A federal challenge involving longtime Texas Gun Rights ally TJ Roberts has gained new legal support from three recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

Texas Gun Rights previously reported that Roberts v. ATF is one of several lawsuits challenging the federal government’s continued registration of suppressors and short-barreled firearms after Congress reduced the related National Firearms Act taxes to zero.

The latest development is not a new lawsuit or a repetition of the original challenge. Instead, attorneys in Roberts v. ATF, Brown v. ATF, and Jensen v. ATF have filed supplemental notices explaining how three Supreme Court rulings issued in June strengthen their existing constitutional arguments.

Those decisions may make it considerably harder for the federal government to defend the registration system Congress left behind.

Three Supreme Court Decisions Change the Legal Landscape

The supplemental filings point to Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections & Public Safety, Wolford v. Lopez, and United States v. Hemani.

Each decision addressed a different legal dispute. None directly decided the constitutionality of the NFA.

But the plaintiffs argue that the principles announced in those cases bear directly on the government’s defenses in the pending NFA litigation.

Together, the decisions strengthen three central arguments:

• The Necessary and Proper Clause cannot be transformed into an independent federal police power.
• Courts must begin with the Second Amendment’s plain text before considering historical restrictions.
• Registration and licensing cannot be treated as interchangeable simply because both involve government paperwork.

 

The Jensen plaintiffs presented those arguments in a July supplemental filing in the consolidated Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF litigation pending in the Northern District of Texas. Similar filings were submitted in the Roberts and Brown cases.

The Necessary and Proper Clause Has Limits

The government has argued that NFA registration may remain constitutionally permissible as a means of supporting taxes that still apply to manufacturers and dealers.

The plaintiffs respond that this theory would stretch the Necessary and Proper Clause far beyond its proper role.

That clause allows Congress to enact measures needed to carry out powers specifically granted by the Constitution. It does not give Congress a general authority to regulate any activity it chooses.

The supplemental filing argues that Landor reinforces this limit. According to the plaintiffs, requiring ordinary Americans who owe no NFA tax to register their suppressors or short-barreled firearms would not be merely incidental to collecting taxes from businesses.

It would represent a major expansion of federal power—one that could theoretically allow Congress to regulate the activities of untaxed Americans in extraordinary detail whenever some related industry remains taxed.

The question is therefore narrower and more consequential than whether registration might be administratively useful.

The question is whether Congress has a constitutional power authorizing it.

Courts Must Start With the Second Amendment’s Text

The plaintiffs also argue that Wolford strengthens their claims under the Second Amendment.

Under the Supreme Court’s modern framework, a court must first determine whether a challenged law concerns conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text. If it does, the restriction is presumptively unconstitutional, and the government must establish that it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The Jensen filing argues that this threshold should be straightforward.

A short-barreled rifle is plainly a form of an arm. A suppressed firearm is also a form of an arm, and regulating suppressors directly affects the possession and use of firearms.

According to the filing, Wolford makes clear that courts cannot import questions about historical regulation, common use, or supposed dangerousness into that initial textual inquiry. Those issues belong later in the analysis, where the government bears the burden of proving its case.

That distinction matters because it prevents courts from creating a special exception for NFA-regulated items before the government is ever required to produce historical evidence.

Registration Is Not the Same as Licensing

The supplemental filings also challenge attempts to compare the NFA registry with ordinary “shall-issue” licensing.

The difference concerns both how the systems operate and why they exist.

A licensing process generally evaluates whether a person is legally disqualified from possessing or carrying a firearm.

Registration tracks a particular firearm, identifies its owner, regulates its transfer, and imposes criminal penalties when the item does not appear in the government’s records.

The Jensen filing argues that Wolford and Hemani require courts to examine those real-world differences rather than treating every administrative firearm restriction as constitutionally equivalent.

That argument directly challenges the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning in United States v. Peterson, which characterized NFA registration as comparable to a presumptively lawful licensing system. The plaintiffs contend that the newer Supreme Court decisions require a complete text-and-history analysis instead of such a categorical shortcut.

What Comes Next

The courts overseeing Roberts, Brown, and Jensen must now decide what effect the new Supreme Court rulings have on the pending challenges.

The supplemental filings do not guarantee victory, and each case may proceed differently depending on its claims, procedural posture, and jurisdiction.

But the government’s burden is becoming clearer.

It must identify a valid constitutional power supporting the remaining registration system, explain why the Second Amendment does not prohibit that system, and produce a genuine historical analogue for tracking particular firearms and their owners.

Administrative convenience will not be enough.

Neither will simply calling registration a form of licensing.

TJ Roberts once considered joining Texas Gun Rights to fight for the Second Amendment in the legislature. Instead, he put himself through lawschool, was elected to the Kentucky House and is now part of a legal effort asking federal courts to confront the constitutional limits of the NFA-–and three new Supreme Court decisions may have strengthened that effort at a critical stage.

Support Texas Gun Rights Foundation’s legal and educational work to help defend the Second Amendment and advance the constitutional rights of gun owners.

 

Everytown for Gun Safety’s latest Texas fact sheet presents a familiar conclusion: Texas suffers from “gun violence” because state lawmakers have not adopted the organization’s preferred gun-control agenda.

But Everytown’s own numbers do not prove that claim.

The underlying mortality data largely comes from government sources and reflects real human suffering. Texas faces serious challenges involving suicide, homicide, domestic violence, and criminal shootings. The question is not whether Texans should care –– it is whether Everytown’s framing accurately explains what its numbers show.

A closer review suggests it does not.

“Gun Violence” Is Not One Problem

Everytown reports that an average of 4,471 Texans die and 7,726 are wounded by firearms each year, giving Texas the nation’s 30th-highest combined rate of firearm death and injury.

But that category is far broader than many readers may realize.

Everytown combines firearm suicides, criminal homicides, shootings by police, accidental shootings, undetermined deaths, nonfatal assaults, suicide attempts, and other firearm-related injuries under the single label “gun violence.”

In Texas, Everytown’s own fact sheet says 58% of firearm deaths are suicides, while 39% are homicides. Police shootings, accidental deaths, and undetermined cases make up the remainder.

Those categories are not interchangeable. Suicide, criminal violence, lawful police use of force, and accidental injury do not necessarily share the same causes or require the same policy response.

That does not diminish the tragedy of suicide. It means a combined “gun violence” total is not the same thing as a violent-crime statistic — and it does not automatically prove that restrictions on lawful gun ownership would address the deaths being counted.

Texas Is Not Near the Top of Everytown’s Own Rankings

Despite Everytown’s criticism of Texas, its own rankings place the state broadly near the national middle.

According to Everytown’s Texas fact sheet, Texas ranks:

• 30th for overall firearm deaths and injuries;
• 31st for firearm suicides and suicide attempts;
• 23rd for firearm homicides and assaults; and
• 28th for estimated societal cost per resident.

 

Those are not rankings anyone should celebrate. But they also do not support the claim that Texas is uniquely dangerous because it protects the right to keep and bear arms.

Everytown’s own statistics should create some caution before accepting sweeping claims that Texas gun laws are the obvious cause of the state’s outcomes.

The Biggest Increase Came During a Nationwide Crisis

Everytown emphasizes that Texas’ firearm-death rate increased 18% from 2015 to 2024, while firearm-suicide and firearm-homicide rates each increased 19%.

Those endpoint comparisons are mathematically accurate. But they leave out one of the most important features of the broader trend: the sharpest increase occurred during 2020 and 2021, followed by a gradual decline.

A simple comparison between 2015 and 2024 can make it appear that Texas experienced a steady, policy-driven rise throughout the decade. Everytown’s own graph suggests something more complicated — a major increase during the height of the COVID-era disruption, followed by several years of improvement.

That pattern was not unique to Texas.

Across the country, 2020 and 2021 were marked by a historic rise in homicide, severe social disruption, economic instability, interrupted public services, and widespread civil unrest. Any serious analysis should account for that extraordinary national context.

This does not prove that one event or policy caused the entire increase. It does mean Everytown cannot credibly imply that Texas gun laws explain a nationwide spike while minimizing the most socially disruptive period in recent American history.

The direction of the recent trend also matters. If rates have been declining since the 2021 peak, readers deserve to know that — not merely that the 2024 rate remained above its 2015 level.

Washington Complicates Everytown’s Theory

Everytown frequently treats state gun-law rankings as though they explain state outcomes.

Its own data complicates that theory.

Washington is praised by gun-control advocates and ranked among the states with the strongest gun laws. Yet Everytown’s figures show that Washington’s firearm-homicide rate increased 33% from 2015 to 2024.

Texas experienced a 19% increase over the same period. The nationwide increase was 14%.

That comparison does not prove Texas policy caused a better result, nor does it establish that Washington’s laws caused its larger increase.

It does show that the relationship between gun laws and homicide is not nearly as simple as Everytown’s rhetoric suggests.

If restrictive gun laws automatically produced better outcomes, Washington should not have experienced a substantially larger increase in firearm homicide than Texas.

A serious analysis would consider criminal activity, policing, prosecution, poverty, urban concentration, repeat offenders, demographic differences, and the unusual disruptions of 2020 and 2021. An ideological policy score cannot explain those variables by itself.

Some of Everytown’s Most Prominent Numbers Are Dated Estimates

Everytown’s Texas fact sheet is presented as updated in 2026, but some of its headline figures rely on older inputs.

Its nonfatal injury estimate is based on 2020 hospital data. Its societal-cost estimate relies on 2019 fatal and nonfatal injury data, combined with economic modeling.

That does not make the estimates meaningless, but it changes how they should be understood.

The “7,726 wounded” figure is not a current 2026 statewide count. The “$51.3 billion annual cost” figure is not a direct Texas budget expenditure. Only a portion is described as a taxpayer cost; the rest consists of modeled social and economic losses.

These estimates may be useful when clearly labeled. They should not be presented in a way that makes them appear to be direct, current-year measurements.

The “Children and Teens” Framing Needs More Context

Everytown says firearms are the leading cause of death among Texas “children and teens,” while separately reporting an annual average for firearm deaths among people ages 0–19.

Those are not identical populations.

The annual figure includes 18- and 19-year-old legal adults, while the “leading cause of death” calculation uses ages 1–19, excluding infants.

That distinction matters because firearm mortality is not evenly distributed across childhood. National research shows the burden rises sharply among older teenagers, while firearms remain well below the leading cause of death for younger children. One recent analysis found firearms became the leading cause of death among ages 14–19, but remained fourth among children ages 0–13.

Among older teenagers, homicide accounts for a substantial share of firearm deaths and is heavily concentrated in particular communities. Federal research recognizes youth gang, group, and community gun violence as distinct problems that are commonly addressed through focused deterrence, gang intervention, and other targeted strategies — not through treating every household and every lawful gun owner as equally responsible.

That does not mean every youth firearm death is gang-related. The broader category also includes suicide, domestic violence, accidental shootings, and other circumstances. But Everytown’s sweeping “children and teens” headline obscures the extent to which the numbers are driven by older adolescents and concentrated forms of violence rather than a uniform risk faced by all Texas children.

Most readers understand “children” to mean minors, especially younger children. A transparent presentation would separate younger children, older minors, and legal adults ages 18 and 19 — and would distinguish homicide, suicide, and accidental deaths within each group.

Statewide Numbers Can Conceal Concentrated Violence

Everytown’s own data shows that firearm homicide is not evenly distributed across Texas.

The burden is concentrated among particular age groups, communities, and neighborhoods. That does not establish the cause of those disparities, and the figures should not be used to stigmatize any population. But it does show why a single statewide rate can be misleading.

Policies aimed broadly at millions of peaceful gun owners may be poorly targeted to violence driven by repeat offenders, gang or group conflicts, domestic abuse, mental-health crises, and localized criminal activity.

A serious response should focus resources where the harm is actually concentrated rather than assuming that statewide restrictions will address every form of firearm death equally.

Broad restrictions should not be presumed effective merely because an advocacy scorecard labels them “strong.”

The Data Deserves Attention. The Framing Deserves Scrutiny.

Texas faces real problems involving suicide, criminal violence, domestic homicide, and preventable firearm injuries.

Those problems deserve honest engagement.

But Everytown’s Texas report does more than present raw data. It combines distinct categories under one advocacy label, relies heavily on a decade comparison shaped by the extraordinary 2020–2021 national crisis, uses dated and modeled estimates as current-looking headline figures, and suggests a stronger causal relationship between gun laws and state outcomes than the evidence establishes.

Public policy should be based on transparent definitions, properly contextualized information, and careful evidence about what specific policies accomplish — not an advocacy scorecard designed to confirm a predetermined conclusion.

Texas Gun Rights Foundation will continue educating the public, examining firearm-related data carefully, and promoting constitutional principles alongside honest, rigorous analysis.

Support Texas Gun Rights Foundation’s legal and educational work to help defend the Second Amendment and advance the constitutional rights of gun owners.

 

A divided federal appeals court just upheld Illinois’ ban on AR-15s, standard magazines, and other commonly owned firearms — giving the Supreme Court yet another reason to step in and settle the issue once and for all.

The ruling came from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Barnett v. Raoul, where gun owners challenged Illinois’ so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act.

A federal district court had already ruled the ban unconstitutional.

But the Seventh Circuit reversed that decision in a 2-1 ruling, relying on its earlier anti-gun reasoning in Bevis v. City of Naperville.

The court’s theory is dangerous: because AR-15s supposedly resemble military firearms, politicians may ban them from civilian hands.

That argument should alarm every gun owner in America.

The AR-15 is not some rare battlefield weapon. It is the best-selling rifle in the country, owned by millions of law-abiding Americans for self-defense, training, sport, competition, and other lawful purposes.

That places it squarely within the “common use” protection recognized in District of Columbia v. Heller.

If courts can allow politicians to ban the most popular rifle in America, then no commonly owned firearm is safe.

The Supreme Court Is Already Taking Up the Fight

The timing could not be more important.

Just days before the Seventh Circuit handed down its decision, the Supreme Court agreed to hear major challenges to so-called “Assault Weapons” bans in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins.

Those cases ask whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect semiautomatic rifles in common use for lawful purposes, including the AR-15.

That means the Supreme Court is now positioned to answer the question anti-gun politicians and hostile lower courts have been dodging for years:

Can the government ban rifles owned by millions of law-abiding Americans?

The answer must be no.

The Second Amendment does not protect only the arms politicians find harmless, outdated, or politically convenient. It protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

And that right means very little if the government can outlaw the firearms Americans overwhelmingly choose to own.

TXGRF Is Taking the Fight to the Supreme Court

Gun owners in Texas should not make the mistake of thinking this is only an Illinois problem.

The gun confiscation lobby wants this model everywhere.

And if the Supreme Court gets this wrong, anti-gun politicians from California to New York will treat it as a green light to ban more firearms, restrict more magazines, and push their gun confiscation agenda further than ever before.

But if the Court gets it right, it could deal a devastating blow to one of the gun-ban lobby’s favorite schemes.

That is why the Texas Gun Rights Foundation is already drafting an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down these unconstitutional bans once and for all.

The anti-gun lobby will flood the Court with briefs claiming Americans cannot be trusted to own commonly used rifles.

The Supreme Court deserves to hear from Texans who understand that constitutional rights do not disappear because politicians invent scary names for commonly owned firearms.

“This is the moment gun owners have been waiting for,” said Chris McNutt, President of Texas Gun Rights Foundation.

“But getting our brief filed takes resources, and we need gun owners to help us finish the job.”

Chip in today to help Texas Gun Rights Foundation complete and file its Supreme Court amicus brief in the fight against AR-15 bans.

 

 

The Texas Department of Public Safety’s attempt to revoke Timothy Willis’ License to Carry just ran into a major new problem.

For months, DPS has continued fighting to revoke Willis’ LTC based on a decades-old Georgia divorce order that contains no finding that Willis was violent, dangerous, or a credible threat to anyone.

Texas Gun Rights Foundation has already beaten DPS three times on this issue.

Now, a new Texas Supreme Court decision may make DPS’ position even harder to defend.

THE TEXAS SUPREME COURT WEIGHS IN

In Noyes v. State for the Protection of Voges, the Texas Supreme Court ordered a lower court to reconsider a lifetime firearm prohibition issued through a protective order.

The order in that case barred Jonathan Noyes from possessing firearms for the rest of the protected party’s life.

But after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Rahimi, the Texas Supreme Court sent the case back for further review of Noyes’ Second Amendment and Texas Arms Clause arguments.

The key issue is whether the government can impose a firearm ban without the individualized dangerousness finding and temporary limitation Rahimi emphasized.

Justice James Sullivan’s concurrence was especially important.

He warned that Texas’ protective-order statute raises “grave constitutional concerns” when used to impose lifetime disarmament without a finding that the person is dangerous.

That is exactly the kind of issue at the center of Timothy Willis’ fight with DPS.

RAHIMI DOES NOT HELP DPS

DPS appears to be leaning on Rahimi to justify its position.

But Rahimi upheld temporary disarmament only where a court had found that the person posed a credible threat to another person’s physical safety.

That is not what happened here.

The Georgia order DPS is relying on against Willis does not say he committed violence.

It does not say he threatened anyone with a firearm.

It does not say he posed a credible threat to anyone’s physical safety.

And it was not a one-sided order identifying Willis as the dangerous party.

It was a mutual divorce order that applied to both parties.

In fact, the Texas trial court expressly found that no court has ever found Willis to be a credible threat.

That should end the matter.

But DPS is still trying to use that stale, reciprocal order to strip Willis of his License to Carry.

That is why TXGR Foundation attorney CJ Grisham has now filed a Notice of Supplemental Authority asking the Fifteenth Court of Appeals to consider Noyes.

In the filing, Grisham argues that Noyes reinforces what TXGR Foundation has said all along:

Rahimi does not authorize the disarmament of someone no court has found dangerous based on an old, reciprocal, finding-free order.

A CIVIL ORDER SHOULD NOT BECOME A LIFETIME GUN BAN

The implications go far beyond Timothy Willis.

If DPS gets away with this, then old civil orders with no findings of violence could be twisted into lifetime firearm disabilities.

A mutual stay-away order from a divorce case could become a weapon against gun owners decades later.

And unelected agency lawyers could use interpretation games to do what the law does not allow.

That is not how rights work.

The Second Amendment is not supposed to depend on whether a bureaucrat can dig up old paperwork and stretch it beyond recognition.

And the Texas Constitution’s Arms Clause is not supposed to be treated like a suggestion.

The Texas Supreme Court’s Noyes decision confirms that these questions deserve serious constitutional scrutiny.

And that scrutiny should be fatal to DPS’ case against Willis.

TEXAS GUN RIGHTS FOUNDATION IS STILL FIGHTING

Texas Gun Rights Foundation has already defeated DPS three times on behalf of Timothy Willis.

But DPS refuses to stop.

Rather than accept the law as written, the agency is dragging Willis deeper into court, forcing him to defend rights he should never have had to fight to keep.

As TXGR Foundation attorney CJ Grisham explained:

“DPS is trying to turn an old reciprocal divorce order with no dangerousness finding into a firearm disability. Noyes makes clear that Rahimi does not give the government that kind of power. The Constitution requires more than stale paperwork and bureaucratic assumptions before the government can strip someone of his gun rights.”

Texas Gun Rights Foundation is drawing the line.

Because if DPS can do this to Timothy Willis, it can do it to other gun owners too.

But courtroom fights are expensive.

And unlike government agencies with taxpayer-funded lawyers, Texas Gun Rights Foundation depends on grassroots patriots who understand what is at stake.

Chip in $25, $50, or even $100 today to help Texas Gun Rights Foundation defend gun owners, fight government overreach, and stop unconstitutional firearm restrictions before they spread.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a major Second Amendment fight that could shake the gun confiscation lobby’s favorite ban scheme to its core.

At issue: whether the government can ban AR-15-platform and similar semi-automatic rifles — some of the most commonly owned firearms in America — by slapping them with the politically manufactured label of “assault weapons.”

For decades, anti-gun politicians have called these firearms “weapons of war,” claimed peaceable citizens cannot be trusted with them, and used fearmongering to justify outright bans.

But AR-15s and similar semi-automatic rifles are commonly owned by millions of law-abiding Americans for self-defense, training, competition, hunting, and defense of hearth and home.

Now the Supreme Court is finally taking up the fight.

THE CONNECTICUT CASE

One of the cases before the Court is Grant v. Higgins, a Connecticut challenge to the state’s ban on AR-15-platform and similar semi-automatic rifles.

Connecticut’s law treats peaceable gun owners like criminals for wanting the same type of rifle millions of Americans lawfully own across the country.

The Second Circuit allowed the ban to stand, proving once again that too many lower courts are still treating the Second Amendment like a second-class right despite Bruen.

A related Connecticut challenge, National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont, raised similar issues over Connecticut’s ban on commonly owned rifles and standard-capacity magazines.

But the Supreme Court selected Grant as the Connecticut vehicle.

THE COOK COUNTY CASE

The Court will also hear Viramontes v. Cook County, a challenge to Cook County, Illinois’ ban.

Cook County’s ordinance prohibits possession, acquisition, and transfer of AR-15-style rifles and other targeted firearms.

In plain English, Cook County politicians decided peaceable citizens should not be trusted with some of the most popular rifles in America.

That is the gun confiscation agenda: ban the guns, criminalize possession, and claim it is all about “public safety.”

THE STAKES GO BEYOND ONE RIFLE

This case directly deals with AR-15-platform and similar semi-automatic rifles.

But the impact could reach much further.

So-called “assault weapons” bans are built on the same basic scheme: take commonly owned firearms, attach scary labels, point to cosmetic features, and pretend that makes them unprotected by the Second Amendment.

Many of these laws do not stop with rifles.

They often use the same feature-based test to target certain semi-automatic shotguns and handguns because they accept detachable magazines, hold more than a handful of rounds, or have other features anti-gun politicians dislike.

If the Supreme Court rejects that framework for commonly owned rifles, it could put enormous pressure on the entire “assault weapons” ban playbook.

Not just rifle bans.

The whole scheme.

Because if the government can ban one commonly owned semi-automatic firearm because politicians dislike its features, then no firearm is safe.

The gun-ban radicals are trying to establish the power to decide which arms the American people may keep.

That is exactly what the Second Amendment was written to prevent.

TEXAS GUN RIGHTS WILL FILE AN AMICUS BRIEF

Texas Gun Rights will not sit on the sidelines while the Supreme Court weighs one of the most important Second Amendment cases in a generation.

The same radicals pushing bans in anti-gun states want to bring that agenda to Texas the first chance they get.

“This case is bigger than one rifle, one state, or one ordinance,” said Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt.

“The question is whether politicians can ban common firearms by inventing scary labels and pretending the Second Amendment does not apply. If the Court gets this right, it could cripple the gun-ban playbook anti-gun states have used for decades.”

Texas Gun Rights will file an amicus brief in this fight, making it clear the Second Amendment does not protect only the arms anti-gun politicians are willing to tolerate.

It protects every arm.

If the Court rules correctly, it could put every anti-gun state on notice:

Chip in today to help Texas Gun Rights file its amicus brief and keep fighting to defend and restore the Second Amendment — without compromise.

The Bill of Rights protects speech, religion, the press, assembly, due process, privacy, and the right to keep and bear arms.

Only one of those rights has an entire federal agency built around regulating, restricting, investigating, and prosecuting the tools necessary to exercise it.

The Second Amendment.

That agency is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

There is no federal Bureau of Speech.

No federal Bureau of Religion.

No federal Bureau of Press and Assembly.

No federal agency licenses newspapers before they publish, inspects churches for recordkeeping violations, registers printing presses, or forces Americans to pay a tax before exercising a First Amendment right.

But when it comes to the Second Amendment, Washington has built exactly that kind of bureaucracy.

Other Rights Are Abused by Bureaucrats. The Second Amendment Is Policed by Them.  

Federal agencies have abused power against other constitutional rights, too.

The FBI and DOJ have targeted speech, political activity, and religious Americans.

The NSA has raised Fourth Amendment concerns through surveillance.

DHS and TSA have expanded federal search power in the name of security.

The IRS has been accused of politically selective enforcement.

Those abuses are real.

But they are not the same as having an entire agency whose firearms mission is aimed directly at the people, businesses, products, paperwork, and transactions tied to one constitutional right.

The ATF does not merely investigate violent criminals who misuse firearms.

It regulates firearm dealers.

It inspects Federal Firearms Licensees.

It polices paperwork.

It interprets federal gun laws.

It issues rules affecting lawful gun owners.

It decides whether products used by peaceable Americans are legal today and criminal tomorrow.

Other agencies violate constitutional rights when they overreach, but the ATF’s firearms mission is overreach by design.

The Firearms Ecosystem Is Part of the Right

The right to keep and bear arms is not limited to owning whatever the government has not yet banned.

It includes the practical ability to acquire, possess, maintain, train with, and use arms for lawful purposes.

That requires a functioning firearms ecosystem: manufacturers, dealers, gunsmiths, ranges, parts suppliers, ammunition sellers, collectors, and instructors.

The ATF regulates and threatens that entire ecosystem.

A right is not protected if the government can choke off the lawful businesses, products, and transfers necessary to exercise it.

The gun confiscation lobby understands this.

That is why they target dealers, manufacturers, accessories, paperwork, and every pressure point they can find.

They want lawful gun ownership to become so legally risky, expensive, and complicated that fewer Americans exercise the right at all.

The Problem Is the Agency, Not One Rule

The problem is not one regulation or one administration.

The structure itself is the problem.

When a federal agency is empowered to regulate a constitutional right, mission creep is inevitable.

Paperwork errors become enforcement opportunities. Technical interpretations become criminal exposure. Political pressure becomes rulemaking.

That is how lawful gun owners are left wondering whether something they bought legally will be treated as contraband after the next ATF memo.

Americans saw it with bump stocks, pistol braces, forced reset triggers, and “zero tolerance” attacks on firearm dealers over technical paperwork mistakes.

But ATF’s record goes far beyond rulemaking.

The agency has been tied to some of the most infamous federal enforcement disasters in modern American history, including Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Its record also includes Operation Fast and Furious, the botched gun-walking scheme that allowed firearms to flow into the hands of Mexican cartels. One of those firearms was later found at the scene of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

More recently, the ATF raid on the home of Little Rock airport executive Brian Malinowski ended with Malinowski dead, raising serious questions about the agency’s use of force and tactics.

And while federal law forbids a national gun registry, ATF has accumulated more than one billion firearm transaction records — exactly the kind of registry-style infrastructure gun owners were promised would never exist.

The pattern keeps repeating.

The ATF stretches the law.

Peaceable gun owners get threatened.

The firearms industry gets punished.

Americans pay the price.

That is not how constitutional rights are supposed to work.

Prosecute Gun Crimes. Stop Policing Gun Owners.

Violent criminals who misuse firearms should be prosecuted.

Armed robbers should be prosecuted.

Murderers should be prosecuted.

Cartels and organized criminal networks trafficking firearms to violent offenders should be dismantled.

No serious defender of the Second Amendment objects to punishing actual gun crimes.

But prosecuting violent criminals is not the same thing as maintaining a federal bureaucracy dedicated to policing peaceable gun owners and the lawful firearms industry.

If someone commits a gun crime, prosecute the crime.

If a criminal network traffics firearms, dismantle the network.

If a cartel moves weapons across borders, target the cartel.

But do not use those crimes as an excuse to regulate, threaten, and punish millions of Americans who have done nothing wrong.

Abolish the ATF

Texas Gun Rights has been leading the fight to abolish the ATF.

Not “reform” it.

Not “modernize” it.

Not put a friendlier face on the same federal gun control bureaucracy.

Abolish it.

Any agency with this long of a record of abusing peaceable gun owners, targeting lawful businesses, inventing backdoor gun bans, and stretching federal law to fit a political agenda has no business policing a constitutional right.

A friendlier administration may slow the abuse, replace bad leadership, and rescind some of the worst rules.

But the machinery remains.

And in two years, that machinery can be re-weaponized by the next anti-gun administration.

That is why gun owners cannot let up just because Washington temporarily changes hands.

Every fight must move toward the same goal: strip the ATF’s power, cut its funding, shut down its gun control schemes, hold its bureaucrats accountable, expose its abuses, block its backdoor bans, and abolish the agency once and for all.

The Second Amendment does not need a federal police bureau.

Peaceable gun owners do not need federal agents looking for paperwork traps.

Lawful firearm dealers do not need to live under political “zero tolerance” campaigns.

And constitutional rights should never depend on whether the current administration feels friendly.

Chip in today to help Texas Gun Rights keep fighting to abolish the ATF and defend the right to keep and bear arms without compromise.

The gun confiscation lobby has spent decades warning that lawful carry would lead to chaos.

They said ordinary citizens could not be trusted with firearms in public.

They said more concealed carry would mean more crime.

They said Constitutional Carry would put Texans in danger.

The data says otherwise.

Research from the Crime Prevention Research Center shows concealed carry permit holders remain among the most law-abiding groups in America.

In Florida and Texas, concealed carry permit holders are convicted of firearms-related violations at roughly one-twelfth the rate of police officers.

Police officers already commit crimes at far lower rates than the general public.

So when permit holders are convicted of firearms-related violations at an even lower rate than law enforcement, the gun confiscation lobby’s narrative collapses.

Lawful carriers are not the problem.

Criminals are.

The Fear Campaign Failed

Anti-gun politicians rely on fear.

Fear of Texans carrying handguns.

Fear of families defending themselves.

Fear of ordinary citizens refusing to remain helpless.

But millions of Americans have carried firearms legally for years, and the numbers are clear:

Permit holders are overwhelmingly responsible and law-abiding.

The same is true in states with Constitutional Carry.

Texas restored Constitutional Carry despite hysterical warnings from the anti-gun Left. The gun confiscation lobby predicted disaster.

It did not happen.

That is because criminals do not obey permit requirements, gun-free zones, magazine bans, or background check schemes.

Those laws burden the people least likely to commit crimes in the first place.

Permit Numbers Undercount the Real Story

The CPRC report also makes clear that permit data now understates how many Americans are legally carrying.

Why?

Because 29 states now have Constitutional Carry, meaning law-abiding citizens can carry without begging the government for a permission slip.

In those states, permit numbers can fall even as the number of people legally carrying rises.

That matters in Texas.

Texas is already a Constitutional Carry state, yet it still has roughly 1.58 million active carry permits — one of only five states with more than one million permit holders.

And nationwide, CPRC reports there are still more than 21.4 million concealed carry permits across the country.

In other words, lawful carry is not rare.

It is mainstream.

And the people doing it are overwhelmingly responsible.

Facts Beat Gun Control Talking Points

Texas Gun Rights has long argued that public policy should be based on facts, not fear.

The facts show lawful carriers are not a public-safety threat.

The facts show gun owners can be trusted to carry responsibly.

And the facts show the gun confiscation lobby’s attacks on concealed carry, Constitutional Carry, and armed self-defense are built on propaganda — not reality.

This is why Texas must keep expanding and defending the right to keep and bear arms.

That means protecting Constitutional Carry.

That means abolishing “gun-free” zones that leave law-abiding Texans defenseless.

That means passing Kyle’s Law to protect lawful self-defenders from financially devastating civil lawsuits.

And it means rejecting every attempt to punish Texans who simply want to defend themselves and their families.

This debate should not be decided by emotional headlines or gun control talking points.

It should be decided by reality.

And reality is not on the side of the gun confiscation lobby.

Lawful carry is not a fringe movement.

It is a mainstream exercise of a constitutional right.

The Second Amendment is not a government-issued privilege.

It is a constitutional right.

And the data proves gun owners can be trusted to exercise it.

Chip in today to help Texas Gun Rights keep exposing the gun confiscation lobby’s lies and fight for the pro-gun reforms needed to keep Texans free.