The permanent injunction Judge James Wesley Hendrix entered on August 5, 2026, in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, No. 6:25-CV-056-H, and the consolidated Jensen v. ATF, No. 6:26-CV-227, is holding. The Justice Department let its stay lapse and has signaled it will not appeal. Covered persons are acquiring suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns through an ordinary Form 4473 and a background check.
I expect that to remain true. But physical security works in layers — a fence, then an alarm, then locks — and no single layer is asked to carry the whole load. Legal exposure deserves the same architecture. The first layer here is the injunction itself, which binds the ATF and the Justice Department as to the parties it covers. The second layer is a doctrine most gun owners, and a fair number of lawyers, have never encountered. It is called entrapment by estoppel, and it exists for the possibility that a future administration tests how far this judgment reaches.
What the Doctrine Actually Is
Entrapment by estoppel is a common-law due process defense to a criminal charge. It applies when an authorized government official affirmatively tells a person that particular conduct is lawful, the person reasonably relies on that assurance, and the government later prosecutes the person for the very conduct it blessed.
The federal courts have reduced it to elements: an official empowered to give the advice, aware of the relevant facts, who affirmatively represented that the conduct was permissible; actual reliance by the defendant; and reliance that was reasonable given the official’s identity and the point of law at issue. Vague or contradictory statements will not do. The test asks whether a person sincerely desirous of obeying the law would have accepted the assurance as true without further inquiry.
Daniel Monnat and Paige Nichols’s December 2010 article in The Champion, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ magazine, puts the difficulty bluntly: because the defense is unusual, many judges and prosecutors have never heard of it.
Raley and Cox
The doctrine is no novelty. It rests on Supreme Court authority approaching seventy years old.
In Raley v. Ohio, 360 U.S. 423 (1959), witnesses before an Ohio commission were held in contempt for refusing to answer questions after the commission’s own chairman told them they could invoke the privilege against self-incrimination. Under the state’s immunity statute, they could not. The Court reversed the convictions, and did so even though no one suggested the commission had intended to mislead anyone:
To sustain the judgment of the Ohio Supreme Court on such a basis, after the Commission had acted as it did, would be to sanction the most indefensible sort of entrapment by the State — convicting a citizen for exercising a privilege which the State clearly had told him was available to him.
Six years later the Court applied the same principle in Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559 (1965). Police officials permitted Reverend B. Elton Cox to demonstrate across the street from a Baton Rouge courthouse; he was then convicted of picketing near a courthouse. The Court reversed again, holding that the Due Process Clause “does not permit convictions to be obtained under such circumstances.” A third decision, United States v. Pennsylvania Industrial Chemical Corp., 411 U.S. 655 (1973), extended the same fair-warning principle to a defendant who had relied on an agency’s own regulations.
Applying It to a Federal Judgment
Here is my argument, and I want to be clear that it is an argument rather than settled law: I am aware of no published decision applying entrapment by estoppel to reliance on a court’s injunction in NFA litigation.
The fit is strong nonetheless, and in one respect the case is easier than Raley or Cox. Those defendants relied on a commission chairman and on police officers. A person acquiring a suppressor today relies on the final judgment of a United States district judge, binding on the executive branch itself. If official assurance of legality is the currency of this doctrine, a federal judgment is the hardest currency available. That same reliance should also bear on any later attempt to search a home for an item lawfully acquired under it.
A future Justice Department bent on prosecution would first have to unwind the injunction, which will not be easy, or argue that a particular person fell outside its scope. The second argument is the realistic threat, and it is the one you can prepare for now.
Build the File Folder
Documentation costs nothing today and may prove decisive years from now. Keep the opinion and the final judgment. Keep proof that you were a member in good standing of a covered organization on the date of acquisition — a membership card, a dated confirmation email. Keep the receipt identifying the dealer, so the dealer’s own covered status can be established. Keep something that fixes the date.
Most readers will never need any of it. The point of a second layer is that it is already in place when the first one is tested.
Why Entrapment Doctrine Recurs in Gun Cases
There is a structural reason this body of law keeps surfacing in firearms prosecutions. Real crimes produce victims, and victims call the police. The NFA and much of the Gun Control Act criminalize conduct that produces no victim at all, which means these cases frequently originate not in a complaint but in government initiative.
This month marked thirty-four years since Ruby Ridge, where a federal case built on a sawed-off shotgun ended with Vicki Weaver and her son dead. That is what enforcement of a victimless registration offense looked like at its worst. Knowing every available defense is not paranoia. It is preparation.
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.