Another Unconstitutional Biden Ban Overturned

President Joe Biden’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has taken another shot to the chin over the agency’s propensity to make laws rather than enforce them.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Texas overturned the administration’s ban on forced reset triggers, which automatically return to their starting position after being pulled.

District Judge Reed O’Connor, who has been front and center in recent decisions to rein in the rogue agency, ruled in the case National Association for Gun Rights v. Garland that ATF overstepped their bounds in classifying guns using forced reseat triggers as “machine guns” under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

“Having considered the above-referenced filings and applicable law, the Court concludes that Defendants engaged in unlawful agency action taken in excess of their authority,” Judge O’Connor  wrote in the decision.

In the decision, Judge O’Connor quoted extensively from the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling tossing the bump stock ban, created by the ATF under the Trump administration and defended in court by the Biden/Harris administration.

“By continuing to characterize a ‘single function of the trigger’ as a ‘single constant rearward pull of the trigger,’ Defendants transform the required statutory focus away from the objective trigger mechanics to the subjective actions of the gun user instead,” ruling stated. “This is incorrect and is the same rewriting of the statute Defendants already attempted and failed to do with bump stocks.”

In the end, the judge couldn’t reconcile the government’s ineffective arguments with the recent bump stock decision.

“Because the Cargill decisions from the en banc Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court are squarely dispositive of the issue in this case, the Court concludes that ATF’s regulation is not in accord with the statutory definition of ‘machine gun,’” the ruling stated. “By redefining the statutory definition, the ATF exceeded the scope of its authority.”

Representatives of the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) were elated with the decision in the case.

“We are absolutely thrilled that the court has dealt such a decisive blow to the ATF’s unconstitutional agency overreach,” said Hannah Hill, executive director of the NAGR’s legal arm, the National Foundation for Gun Rights. “The ATF under the Biden/Harris regime has utterly trampled the Constitution and the rule of law in their eagerness to destroy the Second Amendment. The ATF may appeal this ruling, but precedent and momentum are both on our side, and we fully anticipate the absolute end of the ATF’s unlawful, unconstitutional ban on forced reset triggers.”