Key Takeaways
- The Ninth Circuit ruled that suppressors are not ‘arms’ protected by the Second Amendment in the case of United States v. DeBorba.
- DeBorba, a Brazilian citizen, overstayed his visa and was convicted for possessing firearms and an unregistered silencer.
- The court deemed suppressors as ‘optional accessories’, arguing they are unnecessary for a gun to operate.
- This ruling contradicts federal law, which classifies silencers as ‘firearms’ requiring strict regulation.
- The decision may undermine ongoing legal challenges regarding suppressor bans, impacting gun owners significantly.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
The Ninth Circuit just told gun owners that a suppressor is not an “arm” the Second Amendment protects. The ruling came out of a case built on about the worst defendant imaginable, and that is exactly what worries me.
On June 3, 2026, a three-judge panel affirmed the convictions of João Ricardo DeBorba in United States v. DeBorba. DeBorba is a Brazilian citizen who entered the country in 1999, overstayed his visa in 2000, and never regained legal status. He claimed he was a U.S. citizen on a Washington concealed pistol license application and on ATF purchase forms. He was subject to multiple domestic violence no-contact orders, including one in which a court found he was a credible threat to his wife’s physical safety. When federal agents searched his apartment in 2022, they found five firearms, ammunition, and a box hand-labeled “Tick Suppressor” holding an unregistered silencer.
No one should be shocked that he lost. The problem is how he lost.
Instead of stopping at the obvious, the court reached out and declared that suppressors are not covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment at all. Drawing on its 2025 en banc decision in Duncan v. Bonta, the panel called silencers “optional accessories,” lumped in with slings and scopes, and said they are not “arms” because they are not necessary to the ordinary operation of a firearm. In plain terms, the court’s logic is that because a gun fires without a suppressor, a suppressor gets no constitutional protection.
There is also a glaring contradiction here. Federal law regulates a silencer as a “firearm” under the National Firearms Act and demands registration, fingerprints, and a photograph to possess one. Yet the same item is suddenly not an “arm” when a citizen tries to claim constitutional protection. The government wants it both ways.
More from USA Carry:
The panel went further and said the NFA is a “shall-issue” licensing scheme that is presumptively constitutional under Bruen, and that DeBorba failed to show it was being run toward abusive ends. The court noted that the old $200 transfer tax dropped to $0 on January 1, 2026, which mooted his argument that the fee was excessive. The Fourth and Fifth Circuits have reached similar conclusions on the NFA’s licensing process.
Here is what makes this sting. Second Amendment attorneys have warned that Sanchez v. Bonta, the challenge to California’s outright suppressor ban, was already argued before the Ninth Circuit and presented the clean question of whether suppressors are protected arms, as reported by Ammoland. A bad-facts criminal case beat the good vehicle to the punch, and now anti-gun lawyers have language to cite against lawful owners.
Bad cases make bad law. This one may do real damage well beyond the man who brought it.
I will keep tracking DeBorba and its fallout, including how the Ninth Circuit handles Sanchez v. Bonta.
