A federal appeals court has blasted the Biden administration‘s effort to ban a highly popular firearm and potentially turn 20 million owners into felons overnight.
In the latest ruling against the overreach by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, judges of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the administration didn’t follow federal rules in regulating AR-style pistols.
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The court sent it back to a lower court which could set the ATF regulation aside nationally. It was the latest in a string of court rulings against Biden administration gun control efforts.
In its 40-page decision handed down Tuesday, the court essentially said that the ATF did not give the public a chance to weigh in on its demand that owners of the weapons equipped with “pistol braces” either remove, destroy, or register them.
Several other judges in different circuits have made similar decisions, blocking enforcement of the Biden rule.
The president has called for a ban on all AR-style weapons. In this case, the ATF moved to regulate those with special “braces” that can also be used as rifle stocks and turn shorter-barreled guns into firearms covered by the regulation-heavy National Firearms Act and a $200 tax.
? ICYMI: FPC WINS ?
The Fifth Circuit deemed our Mock v. Garland Pistol Brace Rule Lawsuit likely to succeed, reversed the District Court’s injunction denial, and instructed the Court to re-evaluate a nationwide injunction.
The Opinion can be found at https://t.co/dM58iIRZxc pic.twitter.com/R99UOoyKHB
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) August 2, 2023
For years, the ATF allowed unrestricted use of the braces, invented for use by handicapped target shooters, but under Biden moved to ban or regulate them. The White House claimed they are “weapons of war” though only two “mass shootings” have involved the guns, which are typically used for target shooting and hunting.
An estimated 3 million to 20 million are in use, and making the changes could cost owners a total of some $2 billion over 10 years, said the court.
The ATF rule kicked in this year and the agency gave owners a few months to comply and skip the tax. But just about 250,000 decided to register their guns, a far worse compliance rate than expected.
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Not only did Second Amendment groups call the rule a political move to attack gun owners, but a third judge who joined in the decision said eliminating the braces could make the weapons unsafe.
“Rearward attachments, besides making a pistol less concealable, improve a pistol’s stability, and thus a user’s accuracy. Accuracy, in turn, promotes safety. Even for attachments that convert a pistol into a rifle under the statutes, ATF has not identified any historical tradition of requiring ordinary citizens to endure a lengthy, costly, and discretionary approval process just to use accessories that make an otherwise lawful weapon safer,” wrote Circuit Court Judge Don R. Willett.
Cody Wisniewski, counsel for the Firearms Policy Coalition which sued the ATF, called the ruling “a huge win for peaceable gun owners across the nation, a huge win for FPC’s members, and yet another massive defeat for ATF and this administration’s gun control agenda.”
