BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed an amended federal complaint challenging the Biden administration’s new “Arm Brace Rule,” accusing the government of violating the Administrative Procedures Act, the Second Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Joining SAF in this legal action are Rainier Arms, LLC and two private citizens, Samuel Walley and William Green. They are represented by attorney Chad Flores at Beck Redden LLP of Houston, Texas.
Defendants are the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and Director Steve Dettelbach, the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. The case is known as SAF, et.al. v. ATF, et. al.
“The Biden administration’s new ‘arm brace rule’ is a marked departure from the ATF’s previous position about whether pistols with arm braces are legally considered pistols,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “This dramatic shift in policy leads us to conclude the president, through his agency directors, is moving to change the definition of pistols fitted with these braces to be ‘rifles,’ and thus subject to the National Firearms Act. In so doing, the administration has turned millions of law-abiding pistol owners into criminals who suddenly own guns now defined as ‘short-barreled rifles.’ This is unconscionable.”
“Joe Biden is continuing to use ATF as a means to circumvent Congress,” added SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, “and this new rule is his administration’s latest attempt. He has been obsessed with banning guns and criminalizing gun owners ever since he arrived on Capitol Hill fifty years ago. In the process, he is causing irreparable financial harm to firearms retailers, which to this administration must seem like an added benefit.”
Gottlieb and Kraut both note the Administrative Procedures Act requires courts to “hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions” that are found to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”
“Biden has weaponized the ATF and Justice Department, and we cannot allow that to go unchallenged,” Gottlieb said. “The government has set May 31 as the compliance date for this new arm brace rule, so we’re asking the court to act now, well in advance of that date, to prevent what amounts to a constitutional travesty.”