1836 LLC
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What We Understood
The Double Hook
In August 2024, at the Texas Trophy Hunters Extravaganza in Fort Worth, federal agents seized 1836 LLC's display, inventory, and equipment. Warrants followed at our homes and at the business. The case was later dismissed, after Congress cut the suppressor tax to zero and Judge Hendrix ruled in Jensen. We are now filing the complaint that sequence made possible: whether the Gun Control Act's license can reach a suppressor made in Texas, sold in Texas, and kept in Texas.
The Double Hook
What We Understood
The Double Hook
A suppressor sat under two federal statutes at once. The National Firearms Act of 1934 is a tax law. Its making tax, its transfer tax, and the paperwork built to collect them rest on the taxing power. The Gun Control Act of 1968 is the old Federal Firearms Act combined with the NFA and expanded. The Federal Firearms Act licensed people engaged in the business, and it was written at interstate commerce. It was never a statute for work that never leaves the state. For ninety years the two hooks were crossed. A fight about one looked like a fight about both.
What We Understood
What We Understood
What the Tax Going to Zero Exposed
We read the line the way it is written. Congress has power over commerce among the states. It does not have a general police power inside one state. In 2021 Texas put that line into statute. A suppressor manufactured in Texas and kept in Texas was declared outside federal reach under the interstate-commerce power. We took the State at its word. We did not yet see the tax sitting on top of that line, outside the commerce statute, holding the license up.
What the Tax Going to Zero Exposed
What the Tax Going to Zero Exposed
What the Tax Going to Zero Exposed
The One Big Beautiful Bill set the making and transfer tax on suppressors to zero on January 1, 2026. On August 5, 2026, in Jensen v. ATF, Judge James Wesley Hendrix held that Congress had removed the constitutional basis for the registration scheme that used to support those taxes. Once that ruling landed, the case against us was dismissed. Only then did the hooks come apart. The tax was the prop. Commerce challenges had failed for decades because courts treated the license and the registry as machinery in aid of that tax. Jensen cut into that old answer. The question left is the one we walked in with.
What Still Stands
What the Tax Going to Zero Exposed
What Still Stands
The special occupational tax is a tax on the business, and that tax is a different question from the license. A making or transfer tax is also a different question. Congress could try to write one back in. After Jensen, that is a much harder statute to use.
Suppressors have already moved, in volume, to customers of the Jensen plaintiffs without the old tax and without the old registration. That volume is the point. A tax put back on the books has to be collected from a market that no longer has a clean line. Which cans transferred while the tax was zero? Which transferred after a new tax? Which sat in inventory the whole time? The registry that used to answer those questions is the same scheme Jensen cut out from under the plaintiffs. Once that baseline is gone, a restored tax does not snap the old records back into place. Discerning pre-tax from post-tax property becomes the government's problem, not a switch it can flip.
The license is a separate fight, and it is the one we are bringing. The Federal Firearms Act, carried forward into the Gun Control Act, licensed people engaged in the business of interstate commerce. It did not regulate a suppressor made in Texas, sold in Texas, and kept in Texas. The tax had been doing that work. The tax is now zero, and the transfers that followed have already eroded the trail a new tax would need.Suppressors have already moved, in volume, to customers of the Jensen plaintiffs without the old tax and without the old registration. That volume is the point. A tax put back on the books has to be collected from a market that no longer has a clean line. Which cans transferred while the tax was zero? Which transferred after a new tax? Which sat in inventory the whole time? The registry that used to answer those questions is the same scheme Jensen cut out from under the plaintiffs. Once that baseline is gone, a restored tax does not snap the old records back into place. Discerning pre-tax from post-tax property becomes the government's problem, not a switch it can flip.
Why Now
What the Tax Going to Zero Exposed
What Still Stands
We did not design the sequence. The raid, the warrants, the long hold, the tax going to zero, Jensen, the dismissal. Read backward, it is a straight line to a narrower complaint. The path was ordered. The commerce power has a border. On suppressors made and kept in Texas, we are asking the court to enforce it.
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