Attorney General Steve Marshall announced on Thursday that his office filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court opposing a measure by the Biden administration's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to change more firearms definitions.
In 2022, the ATF broadened its interpretation of "firearm" to now include certain weapon parts kits that may be converted into firearms, as well as specific partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frames or receivers.
"Throughout the Biden-Harris administration, their ATF has repeatedly overstepped its authority to regulate and even ban private firearms and items associated with firearms," Marshall said. "This brief is one of several we have filed over the past three and a half years to protect gun owners from federal overreach. While we understand that the Biden-Harris Administration has no regard for the Second Amendment, we want to remind the Court to remain firmly focused on the statutes our representatives have actually enacted, not the latest preference by liberal political interest groups."
The brief describes the ATF's lengthy history of subverting congressional proceedings, attempting to deploy liberal gun-control policies without Congress passing a law. Instead, the ATF takes it upon itself to, in essence, write new laws by endlessly re-interpreting existing laws to prosecute people for owning firearms and firearm parts that have been legal for years.
"Some might suggest that ATF's limits-testing approach is justified because of the stakes," the brief states. "And certainly, in the wrong hands, firearms can be dangerous. But short of constitutional constraints, Congress is the body that gets to decide how to address any risks that might arise from a particular product. Neither the ATF nor this Court can impose naked policy preferences, especially so on hot-button issues like these."
It continues, "ATF misunderstands its own job—and this misconception is statutorily unjustified and constitutionally impermissible. Time and time again, ATF has ventured off into the regulatory wilderness, abandoning the only statutes that give it life in the first instance. In other instances, it has ignored its obligations under the APA to bypass legitimate objections to its regulatory misadventures."
In November 2023, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously struck down the "Frame and Receiver" Rule because ATF was making laws instead of doing its real job, which is enforcing the laws passed by Congress. The court argued that the rule "flouts clear statutory text and exceeds the legislatively imposed limits on agency authority in the name of public policy."
Alabama joined Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming joined brief led by West Virginia and Montana.
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