With the beginning of the Supreme Court’s new term, oral arguments are slated to be held today in the case of Garland v. VanDerStok. The case’s ascension to the highest of American courts follows a Fifth Circuit ruling against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in their attempts to change the definitions of “firearm,” “firearm frame, and “receiver.”
In 2022, the ATF published their Final Rule, which dramatically expanded the meaning of the aforementioned terms to encompass simple firearm parts or kits used to build and manufacture personal firearms. Under the Final rule, “firearms” are defined as “a weapon parts kit that is designed to or may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” and “frames or receivers” are defined as “a partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frame or receiver designed to or may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to function as a frame or receiver.”
Such alterations are an overt attack on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens who, since the nation’s founding, have been at liberty to build their own firearms. While federal law already prohibits such manufacturers from selling said firearms without regulatory approval, this move by the ATF fulfills the promises of the Harris/Biden Administration to crack down on personally owned, privately built, so-called “ghost guns.”
The Fifth Circuit held that the ATF cannot change or alter congressionally established definitions in such a manner, and ideally, the Supreme Court will rule in a similar fashion.
While three letter agencies such as the ATF are meant to serve strictly as enforcement arms of federal law, they have an extensive history of circumventing Constitutional procedure and enacting their own bureaucratic regulations in an effort to trample atop the rights of ordinary Americans. Additionally, they routinely apply politically motivated protocols in service of the operational ruling class. Now, they are breaking barriers in their pursuit of eliminating the longstanding American tradition of personal firearm manufacturing.
We must resist the continuous infringements of such bureaucratic institutions on the rights of law-abiding Americans and gun owners. As the Lone Star State’s premier NO COMPROMISE gun rights organization, we stand in diametric opposition to the ATF and their tyrannical deeds. Visit TexasGunRights.org today and sign our petition to ELIMINATE the ATF!
Article submitted to Texas Gun Rights by Blake Kresses
