CBS News reported on September 17 that President Trump personally directed the Department of Justice not to appeal Judge James Wesley Hendrix’s August 5 ruling 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, which struck down the National Firearms Act’s registration and taxation scheme for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns once Congress zeroed out the underlying transfer tax. The government’s deadline to appeal that ruling runs to October 5. With this reporting, we now know why the silence since August has been so total: the decision not to fight was made at the top, over the objection of the department’s own lawyers.
What CBS Confirmed
According to reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jennifer Jacobs, “President Trump ordered the Justice Department not to appeal a court ruling that loosened restrictions on firearms known as ‘gangster weapons,’ sources familiar with the matter told CBS News,” in a move that “will let some Americans possess or sell short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and silencers with less government oversight.” The outlet reports that Mr. Trump also told several Republican members of Congress in recent calls that he would personally ensure DOJ did not contest Judge Hendrix’s decision. As CBS summarized the underlying ruling itself: “In August, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee in the Northern District of Texas, ruled that most of the restrictions on all but two categories of specialized firearms regulated under the National Firearms Act are unconstitutional.” The press’s shorthand for these items as “gangster weapons” is a poor label for constitutionally protected arms owned by law-abiding citizens, but the underlying fact CBS reports is not in dispute: this was a decision made by the President himself, over internal dissent, to let a district court’s constitutional ruling stand.
A Justice Department at War With Itself
CBS also reports the internal resistance directly: “Letting the lower court ruling stand runs counter to the recommendations of some career and politically appointed lawyers at the Justice Department across multiple offices who disagree with the court’s opinion,” several sources said, adding that they “have warned it is already beginning to adversely impact federal firearms prosecutions across the country.” That complaint gets the constitutional posture backward. A permanent injunction binding federal agencies and their officers is not an inconvenience to be managed around; it is the law. The Executive Branch does not merely have discretion to decline enforcement of a provision a court has held unconstitutional — in my view, it has an obligation to do so. The President, who alone holds the Article II power that DOJ exercises on his behalf, made the correct constitutional call over lawyers who wanted to keep litigating past the point where the litigation had already been lost.
Why the Line Stops at Machine Guns
Judge Hendrix’s injunction reaches suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns — not machine guns, and not destructive devices, the one other category the NFA still fully regulates. Semiautomatic rifles and pistols were never part of this case; they fall under the Gun Control Act, a different statute altogether. That distinction matters because it exposes the emptiness of the “adverse impact on prosecutions” complaint. A federal prosecutor bringing an NFA charge today against someone for possessing an unregistered suppressor, short-barreled rifle, or short-barreled shotgun is not defending a contested law — they are defending a provision a federal court has already declared unconstitutional and permanently enjoined. That prosecutor, not the injunction, is the one creating the legal exposure.
The Question the Cluster Has Been Waiting to Answer
Since the injunction took effect on August 13, the open question in this litigation has been whether DOJ would use its full appellate window, which CBS reports runs to October 5. CBS’s reporting effectively answers it. A former ATF associate chief counsel, Jeffrey Cohen, told CBS that the tax provision Congress zeroed out “may ultimately do what no court, no Congress, and no administration has done in ninety years — eliminate the National Firearms Act, one of the primary American gun laws.” I have argued elsewhere that this collapse is built to be permanent, because every lawful transfer since August is deepening a common-use record no future Congress can legislate away; nothing in this reporting changes that analysis, it only confirms that no appellate court will get the chance to interrupt it.
Whatever else one thinks of this administration’s record, this particular decision was made by the President personally, against the recommendation of career and political appointees who wanted a fight. He chose the Constitution over the bureaucracy. That is worth stating plainly, and worth remembering the next time someone claims this White House’s commitment to the Second Amendment is rhetoric rather than action.
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.