Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) were joined this week by seventeen state attorney generals in filing for a preliminary injunction to stop a new Biden rule outlawing privately-made firearms.
Such guns, whose parts are made without stamped numbers that can be tracked by the government, are referred to by the media as “ghost guns.”
A new Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rule, set to go into effect Aug. 24, changes the definition in federal law of “firearm frame or receiver,” “frame or receiver” “gunsmith” and “firearm,” without the approval of Congress, to outlaw such privately-made firearms.
GOA and GOF are now joined in their challenge by the attorneys general of Arizona, West Virginia, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
“The ATF is attempting to overshoot the authority granted to it by Congress,” said Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich. “The rulemakings are unconstitutional, impractical, and would likely put a large number of parts manufacturers out of business.”
“Despite the ATF acknowledging serious issues with their preliminary rule, this anti-gun administration has made clear that they would not be deterred in going after ‘ghost guns' one way or another,” said GOA/GOF's Sam Paredes.
“GOF is excited to partner with the chief law enforcement officers of so many states in this fight. We are confident that our challenge to this final rule has serious merit and that we will ultimately prevail in having it dismantled as unconstitutional in federal court,” said Paredes.
The request was filed in the U.S. District Court for North Dakota, following a GOA and GOF initial lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the rule earlier this month, GOA reports.
“Among other provisions, the rule would arbitrarily require (1) background checks on gun parts such as 80% kits, (2) gun dealers to serialize and register privately made firearms which are taken into their inventory, and (3) FFLs to permanently maintain all Firearm Transaction Records (Forms 4473), a change from ATF's temporary 20-year record retention policy in violation of the Firearms Owners' Protection Act (18 U.S.C. 926(a)(3)),” GOA reports.
“GOA and its millions of members continue to voice concerns that this is another attempt by this anti-gun administration to regulate what Congress never intended to regulate and eventually turn their partial gun registry into a complete registry of every firearm transferred,” GOA stated.
“Under current policy, when an FFL dealer goes out of business, the most recent 20 years of records are transferred to ATF. But under the new record-keeping policy in the Final Rule, every transaction record would eventually be entered into ATF's digital and searchable national gun registry,” GOA warns.
He just wants to take away guns from everybody, but he isn’t concerned about getting the illegal guns out of gang’s hand and all the crooks they have let out of jail and prison. These are the guns you need to worry about and not the people who have legal guns.
Hooray Yes
Our increasing reliance on the states to protect our rights is a bit scary…but at least they are acting to check federal overreach…