On August 5, 2026, a lawsuit was placed in a federal court in texas against the ATF. That lawsuit ruled that registration of items on the NFA that do not have a tax associated with them should not fall under the purview of the NFA. This is great news, and so far the DOJ has not filed an appeal on it.
However, the ATF has not given guidance to gun stores on how to handle this, and additionally it only applies to members of the GOA, and customers of a few companies. How gun stores are supposed to handle this is unclear, and unfortunately when it comes to the ATF unclear usually means the pulling of licensing for businesses that are not complying.
The issue here is that we would have to still do the paperwork and processing for customers who are not covered by this lawsuit, and yet not have to do that same paperwork for those who do.
How do we verify this? What happens if they are no longer covered by the lawsuit, and what if an appeal comes later?
Further we still have to do form 3 paperwork on all NFA items that we receive or send to other dealers. So we still have a registry enforced on us.
So right now we are waiting for guidance on how to handle this. The most important thing that we want to see is that this is not to be applied only to specific groups. Simply because there is a burden to prove that the membership is valid and in effect, and more so what happens if they no longer become members or that organization ceases to exist or is rebranded. We think something on this will be decided fairly soon after the 7 day period the judge has given before it goes into effect.
So sit tight, be patient. We are waiting not just to protect ourselves but you the customer as well. We don’t want ATF to try and enforce this after you get your item and then they demand it back because of paperwork.
