MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms Files Opening Brief in Closely-Watched Gun Case

Denver, CO. – April 21, 2021 – Mountain States Legal Foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms (CKBA) filed its opening brief on Thursday in Syracuse v. ATF. The underlying case implicates how the federal government applies the legal definition of firearms as well as Americans’ liberty to self-manufacture firearms for personal use.  

Several progressive-run U.S. cities and anti-gun groups late last year sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). These gun control activists want to force the ATF to regulate raw materials of all kinds—materials that could be used to manufacture a firearm in the future—simply because individuals, through their own knowledge, skill, and ingenuity, can manufacture them into firearms for personal use.

CKBA sought intervention on behalf of our clients, Zachary Fort, Frederick Barton, 80% Arms, and Firearms Policy Coalition, to preserve the natural right and traditional freedom of self-sufficient Americans to legally build firearms for personal use, free from undue (and unconstitutional) government interference, surveillance, and regulatory control. 

On January 2, 2021, however, the district court denied CKBA’s clients’ intervention. The district court determined that they had legally protectable interests in the case that could be impaired depending on how the court decided. But the district court determined that CKBA’s clients’ interests were “adequately represented” by federal government.

Knowing the federal government, much less the current Administration, couldn’t possibly “adequately represent” the interests of our clients, nor everyday Americans who value the right of self-defense and self-sufficiency, CKBA quickly appealed the district court’s decision. That issue is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

“President Biden’s recent announcement targeting the 80% lower industry made it clear that the current Administration does not respect the longstanding American tradition of self-manufacturing firearms for personal use,” said Cody J. Wisniewski, Director of MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms and lead counsel on the case. “We will defend their rights—along with all Americans’ rights—vigorously in the courtroom.”

“Since our nation’s founding, Americans have self-manufactured their own firearms at home,” said Zachary Fort, one of the citizens CKBA represents. “The ability to exercise one’s rights privately, without government intrusion, is a cornerstone of a free society.”

Mountain States Legal Foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms works to ensure that the court hears the voices of everyday Americans, especially those whose rights gun control activists want to eradicate.

Mountain States Legal Foundation, created in 1977, 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.