FReepmail me if you want to be added to or deleted from the list.
More 2nd Amendment related articles on FR's Bang List.
Posted on 07/07/2022 8:03:04 AM PDT by PROCON
John Crump at Ammoland reports that
Gun Owners of America (GOA), Bridge City Ordinance, and North Dakota resident Eliezer Jimenez have sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) over its new rule on unfinished frames and receivers.
After Joe Biden became president, he tasked the ATF to come up with new regulations surrounding privately manufactured firearms (PMF) and pistol stabilizing devices. Biden’s ATF unveiled new rules for a public comment period. Gun owners flooded the comments, but the Bureau moved forward and unveiled the new rules in the White House Rose Garden.
The rule is due to go into effect in late August. According to the new regulation, Americans can still build their own firearms, but it does make it almost impossible to get all the parts to build a gun. Frames and jigs cannot be sold together. If a gun owner buys the items separately, the ATF will consider that structuring the purchases to get around the new regulation.
The other big issue is that if a company sells a frame, and a second company sells a jig, and a customer buys the items from both companies, those companies can be charged with conspiracy. The ATF will charge both companies with conspiracy even if the companies are not connected in any way besides a customer using both sites to purchase items. The lawsuit challenges both of these points in the ATF’s final rule on PMF.
(Excerpt) Read more at thetruthaboutguns.com ...
FReepmail me if you want to be added to or deleted from the list.
More 2nd Amendment related articles on FR's Bang List.
Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of the ATF’s statutory authority can answer this, but could that agency be challenged on the same basis that the EPA was challenged in the courts (and lost) about their authority to invent regulations?
Every, “Assault Weapon,” ban, every, “Red-Flag,” law, every, “Safe Gun Roster,” every magazine restriction, every ban on concealed carry anywhere, every law or ordinance that violates the opinion of the SCOTUS’s Bruen case needs to be followed swiftly by lawsuits.
I think the EPA ruling may apply here.
1) The NFA '34 exists, in violation of the Constitution.
2) The GCA '68 exists, in violation of the Constitution.
3) The Hughes Amendment '86 exists, in violation of the Constitution.
4) The BATFE has an "F" and an "E" in its name, in violation of the Constitution.
I have been waiting for this. With the bruen ruling requiring strict scrutiny for anything relating to the second amendment I expect the courts to invalidate the batfe rules.
Their “rule change” is beyond their powers. Congress has written a LAW defining a frame or receiver You cannot change the law with an administrative rule change.
WV v EPA will be the basis for overturning this.
Yes, the EPA lost because it’s claim of power was beyond what Congress authorized. But the other alphabet agencies will pay no attention to it and the battles will have to be fought one agency at a time.
When you hand power to anyone, even if in the context of them having a limited tenure as a public servant (which is what all elected offices in America are supposed to be) you have to have a way to ensure that they do not abuse that power. When politicians and office holders forget that they serve for a limited time and at the pleasure of the citizens they serve, they become a threat to the personal freedom of the citizenry. The citizenry needs to have a way of protecting their personal freedoms.
This is particularly important when the citizenry have reason to mistrust the voting process, and when the ‘one person one vote’ paradigm falls victim to those who can appropriate an election with their personal money and influence (e.g. Soros, the entertainment industry, Gates, Zuckerberg, etc.).
Just to be clear, I am not advocating for violence, nor advocating for the use of guns or any other weapon. That said, just like nuclear weapons are a horror that we hope to never use, and exist as a deterrent to those who would otherwise feel emboldened to take away the freedoms of a sovereign people, the second amendment is a deterrent against tyranny - and this was why it was codified into the Constitution.
It very well could.
Before Ghost Guns became a 'thing,' the ATF ruled that the lower receiver of the AR rifle would be the "firearm" and be the serialized part.
There have been at least two court cases that I know of where the court threw out an indictment for having an unserialized AR lower because the law requiring serial numbers was unconstitutional vague.
Here's one such case: U.S. v. Jimenez
The parties' motion to dismiss briefing focused primarily on the issue of whether the meaning of "receiver" was unconstitutionally vague as applied to Jimenez. Defendant contends that nothing in the statutes or CFR gave him fair notice that possessing the lower receiver of an AR-15 rifle would count as the criminal possession of "the receiver." As a corollary, he argues that the lack of clear standards allows the ATF to engage in arbitrary enforcement practices.
So the ATF rulemaking was designed to eliminate the 'vague and arbitrary' definition of a receiver.
At the time he Constitution was written, it was expected that every citizen could be an infantryman.
Today citizens don't have parity in firepower anymore. And any uppity citizen can be easily strangled financially. Look at what they amassed against Roger Stone.
I think I now agree that the Bruen decision is better than you describe. Once it is decided that our Second Amendment rights are implicated, the decision goes to us regardless of any justification that the government may offer.
I would like to see a successful challenge to the requirement for serial numbers. That infringement alone has enabled much additional infringement.
Bkmk
These regulations are even more egregious. The EPA used an ambiguous section of the Clean Air Act to claim the power to enact a huge regulatory scheme.
The ATF's new regs simply dispense with the statutory definition of a firearm and substitute their own definition. Even without the Bruen or EPA decisions they had a good chance of being tossed: if it's not a firearm under the statutory definition (like a jig), they simply have no legal authority to regulate it.
It's like saying because a milling machine can be used to make a receiver, all milling machine sales must go through an FFL.
I don’t see any reason they can’t do this. I mean under Trump they arbitrarily decreed bump stocks illegal after specifically stating that they were legal for years. People were okay with that. Apparently they can just make up the rules as they go along.
I approve of that analogy.
The lower receiver rule was created as a compromise with the manufacturers, gun owners and ATF.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.