CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is co-leading a 22-state coalition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take a case against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rulemaking that would criminalize a firearm accessory that thousands of gun owners currently use.
The coalition’s brief, filed April 7, argues that ATF’s final rule on bump-stock-type devices contravened federal law – as well as longstanding ATF policy – when it determined that owners of bump stocks must surrender or destroy their bump stocks to avoid criminal liability. The case is style Gun Owners of America v. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The brief further argues that a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel rightly ruled against the ATF in March of last year, concluding that bump-stock accessories do not transform commonly used semi-automatic firearms into “machine guns” that are banned by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Following that ruling, the full Sixth Circuit Court split evenly and thus affirmed the district court, which meant the ATF’s rule would continue to stand.
Morrisey
“Our office will continue to protect the Second Amendment rights of West Virginians who lawfully own guns for sport or defense,” Morrisey said in a press release. “The ATF does not get to overrule the Constitutional rights of firearm owners across the nation.
“Actions like the ATF’s do not just violate important principles of administrative law. They also illustrate how the government can endanger fundamental rights through creeping, incremental, and seemingly benign regulatory depredations,” according to the brief. “If Congress had wanted to categorically expand the NFA to cover semiautomatic firearms that use a bump-stock accessory, it would — and must — have done so explicitly.”
The coalition says the ATF, through its rulemaking, overreached and attempted to regulate bump-stock accessories by asserting they transform the firearms they are attached to into “machine guns” as defined by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Bump stocks replace the standard stock of these firearms and assist the shooter in “bump firing,” which increases the rate of fire. They do not transform semi-automatic rifles into automatic machine guns.
“The Final Rule effectively transforms commonly owned firearms into banned machineguns simply because of the use of non-mechanical bump-stock accessories," the brief states. "This interpretation categorically expands the text of the criminal statute in a way that Congress couldn’t possibly have intended.
“And it expands criminal liability at the expense of Second Amendment rights, diminishing the latter absent a sufficient and compelling justification. When the ATF — or any agency — invades protected rights by interpreting statutes too broadly, this Court should step in.”
The coalition says the ATF’s bump-stock rule is an attempt to contravene Congress and rewrite a statute with no evidence that Congress intended such an interpretation. It says the ATF itself recognized that “bump firing” has been around for as long as there have been semi-automatic firearms and that common items such as rubber bands, belt loops, and shoestrings can all be used to the same effect as the accessory the ATF is attempting to criminalize.
Attorneys general from these states also joined the West Virginia- and Montana-led brief: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
United State Supreme Court case number 21-1215
