The measure was supported by 45 lawmakers opposed to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) rewriting of the definition of being “engaged in the business” of selling weapons.
The new rule took effect on Monday.
The resolution against the Final Rule was introduced by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC). They and their allies vehemently oppose the ATF’s rebranding of virtually anyone who sells a firearm as a dealer who must register as a federal firearms licensee (FFL).
A similar House bill introduced by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) had over 115 cosponsors.
Cornyn, who drew sharp criticism for his support of the so-called Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), spared no words for this latest federal overreach.
He called on Congress to hold the administration “accountable” for its unconstitutional actions attempting to suppress Second Amendment rights. Referring to the controversial BSCA, Cornyn added, “We will fight this lawless rule tooth and nail to ensure the God-given right to keep and bear arms is preserved and this flagrant distortion of congressional intent of our landmark mental health and school safety law is struck down.”
Tillis struck a similar note, blasting the administration for using the wording of the BSCA concerning “profit” in a private transaction involving weapons to further restrict firearms.
The senator chastised the ATF for taking “a good faith effort to curb the mental health crisis across our country and turn it into an unconstitutional attempt to restrict firearms from law-abiding citizens.”
In the lower chamber, Clyde took the ATF to task for skirting the constitutional separation of powers and unilaterally enacting what amounts to new legislation.
He explained, “private citizens simply shouldn’t be forced to jump through unelected, anti-gun bureaucrats’ unconstitutional hurdles to engage in lawful firearms transactions.”
The court battle against the “universal registration rule” has already begun. Gun Owners of America along with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and three other states filed the nation’s first lawsuit against the new ATF rule earlier this month.
Other gun rights organizations also leaped into the fray. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) sharply criticized the ATF’s new rule as a backdoor attempt to implement universal background checks without congressional approval.
NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence G. Keane clearly laid out the position of the industry trade association. “The rule ignores Congress’ requirements left unchanged by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that a dealer is one who devotes time, attention and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms.”
Keane noted that lawmakers only changed the stipulation that weapons sales no longer must be conducted “for the purpose of earning a livelihood.”
The BSCA changed the wording to require only that a profit be gained from the sale, and that was enough. This is the door that the current administration and ATF slipped through to drastically alter the definition of a firearms “dealer.”
Many gun rights advocates warned against exactly this when lawmakers normally supportive of the Second Amendment began bargaining with gun control proponents.
But the new law came in the aftermath of the Uvalde tragedy, and some felt moved to compromise with anti-gun forces for the sake of doing “something.”
No matter how carefully worded, the new law was going to be wielded as a weapon against constitutional rights. This is exactly what was cautioned against as support built from unlikely quarters for the BSCA, and it came to pass.
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