By Gun Owners of America – February 10, 2023
Thanks to overwhelming support from GOA members, we filed suit yesterday against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF’s) pistol brace rule.
Pistol braces were designed for disabled gun owners to help them better handle firearms. They wrap around the user’s forearm to help stabilize the firearms.
Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) jointly filed a lawsuit with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenging the Biden Pistol Brace Ban. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
This new rule, which took effect on January 31st of this year, will force Americans to register or destroy approximately 40 million of their lawfully owned brace firearms within 120 days, or face possible felony charges.
But of course, that was then, and this is now. Under the Biden administration, ATF has now revoked or radically altered all of its previous classification letters. And gun owners are now suffering under the “new normal”—where Joe Biden is dead set on banning as many firearms as he can.
GOA’s lawsuit is the most comprehensive suit filed, and it spends significant pages explaining why this ATF rule is unconstitutional. You can watch an episode of our Minute Man Moment breaking down the eleven ways GOA believes ATF violated federal law and the Constitution by clicking the thumbnail below.
The Gun Owners’ lawsuit, which can be read here, documents how the ATF has waffled on the topic of pistol-braced firearms for almost ten years. Originally, the agency stated that such braces would not convert a pistol into a Short-Barreled Rifle (or SBR). And in 2014, the ATF even stated that if gun owners were to brace such a pistol against one’s shoulder, that would not reclassify the pistol as an SBR.
Our complaint makes clear that the agency’s rule violates the Second Amendment “text, history and tradition” standard set forth by the Supreme Court in its recent Bruen case. And we also show how the gun ban violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution—not to mention that it’s an invalid exercise of the federal government’s taxing power.
Ken Paxton, who is the Texas Attorney General and co-plaintiff with GOA and GOF, blasted the ATF for its capricious rule.
“There is absolutely no legal basis for ATF’s haphazard decision to try to change the long-standing classification for stabilizing braces, force registration on Americans, and then throw them in jail for ten years if they don’t quickly comply,” Paxton stated.
OTHER AREAS OF THE COUNTRY
As you may know, our case in Texas is not the only high-profile case where GOA’s attorneys are engaged.
In fact, just yesterday GOA won a legal victory after the state of Oregon tried to overturn our recent preliminary injunction in state court. The state supreme court denied Oregon’s request to overturn the Preliminary Injunction that we had previously obtained.
In our Oregon case, GOA is challenging an anti-gun measure that bans magazines over 10 rounds, requires a permit to purchase any firearm, and requires a training course that does not yet exist, application fee, fingerprinting, and a duplicative background check to obtain the permit-to-purchase.
In New York, GOA just filed a brief before the Second Circuit Court, where we’re fighting unconstitutional concealed carry restrictions that are designed to make it as difficult as possible for citizens to carry firearms for self-defense and even require applicants to submit their social media accounts for review.
And in Illinois, we recently filed a motion seeking a Preliminary Injunction in a challenge to the state’s recent ban on commonly-owned firearms that are arbitrarily classified as “assault weapons.”
We’re proud of our attorneys for their hard work in producing legally sound, historically accurate, and uncompromising legal analysis in cases that cross the country.
And in regard to our pistol brace case that was filed yesterday in Texas, we’re excited to have the great state of Texas joining GOA in fighting back as we file in the 5th Circuit Court.
