituted a tax-and-registration requirement for rifles and shotguns with short barrels, as well as for suppressors — weapons that Congress sought to curb because they were deemed particularly suited for violent crime. The law was written as lawmakers warned of a “serious national emergency” driven by gun crime as the country reeled from Prohibition-era gang shootings and an attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 

 

The Times may have also unwittingly given more ammunition to the guns rights movement (pun intended) when it admitted: “Once a niche accessory for civilian gun owners, the popularity of suppressors has skyrocketed in recent years, as more gun owners use them to prevent hearing damage and brain injuries.”

This was a key part of the ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, where “in common use” was essential to defending what American was allowed to own in terms of firearms.

DISCLOSURE: The author of this piece is a member of Gun Owners of America.

Donor Privacy Policy