By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
When it comes to media bias on Second Amendment issues, the New York Times has once again stepped up to demonstrate its animosity toward the right to keep and bear arms with its headline coverage of Wednesday’s ruling by a federal judge that the permitting mandate for short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and suppressors, is unconstitutional because the accompanying $200 tax for the permit has been repealed.
The headline, almost predictably, stated, “Federal Judge Weakens Key Gun-Control Law.”
On the other side of the media coin, the Washington Times headlined its coverage of the same gun rights court victory thusly: “National Firearms Act no longer applies to silencers, judge rules.”
Other headlines fell somewhere in between, and some newspapers didn’t even report on the ruling.
As noted by the Washington Times, the 66-page ruling by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a 2019 Donald Trump appointee to the District Court for the Northern District of Texas, is limited to the plaintiffs in two consolidated cases before him—Jensen v. ATF and Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF—the former case having been filed by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
The Associated Press notes in its report how “Groups that support gun restrictions said the law still has important safety protections and criticized the ruling as reckless.”
The Washington Times story noted that “Giffords Law Center, which backs gun-control measures, called the ruling ‘a dangerous step backward for public safety.’”
On the other hand, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, in a statement to the media, observed, “We are delighted with the ruling from Judge Hendrix. With the tax no longer in existence, there was no logical reason for the ATF’s registration requirement to continue. With this victory setting a precedent, we anticipate success in the other cases involving our sister organization…” the Second Amendment Foundation, which supported the Jensen lawsuit and also has its own pending challenge, known as Brown v. ATF.
“There is no longer any reason for this government gun registry scheme to continue,” Gottlieb said, “and our victory will ideally lead to other successful court rulings across the country. American citizens should never have their names on a government registry in order to exercise their Second Amendment rights.”
The Silencer Shop case involved not only various plaintiff organizations, but also several states.
One thing the New York Times story acknowledged was how the National Firearms Act $200 fee really had no other purpose than to make owning one of the effected firearms too costly for average citizens in 1934 to afford.
“The $200 tax was designed to be prohibitively expensive in 1934 dollars,” the Times acknowledged. “But in 2026, the tax is less onerous when compared to the cost of a modern firearm or suppressor.”
Gun control can take many forms, critics have observed, including economic exclusion.
