In recent days, the three-judge panel upheld most of the preliminary injunction granted in the battle against the ATF’s so-called “ghost gun” rule. And late on Monday night, the Fifth Circuit issued a full preliminary injunction against the agency’s ban on pistol stabilizing braces.
These braces first appeared on the market in 2012 in part to create a way to allow disabled veterans to be able to continue to enjoy sport shooting. They are rather simple devices that attach a pistol to a shooter’s forearm.
The issue arose when the government decided in January that these stabilized pistols are instead short-barreled rifles. This put them under much more stringent regulations from the National Firearms Act (NFA) and effectively would make criminals out of millions of law-abiding gun owners.
Gun owners were given the hard choice of removing the brace and altering it to where it could not be reattached, registering it with the government and paying a fee, or forfeiting or destroying the weapon.
Second Amendment advocates sprang into action. A lawsuit was filed by the Firearms Policy Coalition (PFC) along with Maxim Defense. Members of the PFC and Maxim customers challenged the new rule against stabilizer braces, and it has wound through the courts ever since.
In May, the appeals court granted an emergency injunction in Mock v. Garland that stopped the ATF from enforcing its new rule. This rule essentially banned the popular devices. The court action followed a lower court’s ruling that the plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on the merits of the case.
However, the Fifth Circuit strongly disagreed with the lower court’s stance. The panel declared that not only would the plaintiffs likely succeed, but the ATF rule did not even resemble the one initially proposed. It was also blasted for being vague, something no gun control regulation should be guilty of.
The injunction only applied to FPC members and Maxim customers, and was only effective during the appeal of the district judge’s denial.
But on Monday, better news came with the full preliminary injunction. Judge Reed O’Connor, who has established himself as a fair-minded jurist with a healthy respect for the Second Amendment, wrote the finding of the judges.
“The Court finds that Mock, Lewis and other individual FPC members are threatened with irreparable injuries in the absence of an injunction. The threats to individual FPC members are twofold: (1) sustaining permanent and nonrecoverable costs from their compliance with an unlawfully issued regulation; and (2) suffering impairment of their fundamental right to keep and bear arms in self-defense.”
O’Connor noted that the Final Rule reclassified 99% of pistols with stabilizer braces as short-barreled rifles under the NFA. FPC members thus are subjected to “criminal liability for currently possessing each of their braced pistols.”
In short, owners of these braces would become instant felons when the temporary injunction granted by the Fifth Circuit dissolved.
O’Connor concluded his Monday night ruling by enjoining the ATF from enforcing the pistol stabilizer rule against the FPC and its members as well as Maxim Defense and its customers and business partners.
Clearly the pistol brace Final Rule was simply part of the sweeping Washington agenda to chip away at gun rights until the Second Amendment is meaningless. In yet another case, the courts ruled that the ATF severely overreached and squarely stepped into congressional authority with the new rule.
Once again, decisive action by organized gun control advocates forced the government to backtrack from its latest gun grab. Diligence is key, and gun rights supporters must be on constant alert against hostile actions meant to deprive them of liberties enjoyed for centuries.
