On August 5, 2026, Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the National Firearms Act’s registration scheme for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns lost its constitutional footing when Congress zeroed out the transfer tax on those items in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That ruling has already drawn plenty of attention. What deserves more is the shape of the fight around it. Four lawsuits were filed to test this exact theory. Two have been decided. Two sister cases are still working through district courts in Kentucky and Missouri, and fifteen states signed onto the winning case as plaintiffs without buying their own residents anything. Judge Hendrix stayed his own judgment for seven days to let the government seek relief from the Fifth Circuit.
In the consolidated cases of Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, No. 6:25-CV-056-H, and Jensen v. ATF, No. 6:26-CV-227, Judge Hendrix held that once the tax evaporates, the Form 4 fingerprinting-and-registration apparatus built to enforce and confirm the collection of that tax loses its Article I hook under the U.S. Constitution: there is no longer a tax to enforce, so there is no longer a constitutional basis for the burden built around enforcing it. That is the ruling everyone is talking about. It is not the whole story.
Four Cases, Two Still Undecided
Four separate lawsuits challenge the NFA’s Form 4 process on this mostly identical theory. Two were consolidated before Judge Hendrix and decided together on August 5: Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF and Jensen v. ATF. Two more remain pending. Roberts v. ATF, No. 2:26-CV-00091, sits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky before Judge S. Chad Meredith, within the Sixth Circuit — a circuit with a respectable Second Amendment record. That case is at the summary-judgment stage; nothing has been decided. Brown v. ATF, No. 4:25-CV-01162, is pending in the Eastern District of Missouri before Chief Judge Stephen R. Clark, with argument already held or imminent. Neither Roberts nor Brown has been resolved. Both judges will almost certainly study Judge Hendrix’s sixty-six-page opinion closely, but neither is bound by it, and either could reach a different conclusion.
Who Is Suing in Kentucky and Missouri
In Roberts, the organizational plaintiffs are the American Suppressor Association Foundation, Inc., Buckeye Firearms Association, Inc., Center for Human Liberty, and the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, joined by commercial plaintiff Meridian Ordnance, LLC, and individual plaintiffs T.J. Roberts and Zachary Cockrell. In Brown, the organizational plaintiffs are the American Suppressor Association, the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., the National Rifle Association of America, and the Second Amendment Foundation, joined by commercial plaintiff Prime Protection STL, LLC, and individual plaintiffs Chris Brown and Allen Mayville. Note that the American Suppressor Association Foundation in Roberts appears to be a legally distinct entity from the plain American Suppressor Association in Brown — precisely the kind of distinction that could matter enormously if either case produces its own injunction, since relief mostly runs to the parties actually before the court, not necessarily to every organization sharing a similar name.
Fifteen States Sued — and What That Buys a Resident
In addition to the commercial plaintiffs and the gun rights groups suing, there were also fifteen states suing the federal government in the Silencer Shop Foundation case as plaintiffs: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming. States do not pay the NFA tax, so their claim differs from a commercial or associational plaintiff’s. They argued that their own agencies — police departments, sheriffs’ offices, state law enforcement units — should not have to comply with the Form 4 registration and fingerprinting process either, once the tax underlying it disappeared. Judge Hendrix agreed. But a state’s presence on that plaintiff list benefits that state’s law enforcement agencies. It does not extend to that state’s private residents. Living in Texas, Utah, or any of the other thirteen plaintiff states does not, by itself, exempt an individual from the Form 4 process. The relief runs to the state as a litigant, not to the state’s private residents.
A Seven-Day Clock, and What Comes Next
Judge Hendrix’s judgment carried with it a seven-day stay, giving the U.S. Department of Justice a window to seek a stay or pursue an emergency appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. As of this writing, that window has not run, and the government has not announced its next move. Nothing in Silencer Shop Foundation or Jensen takes effect until that stay period passes without intervention — a detail easy to lose in the celebration. Meanwhile, Roberts and Brown continue on their own tracks in Kentucky and Missouri, and either could eventually produce a second and third precedent on the same constitutional theory, for an entirely different set of named plaintiffs. The NFA tax fight is not one case with one outcome. It is four lawsuits, three judges, fifteen states, and much more — and only one piece of that landscape has actually been decided.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.