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Excerpt from The Reload
The ATF’s ban on pistol-brace-equipped firearms has hit another wall in court.
On Friday, a panel on the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals ruled two-to-one that the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when trying to reclassify the guns. The majority found the rule, imposed at the request of President Joe Biden, exceeded the ATF’s authority under federal law. It determined the agency’s rule was simply too vague to stand.
“[T]he Final Rule makes it ‘nigh impossible for a regular citizen to determine what constitutes a braced pistol, and … whether a specified braced pistol requires NFA registration,’” Judge L. Steven Grasz wrote for the majority in FRAC v. Garland. “For those reasons, the Final Rule is arbitrary and capricious.”
The ruling puts the ATF and Biden Administration further on the back foot when it comes to their effort to expand gun restrictions through unilateral federal lawmaking. The brace ban, which potentially impacts millions of American gun owners, has already been blocked by several other federal courts in the year and a half since it was adopted. The brace ban’s prospects were further dashed when the bump stock ban, which was implemented under the Trump Administration via similar federal rulemaking, was struck down by the Supreme Court in June’s Cargill v. Garland.
Judge Grasz specifically referenced that Supreme Court decision in his opinion. He argued the same standard of review should apply in both cases.
