DOJ files brief openly defending its national gun registry

Late at night, while most people were asleep, the Department of Justice dropped a 48-page brief that set off alarms across the gun-rights world.

Gun Owners of America’s Felisha Bull called it “an outrageous brief” that doesn’t just defend the National Firearms Act, but embraces “an alarmingly expansive theory of federal authority” that could reshape how far Washington can go on guns.

DOJ’s Late-Night Brief Changes The Game

Felisha Bull explains that the filing came in response to what GOA and Gun Owners Foundation have dubbed their “One, Big, Beautiful Lawsuit.”

That case, led by GOA, GOF, Palmetto State Armory, the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, Silencer Shop, B&T USA, and 15 states, is aimed at gutting the NFA’s registration scheme now that Congress has zeroed out the historic $200 tax on certain items. 

According to Bull, DOJ’s response doesn’t just defend the law – it tries to use that $0 tax as a way to expand federal power.

In GOA’s view, the brief treats Congress’s repeal of the NFA tax as a clever pretext rather than a real limit. Bull says the department is now arguing that even with a zero tax, the federal government can still keep and enforce a national registry of short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and silencers.

GOA Says Bondi’s DOJ Is Embracing Unlimited Power

GOA’s leadership did not hold back.

Felisha Bull writes that GOA and GOF “condemn Attorney General Pam Bondi and President Trump’s Department of Justice” for doubling down on an “archaic and unconstitutional law.” She warns that the DOJ’s theory would “open the door to federal regulation far beyond anything the Framers intended.”

Senior Vice President Erich Pratt put it even more bluntly. He called the brief “federal overreach on steroids” and warned that if courts buy DOJ’s logic, “Congress could claim the power to regulate virtually anything, including firearms, on the thinnest of statutory pretexts.” 

In his words, “This is authoritarianism cloaked in legalese” and reads “exactly like something the Biden administration would have produced.”

Executive Vice President John Velleco said GOF expected a bad brief, but “the brief they filed was far worse than anything we anticipated.” 

He says they had hoped Pam Bondi and the Trump administration would use this moment to become “the most pro–Second Amendment presidency in history,” but instead “they’ve fumbled the ball.”

From a constitutional standpoint, GOA’s complaint is larger than just guns. If the federal government can keep a tax-based registry with no real tax, and still call it a tax power, then almost any registry or licensing system could be justified the same way. That’s the kind of legal move that quietly changes the rules for everything else.

YouTubers Break Down How We Got Here

On his Copper Jacket TV channel, gun rights content creator William walks viewers back to the political promises that built expectations for this DOJ.

He reminds his audience that at the start of the year, gun owners were told to expect national reciprocity, constitutional carry, repeal of the NFA, defunding of ATF, and rolling back past gun control. Bondi’s DOJ was branded, in his words, as “the most pro-2A DOJ ever.”

Instead, William says, Congress “trolled” gun owners with scraps, and the DOJ “has fought to uphold” the very regulations they were supposed to dismantle. The brief in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF was the breaking point for him, and he calls it “the worst and most disgusting betrayal yet.”

Over on the VSO Gun Channel, Curtis Hallstrom has a similar reaction but frames it as the mask finally coming off.

Hallstrom says he got word from his contacts at GOA that DOJ had finally filed its long-delayed response. He notes that this is the same department that has spent months asking for extensions, all while calling itself the most pro-Second Amendment DOJ in history. “They’ve just taken the mask off and thrown it away,” he tells his audience, by openly defending “a national gun registry.”

Inside The Brief: “Weapons Of War” And A Door To Banning Everything

Both William and Curtis highlight the same core passages from DOJ’s brief.

William points out that the department leans on language straight out of the gun-control playbook, describing short-barreled rifles as “concealable weapon[s] likely to be used for criminal purposes,” and short-barreled shotguns as “weapons valued for their ability to be easily concealed and unleash devastating damage at short range.” He says the DOJ even asserts that the NFA items it regulates are “primarily weapons of war.”

For William, that’s not just rhetoric. He notes the brief argues that because Congress wanted to “curtail armed crime,” it could target “particularly dangerous and easily concealable weapons that could be used readily and effectively by criminals.” 

In his view, that logic “basically opened the door for banning nearly everything,” because almost any common firearm can be concealed with the right coat and misused by a criminal.

Curtis takes special aim at the “weapons of war” line.

He reminds viewers that American history – and the Supreme Court’s modern Bruen test – recognize a tradition where ordinary citizens often had arms that were as good or better than those of any standing army. 

In his words, text, history, and tradition say “Americans have a right to weapons of war.” If DOJ labels those same arms as a reason for stricter regulation and permanent registration, he argues, it’s turning that history upside down.

From a legal perspective, that’s the big tension: the Second Amendment was written at a time when citizen and soldier weapons overlapped. DOJ is now using the “war” character of certain arms as a reason to keep them in a permanent federal book.

Why The NFA Tax Issue Matters So Much

Underneath all the outrage is a technical but crucial point: the NFA was built as a tax.

William explains that when Congress passed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” it zeroed out the NFA tax on certain items, like suppressors. He notes that historically, the only reason for the registry to exist was to show a tax had been paid and a stamp issued. 

Even the Supreme Court, he says, recognized back in the 1930s that the tax and the registry were tied together and that one couldn’t survive constitutional scrutiny without the other.

Curtis gives a similar breakdown for his viewers. He describes the NFA paperwork as a “tax return” for a specific firearm transaction. 

Even after the tax is set to zero, he says, DOJ is still demanding the same forms, still requiring registrations, and still treating it as a live regulatory regime – just now for a tax that no one actually pays.

The lawsuits GOA and Silencer Shop are backing argue that once the tax disappears, the constitutional basis for the entire regulatory and registry structure should collapse. DOJ’s brief, according to all three sources, essentially argues the opposite: that Congress’s power survives, the registry survives, and nothing actually changed.

That’s why Felisha Bull calls this an attempt to “normalize a theory of unlimited and unchecked federal power.” If the courts bless a “tax” power with no tax attached, the federal government has discovered a way to keep any registry it wants, even when the original funding hook is gone.

What This Fight Means For Gun Owners Going Forward

Felisha Bull writes that GOA and GOF are demanding DOJ “publicly explain and retract” the portions of its brief that push this limitless theory. She also urges members of Congress who claim to care about constitutional limits to pressure the department to abandon it.

William tells his Copper Jacket TV audience that while DOJ’s arguments are infuriating, that doesn’t mean they’ll win. He says Silencer Shop and the broader coalition still have a “strong case” and that this brief might end up being something the government “eats its own words” over if courts side with Bruen’s history-and-tradition standard.

Curtis, meanwhile, focuses on the political and cultural fallout. He says he never wants to hear another claim that this DOJ is pro-Second Amendment and openly hopes the administration is “gutted in the midterms” over moves like this. For him, this case is one more example of why public trust in law enforcement institutions – especially at the federal level – keeps eroding.

Stepping back, it’s hard to ignore the bigger pattern. Gun owners were told to expect deregulation, national carry, and a rollback of old gun-control statutes. 

Instead, according to Felisha Bull, William, and Curtis Hallstrom, they’re now facing a Justice Department that doesn’t just defend the NFA registry – it leans into it, labels common NFA items as weapons of war, and advances a theory of federal power broad enough to threaten “virtually anything.”

That’s why this brief feels like more than just one filing in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF. To its critics, it’s a moment of clarity: the government has finally said the quiet part out loud about its national gun registry, and now the question is whether the courts – and the voters – are going to let it stand.