Anti-Second Amendment outfit Giffords and its California partners are licking their wounds today after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals shot down their suit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) over the agency’s “frame or receiver” rule.
The organization and state could only watch as the court reversed a district court decision in their favor. At issue was the ATF’s limitation of what constitutes an actual firearm.
ATF recognized that raw materials are not finished products
Parts that may be easily converted into fully functional weapons fall under the agency’s “frame or receiver” definition. But gun control radicals were not satisfied that the ATF took a reasoned approach to categorizing receivers.
“[A] billet or blank of an AR-15 variant receiver without critical interior areas having been indexed, machined, or formed that is not sold, distributed, or possessed with instructions, jigs, templates, equipment or tools such that it may readily be completed is not a receiver,” the ATF’s interpretation noted.
A reasoned approach to defining a receiver.
Court: plaintiffs lacked standing to sue ATF
Not so for Giffords and Sacramento officials.
The above exception, commonly known as Example 4, drew the legal onslaught as plaintiffs argued that such raw materials somehow constitute a finished firearm. They argued that the ATF “entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem.”
The lower court agreed and struck down Example 4. But the unanimous three-judge panel found that neither Giffords nor California were harmed by the rule and therefore lacked standing to sue.
The appeals court noted that California and Giffords could not present tangible financial effects of the policy.
Earlier last week, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor deemed the ATF rule unconstitutional for a narrow list of people and products. The Department of Justice, which has unquestionably made strides in protecting Second Amendment rights, surprisingly opposed the judge’s finding on so-called “ghost guns.”
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