The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
– Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre
January 24, 2026
The Year of the Can: The White Hot Silencer Business 20 Days In
When we spoke to suppressor makers late last month, projections varied, but all agreed that 2026 would be a significant growth year for the suppressor industry, now that the $200 tax stamp officially zeroed out at midnight on December 31, 2025.
But nobody could have expected the volume of eForms that would be submitted as we rang in the new year.
NSSF announced that the ATF reported processing over 150,000 eForms on January 1. The normal daily volume is roughly 2,500.
Welcome to the new normal.
Knox Williams, executive director of the American Suppressor Association (ASA), reported after meeting with ATF officials during SHOT Show here in Las Vegas that, to date, more than 260,000 eForms have been processed this January.
That figure includes all NFA forms, not just those covering suppressors. ASA hopes to obtain a further breakdown for its tracking of suppressor-specific transfers, but that data is not yet available.
However, we do have the final numbers for 2025. Last year, a total of 732,863 suppressors were transferred, falling short of the 746,380 transferred in 2024. That brings the total number of registered suppressors in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) to 5,776,685—up from 4,419,578 at the end of 2024.
The shortfall was obviously not due to a lack of consumer demand, but rather to buyers refusing to pay the tax when they knew purchases would be tax-free on January 1. That 150,000-plus eForm volume on day one proves the point.
Ogden, Utah Territory 1855
Born to Jonathan Browning and wife Elizabeth Caroline née Clark a boy, named
John Moses.
Finally: Trump Pulls the US Out of United Nations’ International Gun Registry Scheme
President Donald Trump just delivered a long-overdue message to the global gun confiscation cartel: America is not taking orders from the United Nations.
In a major move for national sovereignty and Second Amendment freedom, the Trump administration has formally withdrawn the United States from the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, a UN-run reporting system that gun rights advocates have warned for years is part of the international bureaucracy’s long game to pressure nations into “standardized” gun restrictions.
What Is the UN Register of Conventional Arms?
UNROCA is a so-called “voluntary” United Nations registry where participating countries report information about weapons transfers, including categories of conventional arms and, in many cases, small arms and light weapons.
Supporters claim it promotes “transparency.”
But gun owners know how this game works.
Transparency is always the excuse and control is always the goal. Because once international bureaucrats start collecting data, they don’t stop at tracking tanks and fighter jets.
HHS announces US has completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the State Department announced Thursday that the United States has completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
President Donald Trump signed the executive order that began the process of withdrawing from the global organization last year, on the first day of his second term.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also cited issues with the organization’s failure to adopt urgent reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the political influence of WHO member states.
“Today, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization, freeing itself from its constraints, as President Trump promised on his first day in office,” the secretaries said in a joint statement. “This action responds to the WHO’s failures during the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to rectify the harm from those failures inflicted on the American people.”
The departments claimed the WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19 and failed to adopt meaningful reforms to address political influence and poor coordination in the aftermath of the global crisis.
The secretaries added that the United States will still interact with the organization to effectuate its withdrawal, but that all funding for, and staffing of, WHO initiatives have ceased.
Choosing to carry is a silent vow to be the most composed person in the room. It’s the realization that while you hope to never need the tool on your hip, you refuse to be a helpless witness to the unthinkable. This lifestyle demands a higher level of awareness, a lower ego, and…
— Firearm Fury (@FirearmFury) January 22, 2026
“Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.” —
January 23, 2026
The Future of Handguns: Did We Peak?
Tamara Keel
Though not definitive, this timeline gives you the approximate years patented and/or successful handguns of the type shown gained market share. The span of time since the Glock G17 was introduced is not unprecedented.
In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama wrote the book “The End of History and the Last Man,” speculating that human society had reached its ultimate political form in liberal Western democracies. As we have seen in the decades since, that may not be true.
What does this have to do with handguns? Well, I’m not really an old-timer, but I can remember when I was a teenager, most police officers still carried revolvers (the old-timers among the gunwriting ranks remember being issued wheelguns). In the years since then, we’ve seen the rise and fall of the traditional double-action pistol as an issue sidearm, as well as a roughly decade-long flirtation with alternate calibers like .40 S&W and .357 SIG.
For the last 10 years or so, though, the standard answer to the “What pistol?” question has been a polymer-frame, striker-fired, double-stack pistol chambered in 9 mm. The temptation is definitely there to think of writing “The End of History and the Last Pistol.” But how did we get here, and what could be next?
For the reasons behind the pistol type itself, it comes down to simple cost. There’s nothing more modern about a striker over a hammer. John Moses Browning’s first semi-automatic pistol, the FN Model 1899, was striker-fired. It’s not intrinsically superior mechanically, either. In fact, it has a few downsides. A hammer generally gets better ignition reliability, and a hammer allows the use of lighter recoil springs since the force required to override the hammer provides much of the initial braking force to the recoiling slide.
The striker’s big advantage is simplicity, which translates to a less-expensive gun. There’s just no way to produce a hammer-fired ignition system as cheaply as a striker-fired one. Similarly, there’s just no way to chisel a frame out of steel or aluminum as cheaply as one can injection-mold one out of polymer. When it comes to the real world of accountants and budgets, the cheap gun that works just fine is going to displace the more-expensive gun that also works just fine.
With ammunition, a similar effect has taken place. With the current school of thought in terminal ballistics, the goal is a bullet that will penetrate 12 to 16 inches, but preferably no more. With most all service calibers delivering this level of performance, it’s probably not a surprise that the cheapest, easiest to shoot one—the one that’s easiest on the gun and which you can cram the most of into a magazine—has emerged as the near-universal choice.
So, what does this mean for the future of duty-type pistols? Is it just an unbroken vista of striker-fired, flat- black plastic and 9 mm bullets? An horizon of Glock G19s, Smith M&P9s and SIG P320s forevermore, at least until someone invents the laser pistol?
It’s hard to imagine something causing a trend back to more-expensive handguns, at least for duty-type use. These days people are just as often “churching up” Glocks or other polymer, striker guns with Zev or Grayguns or Boresight Solutions aftermarket work. Unless there’s a high-profile development that causes a turning away from the easy-to-shoot striker trigger, it seems rather unlikely to be replaced.
The same with the 9 mm cartridge. Ballistically, you could probably get the same results with a 100- to 115-grain bullet of about .312 inch, loaded hot. It’d basically be a rimless .327 Fed. Mag., with no more recoil in a full-size, semi-automatic pistol. You’d get even more rounds in the magazine than with 9 mm, albeit at the expense of increased muzzle blast. But there’s no real incentive to do so when so much of the attractiveness of 9 mm is its ubiquity and low cost.
For the near future though, it looks like the advances will be in peripherals: Better integration of red-dot optics, lights and lasers. There will also be applications for the serialized interchangeable chassis-type lockwork such as that found in the P320 that we haven’t yet explored. So, while we haven’t reached the “end of history” with the current crop of service-style autos, we’ve certainly hit a good, long pause.
The Perversity of Citing The Black Codes To Defend Gun-Control Laws.
Neal Katyal and Justice Jackson were placed in the uncomfortable spot of having to explain why racist legislation to disarm the freedman was actually relevant.
One of the most bizarre aspects of modern Second Amendment litigation is how supporters of gun control are forced to favorably cite Jim Crow laws. In all other contexts, these sort of anti-canonical statutes would be untouchable. Yet, when it comes to guns, all the usual rules go out the window. In Wolford v. Lopez, one of the leading authorities for Hawaii’s law is an 1865 Louisiana statute. Neal Katyal described it as a “dead ringer” for the Hawaii statute.
During the oral argument, Justice Gorsuch was incredulous that Hawaii was relying on this shameful precedent. He asked Wolford’s counsel if it was appropriate to rely on such a law to inform the nation’s traditions.
Bradenton man shoots kidnapper dead for trying to abduct his wife, detectives say
BRADENTON, Fla. (WFLA) — A Bradenton man fended off a kidnapper who tried to abduct his wife on New Year’s Day, deputies said.
According to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, Nicholas Palomo, a 36-year-old felon who had previously gone to prison for kidnapping and other crimes, attempted to abduct a woman who was walking her dog in the area of 18th Place East in Bradenton.
The woman managed to escape Palomo by running from his car and made it to her home and warned her husband about what happened.
Detectives said the husband went outside and confronted Palomo who behaved “in a threatening manner” toward the couple. When Palomo began approaching the victim’s husband, the husband shot him a single time in the driveway.
The sheriff’s office said the whole ordeal occurred within a matter of minutes.
Deputies responded to the shooting at 12:27 a.m., and despite efforts to save him, Palomo died at the scene.
After collecting further evidence in the shooting, investigators determined that Palomo did not know the couple, classifying the shooting as a “random incident.”
Detectives also found that Palomo previously caused a disturbance at a Circle K before the shooting. It is believed he may have been under the influence of narcotics.
An autopsy found Palomo died of a single gunshot to the chest, and toxicology testing is being done to determine what drugs were in his system at the time.
As such, the State Attorney’s Office classified the shooting as self-defense, justifying the homeowner’s actions.
RESPONSE BRIEF FILED IN SAF’S SECOND NFA CHALLENGE
BELLEVUE, Wash. — Jan. 21, 2026 — The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed a response brief in the second of the organization’s two lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act (NFA) registration scheme.
Filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, the brief voices the organization’s opposition to the Government’s motion for summary judgment in Brown v. ATF.
Until President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the NFA established a $200 tax and registration regime on certain classes of firearms including silencers, short-barreled firearms and “any other weapons” (AOWs), drawing from Congressional authority to levy taxes. SAF and its partners filed lawsuits challenging the remaining registration requirements because without the tax, Congress’ reliance on their taxing authority is no longer justifiable.
“The passage of the Big Beautiful Bill kicked the already questionable constitutional authority for the NFA right out from under the ATF,” said SAF Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “With its actual purported authority now eliminated, the government has resorted to borrowing taxation authority from elsewhere in the statute, or entirely different constitutional authority rarely asserted to justify the NFA. Today’s brief explains exactly why neither tactic is persuasive.”
SAF is joined in Brown v. ATF by the American Suppressor Association, National Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, Prime Protection STL Tactical Boutique and two private citizens.
“For the second time this week SAF and its partners have filed opposition briefs in response to the government’s insistence on defending the NFA,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “We’re better situated now than we have been in almost 90 years to relegate significant chunks of the unconstitutional NFA to the dustbin of history. Today’s brief is a major step toward that goal.”
No. All immigrants are not equally likely to assimilate. Open borders is suicidal empathy. My immigration positions stem from having a functioning brain rooted in reality. https://t.co/2ti3U9QpaJ
— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) January 20, 2026
If you look at every issue in this country, every issue I believe traces back to this fact: On the one hand, the elites in the ruling class in this country are robbing us blind, and on the other, if you dare complain about it, you are a bad person.
– J.D. VANCE