Man Successfully Registers Potato as Silencer

“TATE001”

That’s the official serial number of what appears to be the first legally registered 9mm potato silencer, according to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) registration form obtained by The Reload. It’s registered to a man named Zach Clark, who said he pulled off the feat as an act of defiance against the National Firearms Act (NFA).

“It’s a good way to highlight to normal people that like, ‘Yeah, this is dumb,’” Clark told The Reload. “This whole law is kind of dumb.”

The spud suppressor may be the most remarkable result of the NFA tax cut enacted at the beginning of the year as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which made the cost of registering suppressors $0 and opened up the floodgates. The ATF saw more NFA electronic registration requests on New Year’s Day than at any time in its history. The lower cost of compliance, combined with a recently-digitized process, has made new kinds of suppressors–including disposable or even meme designs–more viable than before.

“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) informed NSSF that on Thursday, January 1, 2026, alone, an unprecedented surge in e-Forms submissions were being processed,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade group, said last week. “That total was approximately 150,000 e-Forms. For an eye-popping comparison, last year, ahead of the $200-to-$0 tax change, typical daily volume on e-Forms for suppressors, SBRs and SBSs would hover closer to around 2,500.”

While the NFA requires registration of all sound-suppressing devices that attach to a gun barrel to be registered with the ATF, it provides a process for people to register their own homemade designs. In the same way that somebody buying a suppressor from a store would have to fill out an NFA registration form and get the ATF to approve it before taking possession of the device, a home builder has to submit their intent to build one and get approval before actually constructing the device.

Clark went through that process with his potato suppressor design. He said he made sure to keep potatoes out of his house while he waited to hear back from the ATF.

“As of this moment, I have the serialized washer, and I have the potato, but I haven’t put it together,” he told The Reload. “There’s a manufacturing buffer on that from approval; you have to wait. Plus, that’s a whole thing of like, what is your manufacturing intent? Does it count when you’ll buy the potato? Is it having any potato in your house? Any potato products?”

Potato silencer registration submission form
Potato silencer registration submission form / Zachary Clark

While Clark’s registration effort is something of a troll, gun-rights lawyer Matt Larosiere noted it isn’t entirely a laughing matter.

Continue reading “”

ATF Data Shows The Number of Guns in Americans’ Hands Now Tops Half a Billion.

NSSF, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, released the Firearm Production in the United States including the Firearm Import and Export Data 2025 Edition (reporting 2023 data) to its members. The report compiles the most up-to-date information based on data sourced from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF’s) Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Reports (AFMER).

The report is available free to members by logging into the NSSF Member Portal here.

Key findings for public release showed:

  • The estimated total number of firearms in civilian possession from 1990–2023 is 506.1 million, according to data in reports such as ATF Firearms Commerce in the United States, ATF AFMER and Congressional Research Service and including the collective ATF AFMER reports up to the 2023 edition.
  • Total domestic firearm production reported in the 2023 AFMER was 8,466,729 – a decrease of 15.4 percent from 2022 reported figures.
  • Data indicates that 32,091,000 Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) are in circulation since 1990.
  • Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR) production decreased 46.2 percent from 2022 to 2023. This increased the estimated amount of MSRs produced (since 1990) by 4.5 percent from 30.7 million to 32 million.
  • In 2023, 13,574,653 total firearms were made available for the U.S. market, which includes firearms that were domestically produced plus those imported, minus exported firearms. Of those, 8,176,535 were handguns, 3,899,907 were rifles and 1,498,211 were shotguns.
  • From 1990 to 2023, 284.4 million firearms have been made available to the U.S. market.

Continue reading “”

DOJ: Ban on mailing concealable firearms unconstitutional, can’t be enforced

A nearly 100-year-old federal ban on mailing handguns through the U.S. Postal Service is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced, according to an opinion released Thursday by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The 15-page opinion concluded that a 1927 law, which made it illegal to use the Postal Service to mail concealable firearms, such as pistols and revolvers, infringes on the Second Amendment.

“Section 1715 makes it difficult to travel with arms for lawful purposes, including self-defense, target shooting, and hunting,” wrote T. Elliot Gaiser, the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.

“The statute also imposes significant barriers to shipping constitutionally protected firearms as articles of commerce, which interferes with citizens’ incidental rights to acquire and maintain arms,” the opinion continued.

Postal Service policy mandates that nonmailable firearms found in the mail stream “must be immediately reported to the United States Postal Inspection Service,” and investigations are then referred to the relevant U.S. attorney’s office for prosecution.

The agency categorizes “pistols, revolvers, and other firearms capable of being concealed on a person,” including short-barreled shotguns and rifles, as handguns. It also notes there are no restrictions on mailing rifles and shotguns between licensed dealers, manufacturers and importers.

Major private carriers, including UPS and FedEx, also restrict the shipping of firearms to only licensed dealers, which the opinion argued effectively creates a “complete ban” for unlicensed people.

The opinion acknowledged some limitations, finding the law was only unconstitutional related to handguns but still applied to undetectable firearms, such as pen guns.

Continue reading “”

I can’t help but notice the Minneapolis riots against ICE only started kicking up once Nick Shirley exposed the Democrat daycare scams. It’s almost as if the Democrats were caught red handed and now they’re trying to distract everyone with violence and chaos.
The bureaucratic equivalent of resisting arrest.
– Rogan O’Handley

Kamala Harris Buys $8.2 Million Seaside Mansion After Warning ‘Sea Levels Are Rising’ Due to ‘Climate Crisis’
Harris’s new home features many of the same amenities—such as a gas stove and fireplace—that the Biden-Harris administration targeted with regulations

Former vice president Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff purchased an $8 million mansion in an exclusive oceanside Malibu neighborhood last month. The move came after Harris spent years warning that such communities could be threatened by the “climate crisis.”

A real estate listing for the mansion, reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, says the luxury pad is “perched in a prime coastal location” with “breathtaking ocean views.” The property sits right near a coastline that—according to climate scenarios endorsed by Harris—is at risk of facing extreme flooding. A climate model issued by the Biden-Harris administration determined that Point Dume State Beach, the beach a short walk from Harris’s new property, would be severely damaged by sea level rise even under the model’s most modest projections. The Trump administration discontinued that model in June 2025.

The purchase, which was first reported by the New York Post, calls into question Harris’s earnestness when discussing the threats posed by what she calls the “climate crisis.”

“Our oceans are warming. Sea levels are rising,” Harris wrote during her short-lived presidential campaign in 2019. “Extreme weather is destroying our communities. We are poisoning the planet.”

As a senator, Harris cosponsored the Living Shorelines Act, which called for earmarking $50 million in federal funding a year for combating sea level rise, which threatens “thousands of coastal communities and economies.”

Continue reading “”