The Biden administration’s pistol brace rule, which critics warn could turn millions of Americans into felons overnight, has been dealt another blow by a federal judge in Texas.
Under the rule, AR pistols fitted with arm braces that could allow the weapon to be fired from the shoulder are now classified as short-barreled rifles regulated by the National Firearm Act, and must be registered as such. The ATF tells Americans possessing such weapons that they can also replace the short barrel with a 16-inch or longer one, destroy the brace, or even forfeit or destroy the weapon.
Those who fail to comply with the regulation by the June 1 deadline can face felony charges, punishable by up to 10 years in jail or $10,000 in fines or both, according to ATF.
The two gun rights groups, Gun Owners of America (GOA) and Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), together have more than two million members and supporters nationwide, including thousands who live in Texas.
These law-abiding gun owners, according to the lawsuit, are at risk of serious felony criminal prosecution for doing nothing more than what ATF has long been saying is perfectly lawful to do.
Originally, the ATF agreed that attaching stabilizing braces to an AR pistol does not convert it into a short-barreled rifle. Back in 2014, the agency even said that if someone braces such a pistol against the shoulder, that still doesn’t mean the pistol is now a rifle.
On top of that, the pistol brace rule can’t pass a test the U.S. Supreme Court set forth last summer, the groups argued.
In a landmark June 2022 ruling, Supreme Court Justice Thomas Clarence detailed a two-step process lower courts must follow in deciding whether a government is violating someone’s Second Amendment rights. First, the court must determine whether the Second Amendment’s “plain text” covers an individual’s conduct. If so, then that conduct is presumptively protected, and the government must prove that its law is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The state of Texas, represented by now-suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, also joined the lawsuit, arguing that the ATF rule will generate unnecessary costs for police officers who must now expend money registering or destroying their otherwise legal weapons.
Tipton found such argument convincing, writing in his order that the Lone Star State “has sufficiently shown that it will suffer irreparable harm” under the new rule with respect to the compliance costs.
“This kind of harm is generally satisfied in the context of government defendants who enjoy sovereign immunity from monetary damages,” the Trump appointee wrote.
Erich Pratt, GOA’s senior vice president, welcomed the decision, describing the pistol brace rule as the latest example of the Biden administration trying to ban as many firearms as it could.
“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,” Pratt said in a statement.
The group has vowed to fight for a nationwide injunction for all Americans who own or want to own an AR pistol equipped with a brace, not just its members.
Wednesday’s decision comes a week after the Firearms Policy Coalition secured a preliminary injunction from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals against the pistol brace rule’s enforcement. A District Court in the same Circuit has also granted Second Amendment Foundation’s request to block the rule from going into effect.
Both reliefs were limited to apply only to the current members of the two gun rights groups.
