DOJ Let the NFA Injunction Take Effect — Then the First Unregistered Suppressor Transfers Followed

U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix’s August 5, 2026 order in the consolidated Silencer Shop Foundation and Jensen cases is now in effect because the Justice Department did not seek a stay during the court’s seven-day window. CBS News reported the deadline expired at midnight Thursday. A DOJ spokesperson told CBS: “The Department respects Americans’ Second Amendment rights and is currently assessing the impact of the court’s ruling.” DOJ can still pursue a regular appeal, but it did not stop the injunction from taking effect.

The relief is not nationwide. It covers the parties in the two cases and qualifying members or customers within the injunction’s scope. After the deadline expired, Gun Owners of America and Silencer Shop announced that two covered members acquired suppressors without complying with the enjoined NFA registration requirements — what the groups called the first such transfers since the NFA took effect in 1934. They said they notified ATF and DOJ before conducting the transfers.

Hendrix held that once Congress zeroed the $200 transfer and making tax on suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the NFA’s registration scheme for those arms lost its taxing-power foundation. Brady’s Kris Brown and Giffords’ Emma Brown condemned the missed stay. The market’s next question is not the holding — it is how dealers handle every line the order did not erase.