The National Rifle Association (NRA), 25 states and disabled veteran Richard Cicero joined in a legal challenge against the ATF regulation. The states in their filing called the rule, which was finalized in January, “arbitrary and capricious.”
Jason Ouimet, Executive Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said that “the bureau is declaring that they will effectively decide on a case-by-case basis whether a firearm is subject to the National Firearms Act (NFA). Every American gun owner is in danger of potentially facing felony charges at the whim of these bureaucrats and without any new statute in place.
With the new ATF rule, pistols with these braces are now subject to special registration, longer waiting periods to purchase, as well as higher taxes.
And while the federal agency attempted to claim that the rule did not apply to those attachments “objectively designed and intended…for use by individuals with disabilities,” the states responded that the new regulation is vague enough to apply to anyone who uses the devices.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is spearheading the charge, said in a statement that “we should not be making it harder for senior citizens and people with disabilities — and many disabled veterans — to defend themselves.”
They were first marketed in 2012 to assist the wounded and now are enjoyed by millions of law-abiding Americans. Owners of the braces, which were specifically designed to allow disabled military veterans to continue to enjoy sport shooting, have five options.
They may turn in the entire weapon with the attached stabilizer braces to the ATF, destroy the firearm completely, convert the weapon from a short-barreled rifle to a long-barreled rifle, apply to register the weapon, or permanently remove and destroy or alter the stabilizing brace from the gun.
If the firearm owner chooses to register the weapon, it would be under the NFA. That is the 1934 regulation that governs short-barreled rifles and was used by the ATF to change stabilizer brace regulations.
Owners of these pistol braces have 120 days from Jan. 31, 2023, to comply with the ATF rules.
Another major lawsuit was filed on Thursday against the ATF’s pistol stabilizer regulations by the Gun Owners of America (GOA), the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
GOA senior vice president Erich Pratt declared that “millions of Americans are facing a very tight deadline to destroy or register their lawfully owned property under this draconian new rule. We hope the court will hear the pleas of gun owners across the country who will be irrevocably harmed by this rule, and GOA stands ready to fight at every turn.
The GOF also issued a strong statement on the vast overreach by the ATF. The organization’s Sam Paredes said, “This rule will have some of the most wide-reaching impacts nationwide in the tyrannical history of gun control. We the people will not tolerate this abuse.”
Texas AG Ken Paxton described the regulation as “dangerous and unconstitutional.” He called it yet another attempt by the federal government “to create a workaround to the U.S. Constitution and expand gun registration in America.”
Paxton’s description of a “workaround” to the Constitution is correct. It is the duty of Congress, and not federal agencies, to enact the laws that govern Americans. In this case, however, the ATF took it upon itself to use bureaucratic measures to circumvent the legislative authority of Congress to achieve its goal of further gun control.
This is the very definition of a federal overreach and should quickly be struck down in court.
