Category: News

On October 7^th, the National Association for Gun Rights secured a Preliminary Injunction against the ATF in our Forced Reset Trigger (FRT) lawsuit, barring the ATF from enforcement against our individual plaintiffs, their families, and all NAGR members. You can read the ruling here.

Specifically, the injunction stops the ATF from doing any of the following (against plaintiffs, their family members, and NAGR members):

      (1) Initiating or pursuing criminal prosecutions for possession of FRTs;

      (2) Initiating or pursuing civil proceedings for possessing, selling, or manufacturing FRTs based on the claim that FRTs are machineguns;

      (3) Initiating or pursuing criminal prosecutions for representing to the public of potential buyers and sellers that FRTs are not machineguns;

      (4) Initiating or pursuing civil actions for representing to the public of potential buyers and sellers that FRTs are not machineguns;

      (5) Sending “Notice Letters” or other similar communications stating that FRTs are machineguns;

      (6) Requesting “voluntarily” surrender of FRTs to the government based on the claim that FRTs are machineguns;

      (7) Destroying any previously surrendered or seized FRTs; and

      (8) Otherwise interfering in the possession, sale, manufacture, transfer, or exchange of FRTs based on the claim that FRTs are machineguns.

While we are glad our members are protected, we whole-heartedly believe that Second Amendment rights should not be contingent on membership to any organization. The next step is to push for a ruling on the merits to protect all Americans from this arbitrary and capricious redefinition.

In our lawsuit, we challenged the ATF’s expansion of the statutory definition of “machinegun,” to which Judge Reed O’Connor agreed that the ATF’s expanded language likely violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and is “likely unlawful.”

The ATF spent a significant amount of their briefs claiming that our organization and our individual plaintiffs lacked standing for the lawsuit through the assertion that they have “no current plans to prosecute.” This is something O’Connor addressed thoroughly in his decision, stating, “Defendants could change their current plans at any time by deciding to prosecute.”

• “Without access to courts to bring pre-enforcement challenges, vulnerable citizens may surrender the ability to promptly challenge unlawful executive branch actions. This cannot be.”
• “Yet just as the government cannot prosecute based on what a person might do, the government similarly cannot seriously argue there is a threat to public safety based on what a person might do without some justification.”
• “The crux of this case is that the executive branch has improperly usurped legislative authority by enacting criminal prohibitions that are beyond the scope of its legislatively granted authority.”

This is a huge win as FRTs are clearly not machineguns as defined by the statutory definition written by Congress, as they still require an individual trigger pull to fire an individual round.

This Preliminary Injunction grants protection from prosecution pending an actual ruling on the merits of the case, and according to O’Connor there is a “strong likelihood of success on the merits of its APA statutory interpretation claim.”

Click here to contribute to our legal war chest so we can continue to fight for the Second Amendment in the courts!

The National Foundation for Gun Rights secured a Preliminary Injunction against the ATF’s “arbitrary and capricious” Final Rule classifying braced pistols as Short Barreled Rifles which are subject to NFA and GCA regulation. You can read the ruling here.

Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas issued the injunction which blocks government enforcement of the Final Rule against all members of the National Association for Gun Rights and Texas Gun Rights until there is a ruling on the merits of the case.

In his ruling, O’Connor found that both semiautomatic pistols and pistol braces are in common use, and therefore are protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment. Furthermore, the court ruled that, “a pistol does not qualify as a rifle under the NFA or the GCA.”

Not only did the court find that the final rule violated the Second Amendment, but it is also in direct violation of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA).

The APA requires executive agencies to submit proposed rules for public comment, which the ATF did with the pistol brace rule. However, the Final Rule bears little resemblance to the proposed rule. As O’Connor said in his ruling, “the ATF’s decision to skirt notice-and-comment provisions is arbitrary and capricious.”

Here are some highlights from O’Connor’s ruling:

• “Plaintiffs are substantially likely to succeed on the merits because the Final Rule is arbitrary and capricious.”
• “The ATF provided no explanations for how the agency came to these classifications and there is no ‘meaningful clarity about what constitutes an impermissible stabilizing brace.’”
• “The ATF’s disregard for the principles of fair notice and consideration of reliance interests is further exacerbated by its failure to follow the APA’s procedural requirements for public notice and comment.”

This injunction is a big win for the Second Amendment, and a major step in curbing the unconstitutional tyranny of the ATF.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is representing us in this case.

Click here to contribute to our legal war chest so we can continue to fight for the Second Amendment in the Courts!

Your National Foundation for Gun Rights has filed an Amicus Brief in the case United States v. Rahimi. This is a prohibited persons case that has much wider implications than the plaintiff Rahimi himself.

In our brief we have asked the Supreme Court to readdress several areas of the Bruen decision to provide clarity to the lower courts in how they are to apply the decision in their rulings. You can read our brief here.

First among these misapplications comes the burden of proof question in the first step of Bruen. Even in a cursory reading of Bruen it is plain to understand that an individual’s conduct of owning or bearing an arm is presumptively protected by the Second Amendment, which many lower courts have not been following.

The second item we have requested the Supreme Court to address is common use. Many of the lower courts have been applying common use tests submitted by governments and anti-gun groups that have skewed the test to “actual” use rather than intended use.

In other words, these courts have been applying a metric that if you own an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine for the intended purpose of self-defense but have been lucky enough to not fire the rifle at an attacker, your rifle is not “used” for self-defense and therefore is not in common use.

Third, and possibly most important, we asked the Supreme Court to reiterate and emphasize that means-end scrutiny tests are not permitted in Second Amendment cases. Many lower courts have been inserting such tests under the guise of “history and tradition” or through other means to get the ruling they want.

Finally, we asked for the Court to provide clarity on weapons useful for militia service. In our lawyer’s words,

“(I)t would be extremely anomalous if Heller were interpreted to mean that (1) weapons in common use brought for militia service are protected by the Second Amendment, but at the same time (2) all weapons useful for military service are not protected by the Second Amendment.”

Our Amicus Brief provides important requests for clarity and reemphasis on these matters and will hopefully guide the Supreme Court in maintaining and securing our Second Amendment rights.

Click here to contribute to our legal war chest so we can continue to fight for the Second Amendment in the courts!

The Federal District Court in Connecticut ruled against the Second Amendment in our case against the state’s semi-auto and standard capacity magazine bans. You can read the ruling here.

In her ruling, Judge Janet Bond Arterton, a Clinton appointee, twisted the Supreme Court’s Heller and Bruen decisions in order to uphold gun control in a very long and convoluted ruling.

Bruen clearly states that “When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct…”, meaning that the burden falls on the government to prove that the legislation falls within the text, history, and tradition of firearm regulation in the US.

Judge Arterton ignored this and said:

“Nothing in Bruen or any other cases that the plaintiffs cite grants them an automatic presumption that their conduct is constitutionally protected which defendants are the required to affirmatively rebut.”

This impermissibly puts the burden of proof on us.

She went on to make two particular outrageous assertions in her ruling:

1. She calls gun owners liars, implying that just because an individual claims he owns a firearm strictly for the purposes of self-defense, that doesn’t actually mean that that’s what it will be used for.
2. She said that gun owners have to actually USE their weapons for self-defense in order to fall under the protection of the Second Amendment.

In other words, if an individual owns a firearm strictly for the purposes of self-defense, but is lucky enough to never actually be attacked, too bad. The Second Amendment doesn’t protect you.

If you want to read more of Judge Arterton’s judicial gymnastics, you can do so here.

We will be appealing to the Second Circuit, which also covers New York and Vermont. Our strategy is to get a semi-auto ban and magazine ban lawsuit to the Supreme Court and end these unconstitutional bans nationwide, so with our appeal to the 2^nd Circuit, we are one step closer to that goal.

Click here to contribute to our legal war chest so we can continue fighting for the Second Amendment in the courts!

The National Foundation for Gun Rights has filed an amicus brief in Hawai’i supporting the lawsuit against Hawai’i Revised Statutes Section 134, which effectively bans the carrying of firearms in the entirety of the state. Click Here to view.

H.R.S. 134 mandates that no person carrying a firearm shall enter private property unless given the express permission of the owner. This designation of all private property in the state as a “sensitive place” is a mockery of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen and denies the right to self-defense in nearly all areas open to the public.

Our brief highlights several ways in which the statute violates both Second and First Amendment rights. We also show how this statue fails to treat the Second Amendment the same as the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments as Clarence Thomas specifically explained it must be in the Bruen decision.

Law-abiding citizens of Hawai’i have the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, conduct that is covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment. There is also no historical tradition that would allow for this regulation, as district courts have struck down similar statutes in New York and New Jersey.

The statute also violates the basic First Amendment principle that freedom of speech prohibits the government from telling people what to say. With “sensitive places” being the standard for all private property, property owners who are fine with public carry are now compelled by the government to take a public position on the issue when they may prefer not to – which is the very nature of compelled speech.

Our Amicus Brief asks the district court to block the unconstitutional de facto ban on public carry in the state of Hawai’i. You can read the brief here.

Click here to contribute to our legal war chest so we can continue fighting for the Second Amendment in the courts!

The National Foundation for Gun Rights is suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over their pistol brace rule in the Northern District of Texas. Click here to view.

This rule reclassifies pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, meaning that the ATF is seeking to regulate Americans by federal laws that were never intended to apply to them and their firearms.

Pistols with stabilizing braces are especially popular amongst veterans and other Americans with physical disabilities, making this rule discriminatory against them.

The ATF’s rule significantly expands the definition of a rifle and imposes potential criminal liability on millions of Americans without legislative authority.

We are seeking a preliminary injunction to protect our members from the ATF’s enforcement of this rule for the duration of the litigation.

Our suit comes on the heels of several other lawsuits to overturn the pistol brace rule, including Mock v. Garland, Britto v. ATF, SAF v. ATF, and Texas v. ATF. In these cases, federal courts (including the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals) have issued injunctions limited in scope only to the plaintiffs on those cases, their families, and (in the cases involving other gun rights organizations) their members.

Since those injunctions have been limited in scope to apply only to the plaintiffs of the other lawsuits, NAGR has partnered with Texas Gun Rights and Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) to file our own lawsuit to protect our members from this unconstitutional ATF rule.

WILL has already successfully obtained an injunction protecting their plaintiffs from the ATF in Britto v. ATF, and is representing NAGR and our members pro bono in our lawsuit.

Check out Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty here!

And to contribute to our legal fund, click here.