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.