The Giffords Law Center’s meltdown over the Justice Department’s decision not to appeal a federal ruling striking down the National Firearms Act’s registration and tax requirements for short-barreled rifles and shotguns is less about public safety and more about preserving a century-old regulatory regime that has long been used to chill lawful gun ownership. By refusing to spend taxpayer resources chasing a case the lower court found constitutionally infirm, DOJ has effectively conceded that the NFA’s $200 tax stamp and registration scheme—originally sold as a “prohibition” on gangster weapons—functions today as little more than a paperwork trap for otherwise peaceable citizens. That concession exposes the statute’s shaky constitutional footing: if the Second Amendment protects arms “in common use” for lawful purposes, then a regulatory regime that prices and registers those arms out of existence looks less like permissible “time, place, and manner” regulation and more like the kind of prior restraint the Founders would have recognized as an infringement.

For the broader 2A community, the non-appeal is both a tactical win and a strategic warning. On one hand, it removes the immediate threat of renewed enforcement against braced pistols and short-barreled configurations that millions of Americans have lawfully acquired under ATF’s own prior guidance. On the other, it signals that the administrative state may simply shift its focus to new rulemakings—pistol braces, forced-reset triggers, or “ghost guns”—rather than defend statutes already under constitutional cloud. Gun owners should treat this moment as an invitation to press parallel challenges against the Hughes Amendment’s machine-gun ban, the import restrictions on certain semiautos, and the ever-expanding definition of “engaged in the business.” Each of these provisions rests on the same shaky premise that Congress may permanently price or prohibit categories of arms that are now in common use.

The real lesson is that victories in federal courtrooms are only as durable as the political will to defend them. Giffords’ outrage is a reminder that anti-gun groups view any narrowing of the NFA as the first domino in a larger rollback of the administrative gun-control apparatus built since 1934. Pro-Second Amendment litigators and legislators should therefore treat the DOJ’s non-appeal not as an endpoint, but as the opening for a coordinated litigation and legislative strategy aimed at dismantling the rest of the NFA’s unconstitutional scaffolding before the next administration decides to rebuild it.