(A)Political - October 10th

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Key provisions of a 1934 gun control act no longer apply for U.S. citizens. Ukrainian strikes hit Russian oil facility hours after U.S. makes a deal for Russian diesel fuel. Sec. Rubio berates ICC, and delivers sanctions on the “rogue” organization.

• ATF Stops Enforcing Key National Firearms Act Rules Nationwide

• Hours After Trump's Diesel Deal, Drones Hit A Russian Export Terminal

• U.S. State Department Sanctions The I.C.C., Threatens To ‘End’ It

ATF Stops Enforcing Key National Firearms Act Rules Nationwide

_{By: Atlas}

The Justice Department said Friday, Oct. 9, that it will no longer enforce core National Firearms Act requirements for short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, silencers and so-called “any other weapons,” anywhere in the country. The change suspends, for now, a federal approval and registration system dating to 1934.

A federal judge in Texas struck down parts of the law in August but limited his order to those who sued. Attorney General Todd Blanche’s department chose to extend that relief to everyone. The department “has determined to exercise its enforcement discretion to create greater uniformity, consistent with the Attorney General’s statement today,” the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in an open letter putting the policy into effect.

“The direction from the President, Congress, and the courts is clear,” ATF Director Robert Cekada said in a statement, adding that ATF was “now following suit with our enforcement posture” while staying focused on “combating violent crime in American communities.”

What changes and what stays

Cekada’s letter says ATF “will no longer require individuals to seek ATF approval” to make or transfer the four categories, or require them to be registered, for anyone, “not just to the plaintiffs in the litigation.”

An accompanying FAQ lists what ATF will stop enforcing: the bans on making, receiving, transferring and possessing unregistered items, the NFA ban on moving them across state lines and the marking rule. Approval forms become voluntary, and ATF will keep processing them.

Short-barreled rifles and shotguns still fall under a separate law, the Gun Control Act of 1968. “Individuals transporting short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns should continue to file Form 20s, even if the firearms are not registered,” the letter says.

Under that law, dealers may sell those guns only with specific federal authorization, which the NFA approval process had supplied. ATF says it is “working as quickly as possible to issue new regulations” to fill that gap. “In the interim, ATF will not enforce” that provision, the letter says.

Machine guns and destructive devices keep their $200 tax and every NFA rule. Businesses dealing in NFA items still owe the special occupational tax. Dealers must still complete Form 4473 and, unless exempt, run a National Instant Criminal Background Check System check.

State lines still matter

State laws are unaffected. Many states ban some or all NFA items but exempt those registered under federal law, the letter notes, and the FAQ says ATF “cannot opine” on whether an unregistered item held under the new policy qualifies. In about 15 states, buyers will still need to go through the federal process, the Associated Press reported.

The letter also warns “it is unclear whether state courts will apply the safe harbor created by 18 U.S.C. § 926A,” the federal safe-passage law, to unregistered NFA items. It urges caution before carrying them through states that ban them.

How a tax cut became a court loss

In 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump, cut the $200 making and transfer tax on the four categories to zero.

On Aug. 5, 2026, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee in the Northern District of Texas, ruled in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF that the remaining rules had lost their constitutional footing. “Because today’s NFA does not generate any revenue from untaxed firearms, its regulatory provisions cannot be upheld under the taxing power,” he wrote.

Plaintiffs included gun rights groups, gun businesses and 15 Republican-led states. Hendrix’s injunction, effective Aug. 12 according to ATF, covered them and their “current and future” members and customers. An annual Gun Owners of America membership costs $25, CBS News reported.

ATF says that limit created “inequity and disuniformity.” In an interview Friday, Cekada said the administration believed the “best and fairest thing to do” was to act nationwide. His letter cites an Aug. 11 request to do so from 47 members of Congress, led by Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga.

A decision made at the top

CBS News reported Sept. 17, citing people familiar with the matter, that Trump personally ordered the department not to appeal, over objections from some department lawyers. Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords, warned that day that the administration “could bring us back to the days of Al Capone, where silencers and short-barreled shotguns were used to recklessly kill people.”

In a Sept. 24 letter to Congress required by federal law, Solicitor General D. John Sauer confirmed the department “has determined not to file an appeal.”

Gun rights groups celebrated Friday’s announcement. “This is what happens when all three branches of government are willing to follow the Constitution,” said John Commerford, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action.

John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said Cekada had embraced the “smash-and-grab lawlessness of the Trump administration by attempting to pick and choose which federal gun laws he enforces.”

Why the midterms matter

ATF’s own FAQ says enforcement could resume if Congress imposes a new tax or the injunction is overturned, and that “the Department could rescind the enforcement guidelines.” Federal law, it adds, has no provisions “that would automatically grandfather unregistered NFA firearms.” An amnesty to register is up to the attorney general, who “is not required” to offer one.

Restoring the rules permanently would run through Congress. CBS News reported that would likely require Democrats to regain both chambers, a question before voters in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

David Kopel, a senior fellow at the University of Wyoming College of Law’s Firearms Research Center, said Friday that a new president “could even make the possession of these unregistered items illegal and not give people any amnesty period, even to register.”

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