Denver, CO – August 20, 2021 – Mountain States Legal Foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms has filed formal comments opposing the Biden Administration’s attempt to limit the guns rights of Americans by redefining the term “firearm” to apply to objects that are not firearms and have not previously been categorized as such. The administration’s game of semantic gymnastics will undoubtedly chill the exercise of millions of Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.
“Agency regulations can have a huge impact and bear the full force of law,” said Cody J. Wisniewski, Director of MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms. “When the government and gun control activists go after the very definition of “firearms,” they are striking at the root of all Americans’ constitutionally-protected rights and self-sufficiency.”
For years, gun control activists tried to force the federal government to regulate all kinds of objects that do not meet the legal definition of a “firearm” or a “firearm frame or receiver,” but they haven’t been very successful. But now, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“ATF”) are doing the work for them. Except, instead of trying to stretch the law, they’re now trying to rewrite it.
On May 21, 2021, in an abrupt policy reversal, the DOJ proposed changes to ATF regulations to redefine or newly define several terms to regulate millions of firearm parts and non-firearm pieces and materials that the ATF does not have the congressionally mandated authority to regulate.
This newly proposed rule completely alters the legal landscape surrounding firearms regulation. It seeks to give the ATF and its Director complete discretionary power to decide what the ATF can regulate and how. This is the ultimate attempt to usurp existing law and give the ATF a complete and total authority to define peaceable American’s gun rights as the ATF wishes.
The DOJ and ATF must accept public comments on the proposed rule, review and address these comments, and make use of them in formulating a final rule. MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms has submitted comments in opposition to the proposed rule on behalf of itself and a group of clients.
Follow this link to read the comments.
ATF is essentially attempting to create new law through rulemaking. By reinterpreting federal law, the ATF and DOJ, if successful, will make millions of Americans into felons if they continue their currently lawful, longstanding practices.
Wisniewski points to the tidal wave of comments the rule change has generated – more than 290,000 at last count – as evidence that the public is not laying down for the administration’s attempt to shortcut the public process and caste an overreaching regulatory net by blurring definitions and distinctions.
“Thankfully, there’s been a strong public outcry against these proposed regulations, with over 290,000 public comments that the Biden Administration will be required to review and address in any final rule,” added Wisniewski. “MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms is pleased to add its voice—and to be a voice for its clients and the American People.”
Wisniewski hopes the groundswell of opposition to the rule will delay a final proposal or possibly even dissuade the administration from issuing one. But MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms and its clients will remain vigilant, given this administration’s already well-known tendency to cut corners on the public process and disregard the rule of law in pursuit of partisan ends.
Mountain States Legal Foundation is a nonprofit, public-interest legal foundation dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and the free enterprise system. Its offices are located outside Denver, Colorado.