Gun Rights Group Sues ATF Over Machine-Gun Classification Rule

The National Association for Gun Rights has sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over its classificaiton of some forced reset triggers as machine guns. The devices increase the rate of fire for some semi-automatic rifles. In this photo a man shoots an AR-15-style rifle at a shooting range in Greeley, Pa., on Oct. 12, 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A Second Amendment advocacy group has sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) for allegedly overstepping its authority.

“If we allow the ATF to continue to whittle away our rights by constant redefining what is and what isn’t legal, we’ll soon be left with no rights at all,” Hannah Hill, executive director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights, the legal arm of the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), wrote in an Aug. 9 press release.

The most recent lawsuit, National Association for Gun Rights v. Garland, was filed in federal court in the Northern District of Texas on Aug. 9 over the ATF’s decision that certain forced reset triggers (FRTs) are legally machine guns.

A forced reset trigger is a device that increases a rifle’s rate of fire. This is not the first time ATF has been to court over FRTs.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, ATF director Stephen Dettelbach, and the ATF are the defendants.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has been named in a lawsuit over the ATF's classificaton of forced reset triggers as machine guns. Here he delivers remarks during a meeting with U.S. attorneys at the Justice Department in Washington on June 14, 2023. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

In addition to the NAGR, the plaintiffs are Texas Gun Rights Inc. and individuals Patrick Carey, James Wheeler, and Travis Speegle. The plaintiffs claim the ATF has illegally classified the FRT as a machine gun regulated under the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the National Firearms Act of 1934.

According to the lawsuit, the ATF deprived the plaintiffs of their property by confiscating FRTs they had purchased or planned to sell. It claims the agency is violating their rights by preventing them from buying more FRTs.

According to the NAGR press release, Rare Breed Triggers began selling FRTs in December 2020. The company reportedly obtained the design from another company. Rare Breed Triggers did not submit any samples, documentation, or plans to the ATF to determine if the product complied with the law.

Instead, the company had the design “analyzed by multiple legal teams and firearms experts.” NAGR maintains that the experts determined that the FRTs comply with the law.

“By January 13 of 2021, the ATF launched efforts to have FRTs outlawed,” the press release reads. “The ATF tried to justify this by saying that ‘multiple concerned citizens’ reached out to them regarding Rare Breed’s FRTs. However, FOIA requests proved that there was no record of a citizen ever contacting the ATF about the triggers.”

ATF Sent Open Letter

The ATF had issued an open letter to Federal Firearms License holders dated March 22, 2022, warning them that the agency had determined the Rare Breed Triggers’ FRTs are illegal.

“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives recently examined devices commonly known as ‘forced reset triggers’ and has determined that some of them are ‘firearms’ and ‘machineguns’ as defined in the National Firearms Act and ‘machineguns’ as defined in the Gun Control Act,” the letter states.

Under federal law, a machinegun is a weapon “which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot automatically more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

“There is no dispute that the Rare Breed Triggers’ FRT only allows one round to be fired for each function of the trigger,” the NAGR press release reads.

It appears the ATF does dispute that.

Dispute Over Trigger Function

“The subject FRTs do not require shooters to pull and then subsequently release the trigger to fire a second shot,” the ATF’s March 22, 2022, letter reads.

In “Operation Reticent Recall,” the ATF sent letters to FRT owners requesting they turn the devices over to the ATF or provide proof they had been destroyed.

ATF agents and local police also went to the homes of people they believed owned or sold FRTs. Videos of some of the visits circulated online.

In two videos reviewed by The Epoch Times on May 15, 2023, armed people clad in body armor claiming to be ATF agents and police officers ask residents about firearms or components they allegedly purchased. The officers are friendly and tell the residents they will be on their way as soon as they can inspect or confiscate the items.

They repeatedly tell the residents they aren’t in trouble and have done nothing wrong.

Two agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, along with a state trooper, went to the home of a Delaware gun owner and asked to see his recent firearm purchase on July 12, 2022. (Screenshot via Ring Video Doorbell website)

The NAGR press release says the ATF is attempting to intimidate the company and its customers. Many speculate that the ATF got information on who purchased the devices from a vendor on a popular firearms website, though that has not been proven.

“They are harassing our friends at Rare Breed Triggers for making perfectly legal forced reset triggers (FRT). They’ve seized merchandise, raided homes, and generally rained terror down on the heads of law-abiding gun owners,” Dudley Brown, NAGR president, wrote in the Aug. 9 press release.

Lawrence DeMonico, President of Rare Breed Triggers, posted a video on the NAGR YouTube page saying that the ATF’s ultimate goal is more than regulating machine guns.

“The ATF is trying to set the groundwork to ban all semi-automatic firearms by redefining what a semi-automatic trigger actually is,” Mr. DeMonico said.

This is not the first time Rare Breed Triggers and the ATF have met in court.

In August 2021, the ATF notified the company that FRTs had been classified as machine guns and machine gun parts. Rare Breed Triggers sued in the Middle District of Florida. That case was ultimately thrown out because one or both parties failed to follow local procedural rules.

Soon after, Rare Breed Triggers reorganized as a North Dakota company and sued the ATF in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota over the classification. The judge dismissed that case as being filed in the wrong venue.

In the video, DeMonico said the goal of the NAGR lawsuit is to stop the ATF.

Not The Only Lawsuit

“The ATF has a history of reinterpreting federal law in an attempt to expand which firearms accessories are illegal. The ATF has a history of redefining absurd objects as machine guns, like when they tried to define a shoestring as a machine gun in 2004, and that’s exactly what they’re doing again,” DeMonico said.

The ATF is currently embroiled in several lawsuits over alleged overreach.

Gun Owners of America and the Gun Owners Foundation has sued the ATF for a zero tolerance policy toward federally licensed firearms dealers that the groups claim have resulted in hundreds of law-abiding businesses being shutdown over minor clerical errors.

The two gun rights groups also joined the Firearms Policy Center in suing the ATF over its ruling that pistol-stabilizing braces convert large-format pistols into short-barreled rifles, which are illegal under the National Firearms Act of 1934.

In addition, there have been calls in Congress to rein in the ATF, including calls to defund the agency.

During congressional hearings about the agency’s practices, Mr. Dettelbach said the agency is operating within the bounds of the law set by Congress.