U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor on Tuesday vacated the agency’s new rule that arbitrarily classified forced reset triggers (FRTs) as “machine guns.” This brought weapons modified with this popular device under federal law and a host of stringent requirements.
It was essentially a ban.
The suit against the ATF was brought by the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), Texas Gun Rights, Inc., and individual plaintiffs. Their concern was the establishment of a felony for simply owning an FRT and the agency’s clear misapplication of the law.
Congress wrote the definition of a machine gun decades ago, but the ATF made a sweeping change to that designation without authorization from the Legislative Branch.
A machine gun is defined as one that will fire more than a single round with one trigger pull. Attaching an FRT to a firearm means the trigger will reset faster, but there still must be another pull before a second round is fired.
As O’Connor noted in his decision, the ATF rule clearly exceeded Congress’ definition of a machine gun. “When firing multiple shots using an FRT, the trigger must still reset after each round is fired and must separately function to release the hammer by moving far enough to rear in order to fire the next round.”
In other words, not a single pull.
O’Connor added that because it takes multiple trigger pulls to fire more than one round, an FRT does not qualify as a machine gun.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Chevron decision cast aside such actions by unelected bureaucrats to amend or even establish laws far outside their proper constitutional roles. ATF officials are slowly waking up to this new reality.
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