Well, well. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency that spent nine decades treating a muffler for your rifle like it was a shoulder-fired nuke, has suddenly discovered the Constitution. Friday the Justice Department announced it will no longer enforce the registration requirements on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and certain other firearms. Nine decades of paperwork, tax stamps, and waiting, gone with one emailed statement.
Here’s the part they don’t want you dwelling on. A federal judge in Texas, James Hendrix, ruled back in August that the permitting scheme under the National Firearms Act was unconstitutional. But read the fine print on that ruling: it applied only to the parties in that one case. The judge didn’t strike the law down for the whole country. The Justice Department just decided to spread it around anyway. Now ask yourself, when has the federal government ever voluntarily loosened its grip based on a ruling that didn’t even require it to? When the little guy wins one in court, they appeal it into the ground. When it suits them, they stretch it coast to coast overnight.
The ATF’s own director, Rob Cekada, put out the statement, and the line is a beauty: “The direction from the President, Congress, and the courts is clear.” Translation: we’re reading the political wind and we’d rather get out in front of it than get run over. You’ll notice these people never say “we were wrong.” They say the direction is clear. The direction was clear in 1934 too, when they built this registry, and it stayed clear through every administration, Republican and Democrat, that happily kept enforcing it. Funny how the direction only changes when the enforcement becomes politically expensive.
And let’s be honest about what the National Firearms Act always was. It was passed in the 1930s on a wave of Hollywood gangster panic, and it turned a $200 tax stamp and a federal registry into a toll booth between you and a piece of metal that protects your hearing at the range. In Europe, of all places, suppressors are sold over the counter as basic safety equipment, because the noise from an unsuppressed firearm genuinely damages hearing. But here the experts treated them like assassin equipment, because in this country the rule is simple: if the little guy wants it, it needs a form, a fee, and a waiting period.
For once, the little guy didn’t get played. A judge in Texas read the actual words of the Constitution, the ATF got its marching orders, and the paperwork wall came down. Enjoy it, because you and I both know how this goes. The same establishment that spent your tax dollars for ninety years running this registry will now spend more of your tax dollars fighting to put it back, and the moment the political wind shifts, the “direction” will suddenly be clear again in the other direction.
So hold onto your receipts on this one. When the government gives up power voluntarily, watch it like a hawk. But today, for one Friday in Washington, the swamp drained a little.