Today, October 9, the federal government did something gun owners have wanted for ninety years: it stopped requiring Americans to register suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns with the ATF. No more Form 4. No more fingerprints and the months-long wait. For most of the country, buying a suppressor now looks like buying any other firearm. A quick background check at the counter, and you walk out.
But not in Mississippi.
When the ATF issued its guidance applying the court’s ruling nationwide, it carved out roughly fifteen states whose own laws still demand federal registration. Mississippi is on that list. In twenty-seven states, residents walked out of gun shops that same day with nothing but a standard background check. Our neighbors in Louisiana are among them. Mississippians are not.
And here is what should make every Mississippian angry. The only reason we were left behind is a single sentence in our own code. Section 97-37-31 makes owning a suppressor a crime unless you are “duly authorized under federal law.” Because our statute chains us to the federal permission slip, the ATF is keeping the Form 4 requirement alive here even as it abandons it everywhere else. Washington got out of the way. Mississippi’s own politicians are holding the handcuffs.
Our leaders love to call Mississippi one of the most pro-Second Amendment states in the country. Here is their test. This is not a fight with the federal government. The federal government already surrendered. The barrier is entirely ours, and it can be removed with a few lines of legislation. There is no court to wait on, no bureaucrat to persuade, no act of Congress required. Just the will to act.
So let us find out who means it. Every elected official who claims the pro-gun mantle, from legislators to statewide officers to candidates for higher office, should say publicly, this week, that Section 97-37-31 must be repealed. Silence now is an answer all its own.
And Governor Tate Reeves should lead. He should not make Mississippi gun owners wait months for the regular session to grind into gear. He should call a special session and put this repeal at the top of its agenda. In the meantime, he can direct the Department of Public Safety and state law enforcement not to enforce a registration requirement the rest of the country has already discarded. That is what executive leadership looks like when a constitutional right is on the line.
None of this is hard, and that is what makes the moment so clarifying. For years our politicians have told us they would defend our gun rights if Washington ever threatened them. Washington just did the opposite. It handed those rights back, and the only thing standing in the way is a law written in Jackson. If Mississippi’s leaders mean what they have always said, they will act now. Not next session. Not next year. The rest of the country is already free. Mississippi should not be the state that made its own citizens wait.