On October 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is set to hear argument in Anderson v. Raoul, No. 25-2642, a challenge to Illinois’s ban on firearm suppressors. The plaintiffs include Carlin Anderson, and they are appealing a loss in the Southern District of Illinois, where Judge David W. Dugan granted the State’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and entered judgment for the State on September 5, 2025. The question before the panel is whether a state may prohibit an item that millions of Americans lawfully own. My answer is that it may not.
Why the Fight Moves to the States
The federal posture has shifted. Judge James Wesley Hendrix’s ruling in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF and Jensen v. ATF held that the National Firearms Act’s registration regime could not stand once Congress zeroed out the transfer tax, and ATF announced on October 9 that it would not enforce its approval requirements for suppressors against anyone. That announcement is enforcement discretion rather than a statute, and it leaves state law untouched.
Federal retreat does not reach Springfield. A suppressor that a federal agency no longer demands be registered remains contraband in Illinois. The next front is therefore the state ban, and Anderson is the vehicle for testing it.
The Plain-Text Argument
The appellants’ argument tracks the framework of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). The Second Amendment’s text is implicated when government regulates arms-bearing conduct, and an instrument that facilitates armed self-defense is within that text. The appellants contend that a suppressor does exactly that. It reduces the muzzle blast that can cause temporary deafness or disorientation in a person defending home and family, which allows that person to hear an intruder and to communicate with relatives and with emergency responders.
The same reasoning applies to the hunter who must stay aware of his surroundings and to the shooter who trains at an indoor range, where repeated exposure to unsafe levels of sound and pressure is a documented hazard. Illinois’s position, as I understand it, is that a suppressor is a firearm accessory and not a weapon, and therefore falls outside the Amendment altogether. Labeling an instrument an accessory does not remove it from the text, because the Amendment protects what facilitates armed self-defense.
Common Use Shifts the Burden to Illinois
Once the text is engaged, the burden shifts to the State to show that suppressors are dangerous and unusual. By my count, nearly seven million suppressors are owned in the United States, and they are lawful in forty-two states. The appellants’ brief puts the registered total at 4.5 million as of December 2024 and likewise counts forty-two states, but any arm in that kind of circulation is not unusual. An item held by millions of citizens for lawful purposes in the great majority of the states is, under District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), in common use, and what is in common use cannot be banned.
The appellants’ brief also relies on my scholarship, citing “What Part of ‘In Common Use’ Don’t You Understand? How Courts Have Defied Heller in Arms-Ban Cases—Again,” published by the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. The principle, I would add, is the Supreme Court’s, not mine.
A Ban, a Targeted Tax, and a Registry Fall Together
What makes this case matter beyond Illinois is the remedy it implies. If suppressors are protected arms, then three things follow. They cannot be banned, as Heller holds. They cannot be subjected to a targeted tax, a principle the Supreme Court applied to a $1.50 poll tax in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), and to a tax aimed at the press’s ink in Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575 (1983). And they cannot be registered, a point Judge, now Justice, Brett Kavanaugh made in dissent in Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244 (D.C. Cir. 2011), when he examined the historical tradition against registering firearms.
These are my forecasts, and I state them as such. I expect the Supreme Court to reaffirm the common-use test in Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, and Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, which are set for argument on December 2, with a decision I anticipate by June 2027. I expect that framework to be applied to suppressors and short-barreled arms within the next few years. If it is, a future Congress that revived the NFA’s tax or registration scheme would meet the same constitutional wall that Illinois now faces in the Seventh Circuit.
What to Watch on October 28
Nothing about this case is guaranteed, and an appellate outcome is a prediction, not a fact. But the question presented is narrow and the common-use record is strong. Illinois cannot call an instrument that protects a defender’s hearing an accessory unworthy of constitutional notice and expect the label to carry the case. I believe it will not, and I regard Anderson as part of the beginning of the end for categorical suppressor bans, in the states and in Washington alike.
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.