NRA Members Protected Against Pistol Brace Enforcement (video of judge)

Judge Sam A. Lindsay, Dallas, Texas

Link to Youtube video of Judge Sam A. Lindsay

On March 29, 2024, United States District Judge Sam A. Lindsay, for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas, ordered a preliminary injunction stopping the  Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from enforcing the final rule as it applies to pistol braces and NRA members. Once Joe Biden was elected President, the ATF had radically changed course, reversed fifteen years of previous administrative measures, and declared once legal pistol braces as re-defined “short barreled rifles.

The “final rule” claimed to be implementing measures approved by Congress in the 1934 National Firearms Act.  The court found the ATF had gone to far. In effect, the ATF created legislation, usurping the function of the Congress.  From the opinion by Judge Sam A. Linday United States District Judge of the Northern District of Texas in the Fifth Circuit:

The National Rifle Association of America (“NRA” or “Plaintiff”) brought this action on July 3, 2023, against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“ATF”), Steven Dettelbach, in his official capacity as the Director of the ATF; the United States Department of Justice; and Merrick Garland, in his official capacity as the United States Attorney General (collectively, “Defendants”), for alleged violations of the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. In particular, the NRA challenges the ATF’s January 31, 2023 issuance of an administrative rule titled “Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached ‘Stabilizing Braces,’ ” 88 Fed. Reg. 6,478 (“Final Rule”), which created a framework for determining whether firearms equipped with a stabilizing brace qualify as a short-barreled rifle (“SBR”), a category of firearms regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934 (“NFA”).

The controversial NFA had passed in 1934 after the primary purpose of the law, to require registration and licensing of all handguns, had been stripped from the measure because of lobbying by the NRA. What remained was mainly irrelevant and irrational at the time. Confiscatory taxes and registration of machineguns, of which only a few hundred were privately owned, registration of silencers on guns but not on automobiles,  registration of short barreled shotguns, seen as both crime weapons and homeowner’s defensive tools, and registration of short barreled rifles, added to the bill at the insistence of an addled, drunk, or Machiavellian Minnestota Congressman, Harold Knutson. At the time, the bill and tax only applied to items which crossed state lines. By 2016, much of the NFA was already under attack. The law was full of contradictions and irrational requirements. The Hearing Protection Act would have removed silencers from the NFA. It would have passed in the First Trump administration except for the machinations of Paul Ryan, a peculiar opponent of a Republican president. 

In the conclusion and preliminary injunction, Judge Lindsay stops the ATF from enforcing the final rule, as it applies to pistol braces owned by NRA members, until the court case is adjudicated. This will likely come after the Supreme Court rules on the matter. From the opinion:  

III.Conclusion and Preliminary Injunction 

For the reasons explained, the court concludes that the NRA has associational standing to sue on behalf of its members and has met its burden of establishing each of the four requirements for a preliminary injunction. The court, therefore, grants the NRA’s Motion (Doc. 8) and request for a preliminary injunction, and it enjoins the ATF; Steven Dettelbach, in his official capacity as the Director of the ATF; the United States Department of Justice; and Merrick Garland, in his official capacity as the United States Attorney General from enforcing the Final Rule against the NRA’s members pending the final resolution of this action on the merits. In accordance with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(d), this preliminary injunction order enjoins and applies with equal force to Defendants’ “officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys,” and “other persons who are in active concert or participation with anyone described in Rule 65(d)(2)(A) or (B),” and Defendants shall provide notice to all such persons of this preliminary injunction order.

The court ruling strikes at the heart of the ATF and other bureaucracies to create and define law as they so wish and a particular administration desires, even reversing policies of long standing. Such flagrant abuse of power is the exact opposite of the rule of law. The “Progressives” are exactly the opposite of what the claim. They wish to regress to the rule of the ruling class, where an ultimate ruler changes the rules at whim, favoring those in the ruling class. The Progressives oppose any limitation on government power. The Constitution was created, in large part, to limit government power. 

©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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