One important point that often gets lost: Congress did not<\/strong> remove these items from the NFA. An earlier version of the bill would have done exactly that, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the removal language couldn\u2019t stay in a budget bill under the chamber\u2019s rules. So what survived was only the tax reduction. On paper, the registration requirement and the Form 4 remained fully in place \u2014 just with a $0 price tag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That tax change set up the legal fight that followed. On August 5, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas decided Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF<\/em> (consolidated with a case backed by the NRA and Firearms Policy Coalition).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The court\u2019s reasoning is worth understanding, because it explains why the ruling exists at all. The NFA has always been justified as an exercise of Congress\u2019s power to tax. The court held that a tax which collects no revenue is not really a tax \u2014 quoting an earlier Supreme Court decision, it noted that \u201can essential feature of a tax is that it produces at least some revenue. A tax set at $0 produces none.\u201d With the tax gone, the court found, the registration-and-approval machinery lost its constitutional footing for the items whose tax had been zeroed out. It therefore struck down the NFA registration requirement as applied to suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short: because the tax on those items is now zero, the court said the government can no longer require the Form 4 registration for them \u2014 for the people the ruling actually covers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the part the headlines usually skip. Because of a 2025 U.S. Supreme Court decision that curtailed nationwide \u201cuniversal\u201d injunctions, the Texas court could only grant relief to the parties in front of it. The injunction bars the government from enforcing the challenged NFA provisions against the plaintiffs and, where applicable, their members, their customers, and the fifteen states that formally joined the case. It is not<\/strong> a nationwide ruling, and it does not automatically apply to everyone in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mississippi was not one of the states that joined the lawsuit. As a result, a Mississippi resident is not covered simply by living here; coverage would depend on being a member of one of the plaintiff organizations or purchasing from a covered dealer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinarily a decision like this would be tied up on appeal for months or years. That is not what happened here. The court issued its ruling with a seven-day stay, and that stay expired at midnight Central on August 13, 2026 without the Department of Justice filing an appeal<\/strong>. By declining to seek a longer pause, the Trump administration allowed the ruling to take effect, and the first lawful transfers of unregistered suppressors reportedly took place that same morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The administration has also signaled it does not intend to fight the decision at all. Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia said he \u201creceived confirmation from the Trump Administration that the DOJ will NOT appeal.\u201d The DOJ itself has not issued a formal public statement, so the strongest evidence is the government\u2019s own conduct \u2014 declining a stay and letting the deadline pass \u2014 together with that confirmation relayed through Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two caveats keep this from being fully settled. First, letting the short stay lapse is not the same as the appeal window closing entirely; under the normal federal rules the government has roughly sixty days from the August 5 judgment \u2014 into early October 2026 \u2014 to change course and file a notice of appeal. All indications are that it will not, but that window technically remains open. Second, because the relief is party-limited, the ruling does not, by itself, extend to Americans who were not part of the case. There is ongoing discussion in Congress and at the ATF about whether to broaden the relief so it applies nationwide, but unless and until that happens, the geographic patchwork remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even where the Form 4 requirement has been lifted, several things did not change. A buyer still completes a standard Form 4473 and passes a NICS background check through a licensed dealer. People legally prohibited from owning firearms still cannot buy these items. State-law bans and restrictions still control. And machine guns and destructive devices remain fully regulated under the NFA, $200 tax included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mississippi\u2019s own statutes matter as much as the federal ruling, and here the picture is specific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For suppressors, Mississippi Code Section 97-37-31 makes it a misdemeanor to make, sell, or possess a suppressor unless the person is \u201cduly authorized under federal law.\u201d In plain terms, Mississippi ties the legality of a suppressor directly to federal authorization. State law does not independently create a suppressor registry; it points back to the federal system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mississippi also has a lesser-known statute, Section 45-9-81, the \u201cMade in Mississippi\u201d suppressor law enacted in 2023. It declares that a suppressor manufactured and kept entirely within the state is not subject to federal regulation, under a states\u2019-rights theory tied to interstate commerce. Similar laws in other states have generally not held up when challenged in federal court, so its practical effect is uncertain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and machine guns, Mississippi does not impose its own separate possession ban \u2014 these items are lawful to possess in the state so long as the owner complies with applicable federal law. Concealed-carry rules are handled separately under other statutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of today, the tax on suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs is zero everywhere. A federal court has ruled the registration requirement for those items unconstitutional, and the Department of Justice has chosen not to appeal, allowing the decision to take effect. But that relief reaches only the specific parties and states covered by the case \u2014 Mississippi is not among them \u2014 and the formal appeal window does not fully close until early October. On top of that, Mississippi\u2019s own law still ties suppressor legality to federal authorization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The result is a genuinely confusing moment, where national headlines and on-the-ground reality don\u2019t quite match. A buyer in a covered state may face a very different process than a buyer in Mississippi, even though the federal tax is now the same everywhere. Anyone making a purchasing decision should treat this as a fast-moving area of law, follow how the relief is extended (or not) in the weeks ahead, and consult a qualified attorney rather than relying on a headline. This article is intended as a general explanation, not legal advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you follow firearms news, you have probably seen the headlines: \u201cSuppressors deregulated.\u201d \u201cThe NFA is dead.\u201d \u201cNo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124494,"featured_media":165122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32635],"tags":[32685,10806,5,35632],"class_list":["post-165121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dana-criswell","tag-dana-criswell","tag-guns","tag-mississippi","tag-nfa"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/NFA.jpg?fit=1100%2C733&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165123,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165121\/revisions\/165123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The court ruling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The catch: who is actually covered<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The government is letting the ruling stand<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What still applies everywhere<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Current Mississippi law<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The bottom line<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg\")
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