A preliminary injunction issued by a Texas court essentially prevents the ATF from enforcing its new regulation requiring the registration of pistol braces with the federal government. All around the nation, gun owners will be impacted by this decision. Keep checking back for more information as this story develops.
Owners of pistol stabilizing braces should register their devices with the ATF to avoid being charged with a crime.
Fox News quotes the ATF as saying that disobedience may result in costs as well as “up to 10 years’ imprisonment or $10,000 in fines or both.”
The rule will go into effect on Thursday.
In a major decision, Judge Drew B. Tipton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas issued an injunction prohibiting the rule’s application to Texans working for the state government and GOA members. This indicates that the impacted parties connected to the case’s plaintiffs are excluded from the regulation.
In his request for the injunction, former Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that the regulation would “inflict compliance costs on Texas police who own previously legal handguns with stabilizing braces and must now expend resources to register those weapons.”
As described by the ATF, a stabilizing brace “provides a surface area that allows the weapon to be fired from the shoulder, so long as other factors that indicate that the firearm is designed, made, and intended to be fired from the shoulder,” The ATF said that this effectively converted a handgun into a short-barreled rifle.
Congress is investigating short-barreled rifles because they are incredibly deadly and simple to hide. Due of their increased precision, they are more lethal than handguns and more concealable than other rifles.
Two years ago, President Joe Biden began a campaign against braces that facilitate gunfire. The decision was made in response to a terrible occurrence in which a shooter used one of these braces to kill 10 people at a shop in Boulder, Colorado.
GOA and other organizations have filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that it is unconstitutional to require millions of legitimate gun owners to register.
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According to GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt, the Biden administration is “trying to weaponize” the Department of Justice. In reaction to Tipton’s directive, this remark was made.
“This assault on millions of Americans was just the latest example of President Biden trying to weaponize the DOJ against law-abiding gun owners, and we doubt it will be the last.
“We are incredibly grateful to Judge Tipton for hearing the pleas of our members who were facing serious prosecution simply for owning a piece of plastic — all because of an arbitrary reclassification by the ATF.
“GOA and our millions of members nationwide will continue to fight back against this rogue anti-gun administration at every turn in defense of our rights,” he said.
Another plaintiff in the lawsuit, Sam Paredes of the Gun Owners Foundation, said: “While Congress was slow to act on this wide-reaching rule, GOF stepped in to defend the millions of Americans facing legal jeopardy.
“We are proud to have helped partially halt this rule, and hope it sends a message to anti-gunners hellbent on continuing the assault on the Second Amendment.”
The amount of firearms that may be subject to the ATF’s proposed regulation, if adopted, is uncertain.
Fox reports that the ATF asserts that American gun owners have “at least” 3 million guns with stabilizing braces, while the Congressional Research Service has estimated that gun owners have between 10 and 40 million such braces.”
