A small victory in the war against ATF overreach:
The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that two Texas residents are likely to prevail in their legal challenge to a Biden administration rule that redefined firearms with pistol braces as heavily regulated short-barreled rifles (SBR), ordering the district court to reconsider issuing a permanent injunction to block the rule.
The case, styled Mock v. Garland, was brought by attorneys with the Firearms Policy Coalition on behalf of Texas residents William Mock and Christopher Lewis. The plaintiffs sought to block the administrative rule that would subject firearms, otherwise legally classified as pistols, as SBRs, which are heavily regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA).
To purchase an NFA-regulated weapon, a buyer must undergo a background check, pay $200 in taxes to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and wait roughly a year. NFA firearms are also subject to a litany of additional regulations, the violation of which can subject the owner to substantial civil and criminal penalties.
Gun owners were given four months after the rule change in January to remove braces from their pistols and either destroy, register, or surrender them to the ATF, or else be subject to criminal charges after the grace period.
Snip.
The 5th Circuit’s decision noted that the rule was challenged on two fronts, the first being that the ATF failed to follow proper procedure by giving public notice of one version and then implementing a different final version with a broader application.
Because the court sided with the plaintiffs on the administrative procedural challenge, determining they would likely succeed on the merits at trial and that they meet the requirements for injunctive relief, the court stopped short of addressing the constitutional challenge. However, Justice Don Willet wrote in a separate concurring opinion that he suspects the rule would likely “not withstand constitutional muster.”
God bless Judge Willet and President Donald Trump for nominating him to the Fifth Circuit.
The majority opinion remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where the original judge had denied the plaintiff’s past request for an injunction blocking the rule.
For now, the appeals court is maintaining an order blocking enforcement of the rule against FPC and its members until the district court issues a new ruling on its injunction request that complies with the appeals court’s findings.
Several other legal challenges to the pistol brace rule are presently ongoing in federal district courts, with challenges from Gun Owners of America and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty prevailing earlier this year in securing injunctions to block the rule’s enforcement for the organizations’ members.
The pistol brace rule would retroactively make millions of law-abiding Americans criminals for not registering them (which, for the left, is no doubt the point). Government agencies should not be able to unilaterally and retroactively declare ownership of legally obtained goods suddenly forbidden on penalty of law.
Hopefully the pistol brace rule gets overturned entirely.
Tags: ATF, Christopher Lewis, Don Willet, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Guns, Mock v. Garland, National Firearms Act, pistol brace, Regulation, William Mock
Preliminary injunction, not permanent.
The basis of action on this ought to be the capricious and arbitrary manner in which the BATF operates.
Firstly, they approved pistol braces. They didn’t get manufactured and sold without BATF approval; that was done, they said “Yeah, this is legal…”
Then, they changed their minds, making thousands of people who bought those pistols felons for possessing that which they’d approved of a few years earlier…
On that basis alone, I say the BATF ought to be shut down, the employees fired, and salt sown upon their razed headquarters. I can think of few cases of more egregious misconduct by a Federal bureaucracy. It’d be one thing if all those pistol braces had been manufactured out of the blue by people wanting to skirt the law, but… That ain’t what happened. Manufacturers went to BATF and asked “Hey, would this be legal…?”, and the BATF said “Yeah, sure… Have fun…”
Creepy bastards. I have known a couple of decent human beings who were BATF employees, but the sort that seem to come out of the woodwork whenever the Democrats hold office are emphatically scum of the earth. Friend of mine was a gun store owner in Illinois; I ran into him at the Lake County Gun Show, where he had a table set up. There was an obvious straw buyer wandering around, and he refused a sale, thinking it was a gang-banger. Got the guy’s info, along with his straw buyer, apparently his girlfriend. Reported that to the local BATF office, and guess who got investigated almost to the point of losing his FFL? Yeah; my friend. You kept seeing that same guy wandering around with his “girlfriend” at ever show I went to after that happened. So far as we could tell, nothing happened to them. BATF did, however, go after any and all FFLs that reported them…
Still not sure what to make of that. Might have been that the gang-banger straw buyer was BATF, but… I dunno. The guy’s ID was in the system with Chicago PD as a known gang member with multiple felonies.
[…] RIGHTS UPDATE: Federal Judge Rules Against ATF Brace Rule. “The pistol brace rule would retroactively make millions of law-abiding Americans criminals […]
Now the 5th is Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Does that mean those living in that area can put the braces back on for now?
Not quite yet. The 5th basically ruled “Hey, lots like they have a pretty strong case here. You wanna maybe take another look at this, Mr. Lower Court?” Enforcement is temporarily blocked, but only until rules one way or another.
“Firstly, they approved pistol braces. They didn’t get manufactured and sold without BATF approval; that was done, they said “Yeah, this is legal…”
“Then, they changed their minds, making thousands of people who bought those pistols felons for possessing that which they’d approved of a few years earlier…”
That, in itself, would suggest that the change was Arbitrary and Capricious. Compounding that was that it was essentially ordered by the White House. And why, again, should the Court defer to agency expertise?
Under the APA, the publication of the new regulations puts the public on notice. A major change in the regulations adopted after publication negates that Notice requirement. In the end, that is going to be a large hurdle to affirming the rule change (even ignoring the 2nd Amdt considerations – by now, these pistol braces are in common usage).
Bit of background for those who may need it. The 1934 NFA defines rifles as having at least a 16” barrel. Shorter than that makes it a Short Barreled Rifle (SBR), which requires a $200 tax stamp, which in turn requires a background check, and may take a year to issue. But why not put a shorter barrel on an AR-15, and treat it like a pistol? You can’t do that with a regular rifle, because once a rifle, always a rifle. But with an AR-15, the serialized part is the lower receiver, from which you can build either a pistol or a rifle. You can’t have a stock on a pistol, so at one point, AR pistols just had a naked buffer tube. Then someone figured out that with a brace, that wraps around your wrist, they could be shot one handed – just like a pistol. This was useful for those who only had one hand available (and thus a reasonable accommodation under the ADA). What if you could alternatively use the brace as a shoulder stock? Up until this rule change, the ATF had said “fine”, just as long as it could still be shot one handed with the brace. That was what the rule change was aimed at ending.
The 16” minimum barrel length for rifles is a remanent of the firearms technology of the 1930s. At that point, and up through the 1980s, military rifle barrels invariably exceeded 20”. But technology advanced, and our military moved from the M16 with a 20” barrel, primarily to the M4 Carbine with a 14.5” barrel. A semiautomatic M4 (I.e. an AR-15 with a 14.5” barrel) is legally an SBR, which is a major impediment to militia use, if nothing else.
Willet is definitely one of the good ones. I don’t always agree with him, but he is logical, writes extremely well, and obviously truly believes in the Constitution and the rule of law.
Effectively, it’s still entrapment.
They approved it; I’ve seen copies of the letter issued by BATF’s technical branch. Once having approved it, they now say it’s a felony after a few hundred thousand pistols are out there.
This sort of thing ought to be illegal, and if they are going to do this, then they should have to “eat” the fact that these pistols were manufactured and sold, purchased in good faith.
Personally, I never saw the use-case for the things, and I was always certain that something like this was coming. The BATF is infamous for these entrapment schemes; Randy Weaver was a victim of a BATF informant who insisted on him cutting down a shotgun barrel to just below the legal size. Most of those “drop-in auto sear” ads in Shotgun News seem to be BATF bait operations, from what I’ve been told.
Federal law enforcement should not be allowed to operate like this, and Congress should have shut them the hell down years ago. The whole Branch Davidian thing stems from a BATF PR effort meant to get them in the limelight when Congress was debating rolling their operation up into the FBI; something similar was going on in OKC with the bombing by McVeigh. I have never bought the “official narrative” of that whole deal, and never will. Too many inconsistencies and unlikely things; the blast was too effective for a couple of inexperienced mooks like McVeigh and his buddy to have put together, for one thing. They got extraordinarily lucky for a “first time” effort, absent some experienced technical advice from people who were never brought out at trial. Either there was involvement from foreign operatives that was never traced down and prosecuted, or the technical expertise came from “inside the house”. Don’t know which, but I’m never going to accept that McVeigh and company pulled that whole thing off entirely on their own.
I worked with hasty improvised ANFO for years, in the Army; it takes a fair amount of experience to get those things right. You don’t just grab random fertilizer, pour in your equally random petroleum product and Hey! Presto!, you’re taking down a city block. If either McViegh or his buddies had been commercial blasters using that stuff? Maybe… But, improvised product, straight out of the gates for the first time, ever? No. F*cking. Way.
More importantly, in my book is that the state of Texas has filed an appeal to the fifth circuit after the district court dismissed the silencer case (Paxton v. Richardson) for lack of standing.
“You don’t just grab random fertilizer, pour in your equally random petroleum product and Hey! Presto!, you’re taking down a city block.”
Explosives expert Brigadier General Ben Partin dissected the Oklahoma City bombing and concluded that all the evidence ran contrary to that of an ANFO bomb being used to destroy the Murrah building.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rCYIn8QzRjI
I own his monograph and find his argument to be compelling and conclusive.
I lay no claim to knowing what the hell went on at OKC; all I will say is that the facts of the incident as laid out by the media and government do not comport with my experience.
It could have been ANFO, enhanced and put together by someone who knew what they were doing, who had experience of doing building truck bombs. That wasn’t McVeigh and his friends… If they pulled that off, with no actual practical experience and no technical advice? I just don’t see it having gone down that way. In my opinion, they had help, from someone, which never came out at trial. I can’t think of a good reason why that would have never been brought out, unless the guys who “helped” them were agents provacatuer belonging to someone in our government.
I’ve also heard rumors that the local fire department and bomb squad had been put on alert for another location, that morning. The blast at the Federal Building took everyone by surprise, and it strikes me that it’s awfully odd that they picked up McVeigh that same morning. From the outline of known facts, I have to wonder if they didn’t already know the plot was going, the crew with McVeigh figured it out, and that’s why the bomb went off at the Federal Building instead of where the fire department had been told to be ready…
Lots of things don’t add up about that morning. I would also like to know where the hell all those fireworks and other explosives that the BATF had recently taken custody of were stored at, because from the way that building blew, it sure looks a lot like a major secondary blast occurred that matches where their storage areas were… I’ve never seen any testimony about what was in those storage areas, or where the off-site storage was. I’ve been told that a couple of prosecutions for fireworks and other illegal explosives were dropped, after the bombing, due to “lost evidence”. Kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
It was mere coincidence that AG Garland arrived in Oklahoma City five days after the explosion and took control of the investigation. The grateful authorities made certain after that he would have a highly successful government career.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/no_author/white-house-memo-confirms-suppressed-true-story-behind-oklahoma-city-bombing/
When we find McVeigh’s Elohim City buddy, Strassmeir, we may be able to get answers to the questions that have gone unanswered for twenty-five years.
I don’t think Garland’s involvement really ever registered with me, but like Jamie Gorelick, he’s been a few too many places and involved with a few too many disasters for me to think he wasn’t complicit.
The Clinton administration was a cancer that’s metastasized and colonized the entire body politic. They set the stage for the entire “Global War on Terror”, colonized the Federal bureaucracy with their minions, and basically enabled a lot of what Obama continued. Before them, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad, but after…?
It wasn’t so much Bill and Hillary that were bad, it was the people they brought on board and then enabled. Their appointments began the purge of any dissident views, and began the politicization of Justice and Defense. At this point, I’m not sure it’s even recoverable, absent burning both down and starting over with entirely new people.
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