08/14/2026
By now you're heard all kinds of interesting opinions regarding the recent NFA ruling. Here’s the part of the ruling that has us more interested than irritated...
Silencer Shop is in a unique position right now because its foundation was a plaintiff in the case. The injunction protects Silencer Shop customers, which means customers covered by the ruling can buy suppressors without going through the traditional NFA registration and approval process, while independent shops that aren’t covered by the injunction still have to follow the existing process.
We deliberately chose not to use Silencer Shop because of our concerns about customer privacy and how much personal information gets centralized in that ecosystem.
We were always comfortable competing a different way. We almost always undercut Silencer Shop on price, gave customers one-on-one guidance through the entire Form 4 process, handled fingerprints and photos right here, and put local, friendly faces behind the transaction instead of turning it into another online process. The longest part of the transfer process besides the weight was talking you, the customer, and getting to know you, and both of us can be talkers.
Helping people navigate the NFA and get the items they wanted was always part of the mission for us. We took a process the government made unnecessarily complicated and helped regular people get through it without all the headache.
But if this ruling is the beginning of the end of that whole system, we’re all for it.
Being in the NFA business means paying a yearly Special Occupational Tax, carrying the paperwork burden, maintaining records, paying for software and filing tools, dealing with fingerprints, photos, forms, compliance changes, transfers, law enforcement notifications, and all the other overhead that comes with selling something that should never have been this complicated in the first place.
If that all starts going away, we may be perfectly happy to go back to being consumers.
We will keep things simple and focus on the occasional refinishing or laser engraving project, put a few interesting guns on GunBroker every now and then, and spend a whole lot less time dealing with NFA paperwork and firearm transfers.
That was originally our goal, and honestly, that sounds pretty good.
Unlike some, we never wanted to preserve the NFA because we made money helping people navigate it. The goal was to help people exercise their rights despite the NFA. If the government finally gets out of the way and makes that business unnecessary, we’ll consider that a win.
Right now, Silencer Shop has an obvious competitive advantage because this injunction applies to its customers while independent dealers are still operating under the old rules. That may be temporary, and it may ultimately help break the whole system wide open. We hope it does.
There’s also still some legal uncertainty. The government did not seek an immediate stay, so the injunction is currently in effect, but an appeal is still possible. If the government eventually appealed and prevailed, that could create a messy situation involving suppressors transferred outside the registry during the injunction and potentially another registration or amnesty-type process to straighten it out.
So yes, Silencer Shop has the advantage right now.
But if the end result is that we get to stop paying the government every year, stop managing mountains of NFA paperwork, stop paying for software just to deal with federal bureaucracy, and go back to enjoying suppressors as consumers instead of spending our time processing them for everybody else? We’ll definitely take that deal!
