The Feds Stepped Back on NFA Rules. Your State Didn't.

Two documents landed three weeks apart this October, and together they describe the regulatory room your counter is actually standing in. On October 9, ATF told licensees and the public that it will no longer enforce NFA approval, registration or tax-stamp requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and "any other weapons." On October 19, the NSSF, the NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation and three Albuquerque dealers sued New Mexico's attorney general over a seven-day waiting period that a federal appeals court has already called unconstitutional.

One story is Washington stepping back. The other is a state refusing to. Dealers who read only the first headline are going to hand a customer a suppressor their own state still treats as a felony, or release a pistol on a "proceed" their state still says must sit for a week. Both mistakes create the kind of liability that does not show up until an investigator does.

What ATF actually stopped enforcing on October 9

ATF Director Robert Cekada signed an open letter to licensees and the public, released with a companion FAQ. It covers suppressors, SBRs, SBSs and AOWs, and ATF was explicit that it applies to anyone otherwise subject to those requirements, not just the plaintiffs who won the underlying case.

• No Form 1, Form 3 or Form 4 approval is required before making or transferring those items.
• No registration in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, including the 24-hour registration requirement for manufacturers.
• No enforcement of the NFA marking requirement, and none of the unregistered making, transfer, possession or interstate-movement prohibitions for those four categories.
• Registration did not disappear. ATF still accepts and processes voluntary Forms 1 through 4 and still maintains the registry, mainly because a number of state laws key lawful possession to federal registration.

The path here matters less than the footing: Congress zeroed the $200 making and transfer tax on those items in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Judge James Wesley Hendrix held in Jensen v. ATF and Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF that the surviving registration scheme could not stand on a tax that no longer exists, and the Justice Department declined to appeal. The appeal window closed October 5. ATF turned the ruling's logic into enforcement policy four days later.

What did not change, and dealers keep missing

• Machine guns and destructive devices. The $200 tax and every NFA provision still apply. Nothing about this policy touches them.
• The special occupational tax. If you are in the NFA business you still hold SOT status. Lighter paperwork does not create inventory authority, and a dealer without an SOT cannot use October 9 as a reason to start selling cans.
• The Gun Control Act. Suppressors, SBRs, SBSs and AOWs are still "firearms." Form 4473, a NICS check, your records, the prohibited-person rules and in-state residency limits all still apply.
• Form 20. Taking an SBR or SBS across state lines still requires approved ATF transportation under 18 U.S.C. 922(a)(4), registered or not. That one lives in the GCA, not the NFA.
• Dealer sales of SBRs and SBSs. 18 U.S.C. 922(b)(4) still requires federal authorization for a dealer to sell one, and ATF concedes no mechanism exists yet. It is drafting forms and regulations and says it will not enforce that provision in the meantime. Waiting for the paperwork is a defensible business decision, not a lost sale.
• State and local law. ATF's letter does not override a single line of it, and a licensee still may not transfer an item in violation of state or local law.

This is also a policy, not a repeal. ATF's FAQ names three ways it ends: Congress imposes a new tax, a court dissolves or overturns the injunction, or the Department rescinds the guidance. Federal law does not automatically grandfather items acquired without registration, and an item removed from the registry generally cannot go back on unless the Attorney General declares an amnesty, which he may do for up to 90 days but is not required to. Say that out loud before a customer asks you to withdraw a pending application or deregister a can.

Your state law is now the whole ballgame

Montana is the cleanest example of a state that did not move. Attorney General Austin Knudsen issued guidance to local prosecutors and law enforcement in late August making the point plainly: under Montana law, possession of an unregistered silencer remains a felony carrying five to 30 years and up to a $20,000 fine. The state's short-barreled shotgun exemption is tied to holding a valid federal tax stamp, which is exactly the document the federal ruling removes for eligible parties, and suppressors used for hunting still have to be registered with ATF. A bill for the 2027 legislative session has been filed to rewrite those penalties, but until it passes, a Montana customer and a Texas customer can walk out with the same suppressor and completely different criminal exposure. The shops that publish their state posture first are the ones who capture that confused customer, and FFL dealers in Montana is where that customer in that state starts.

New Mexico runs the opposite direction on a different rule, and it is the more instructive case for dealers. The Tenth Circuit held in Ortega v. Grisham that the state's seven-day waiting period is unconstitutional, both on its face and as applied, for buyers who pass a federal background check. The district court entered final judgment in August. New Mexico's response was to argue that the ruling binds it only as to the two named plaintiffs and to say publicly that retailers and buyers who ignore the waiting period should expect criminal charges. Violating it is a misdemeanor for the buyer and the seller. That is why NSSF, NRA, SAF, the state's firearms industry and shooting sports associations, and dealers Calibers, Omni Tactical USA and Right to Bear Arms went back to federal court on October 19.

For a New Mexico counter, the lesson is blunt: a NICS proceed is not permission to hand over the firearm. For everybody else, the lesson is that a state can keep enforcing a rule that has already lost in court, and you are the one standing between the customer and the charge. Your listing is the cheapest place to make that clear, and it is worth checking what is published for your own shop among FFL dealers in New Mexico before a customer finds it first.

The counter checklist for the next 90 days

• Pull your state's NFA statute and read it as a document separate from federal law. Suppressor rules, short-barrel rules and waiting-period rules are written in different places and do not always agree.
• Ask the customer's state before you quote a timeline. The state, not ATF's policy, now sets the longest part of the wait.
• Write down your SBR and SBS position while the 922(b)(4) gap is open, and tell customers what it is. "We are waiting for ATF's new form" is a better conversation than a refund.
• Keep the SOT and keep the GCA paperwork. Both are audited, and neither got easier.
• Script the counter answer for staff: federal rules changed, state law did not, here is your state's status. Consistency protects you more than enthusiasm does.
• Let the customer decide on voluntary registration, in writing, with the tradeoff spelled out: registration is the safe path in states that require it, and deregistering later is close to one-way.

This is a dealer-finder problem now

Before October, a customer searching for a suppressor transfer near them was comparing price and wait time. That search has changed. The buyer now has to establish whether their state permits the item, whether the shop holds an SOT, whether the shop will hold inventory while a state question gets answered, and what the transfer fee is when it does. Those are the questions that decide which shop gets the call, and they get answered in the first thirty seconds of a page visit, not on the third phone call. A dealer locator that shows a shop without that state context is sending traffic to a counter that cannot close it. If you want to see how a state hub reads when listings carry hours, fees and contact details, start with FFL dealers in Texas, then compare your own state page to it.

That comparison is the cheapest fix available to you this week: put your shop's NFA and transfer answers on your free dealer listing, so the customer who is already searching arrives pre-qualified instead of pre-confused. Claiming a listing on FFL Search creates a dealer account, asks for your website address and a copy of your license, and puts your hours, transfer fee and contact details in front of the people already searching your town by name.

The state line is the new compliance line

For a decade the compliance question for an FFL was federal: what does ATF require, and did we do it. This autumn moved the question to the state capital. Federal enforcement receded on four item categories, one state kept a felony on the books for the same conduct, and another state is defending a waiting period its own circuit already struck down. Dealers who win the next year will not be the ones with the strongest opinion about the rulings. They will be the ones who can tell a customer, accurately and in one breath, what the law requires where that customer lives, and who made that answer easy to find before the customer walked in.

The regulatory map is now fifty maps. Keep yours current, keep your listing current, and keep the two consistent with each other, because your customer is checking both.

— Fred Thompson, [email protected]