The plaintiffs are the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and the FPC Action Foundation (FPCAF).
The suit challenged the Final Rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) redefining pistols equipped with stabilizer braces as short-barreled rifles (SBRs). As such they are now regulated under the National Firearms Act and require federal registration.
The Fifth Circuit remanded the case back to district court where consideration is to be given to other preliminary injunction factors within 60 days.
In the appeals court ruling, the Circuit maintained that the ATF incorrectly labeled its Final Rule on pistol braces as interpretive. That is a distinctly different act from being legislative and as such exempts the regulation from the logical-outgrowth test.
That is the determining factor for whether a federal agency may institute a rule. If it aligns with the original edict and the already completed notice and comments logically follow, then the new rule is permissible.
The Fifth Circuit, however, determined that the Final Rule is in fact legislative. As written, it “affects individual rights, speaks with the force of law, and significantly implicates private interests.”
In simple English, government agency bureaucrats do not have the power to institute rules that are in fact in the purview of the legislature. That’s what elected officials are sent to Washington to do.
FPCAF General Counsel Cody J. Wisniewski called the court’s ruling “a huge win for peaceable gun owners across the nation, a huge win for FPC’s members, and yet another massive defeat for [the] ATF and this administration’s gun control agenda.”
A final victory over the ATF Final Rule appears likely, and that is cause for lawful gun owners to celebrate.
