RICHMOND, Va. (CN) — The Fourth Circuit on Tuesday upheld the unregistered firearms charges of a man convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, in power that Hatchet Speed solvent traps functioned as silencers.
A court in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced Speed — a Navy veteran who admires Adolf Hitler and a member of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group — to three years in prison under the National Firearms Act for possessing three devices the government argued were unregistered silencers in 2023. A lower court rejected Speed’s bid for a new trial.
The devices were three solvent traps, gun cleaning tools designed to trap solvent residue, which Speed told an undercover FBI informant could be converted into silencers by drilling holes in them.
U.S. Circuit Judge Marvin Quattlebaum, a Donald Trump appointee who wrote for the panel, declined to weigh in on Speed’s claim that the Second Amendment protects the possession of silencers.
Speed argued that the devices are not silencers until they are modified and that the National Firearms Act is void for vagueness as applied to it. Quattlebaum dismissed the notion that the act required unregistered silencers to operate.
“If Congress had intended to cover only devices that actually function as silencers, it could have easily included such language,” Quattlebaum said. “But it didn’t happen.”
Quattlebaum also agreed with the lower court’s decision to exclude a statement Speed made to the informant that Speed argued would prove his innocent intent.
“Once you drill a hole in the bottom without filling out Form 1 (required to register mufflers), you’re a criminal,” Speed told the informant.
Quattlebaum argued that the statement would confuse jurors, as it is a legal error.
Under the Biden administration, the government argued that suppressors are not tolerable “weapons,” or otherwise qualify as “dangerous and unusual” weapons subject to regulation.
Since Trump took office in 2024, the government has reversed its position, agreeing that the Second Amendment protects firearm accessories such as suppressors. However, she now argues that the act’s registration and tax requirements remain constitutional because they impose only a modest, historically grounded burden.
In a concurring opinion, U.S. District Judge Julius Richardson seemed sympathetic to Speed’s argument that the statute is unconstitutionally vague because it could apply to any gun silencer, including plastic bottles.
Ultimately, Richardson agreed with the majority under binding appeals court precedent United States v. Hansonwhich held that devices such as those owned by Speed were part of the act’s definition of a silencer.
Richardson, also a Trump appointee, agreed with Speed that the court could not reconcile the ruling with the text of the Second Amendment or the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruenwhich requires the government to provide a historical analogue for the regulation of firearms and requires that the regulation be included within the scope of the text of the Second Amendment.
Quattlebaum relied on the 2024 court of appeals decision en banc in *Maryland Shawl Issue Inc. v. Moore,*in which the majority cited a footnote at Bridge to justify the exclusion of laws derived from the text-and-history framework.
“The NFA registration requirements and related regulations provide objective criteria that ATF must use to decide whether to allow the transfer or manufacture of a silencer,” Quattlebaum said. “As a result, these claims are presumptively constitutional, and Speed bears the burden of overcoming that presumption by showing that the regime was abusive.”
But Richardson criticized the enbanc majority’s decision.
“While we have no choice but to follow this circuit’s misguided framework, I remain hopeful that we will one day evaluate firearms regulations against history and tradition,” Richardson said. “For now, we’ve given the government a free pass to erode protected behavior in ways inconsistent with our nation’s historical tradition, as long as it does it … nicely?”
U.S. District Judge Harvie Wilkinson also wrote a concurring opinion, arguing that Speed’s appeal fails for an additional reason: he believes the Second Amendment does not protect silencers.
“They are neither weapons nor armor,” said nominee Ronald Reagan. “Instead, silencers are better understood as firearm accessories.”
Speed bought the solvent filters six days after a gun dealer informed him that, due to a processing backlog, it would take the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives more than a year to complete the required paperwork, making it legal to possess the four silencers he purchased. Prosecutors said Speed spent more than $50,000 on firearms in the four months following the uprising.
Speed is serving a four-year sentence for his role in the uprising. Speed told the informant his admiration for Hitler, Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and described a plan for Christians to exterminate the country’s Jewish population. Speed served as a petty officer first class in the US Naval Reserve and was assigned to the Naval Space Warfare Activity at the National Reconnaissance Office in 2021.
Attorneys representing the government and Speed did not return a request for comment.
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