On July 23, 2024, the National Association for Gun Rights won summary judgment striking down the ATF’s ban on forced reset triggers. The case was NAGR v. Garland.
The ruling from Judge Reed O’Connor from the Federal District Court, Northern District of Texas, vacated the ATF’s ban on forced reset triggers, stating unequivocally that the ATF had acted beyond the scope of its statutory authority in redefining forced reset triggers as machine guns.
In the decision, an FRT is defined as a device that forcibly returns the trigger to its reset state. In the commercialized FRT designs at issue in this litigation, the trigger is forcibly reset by the hammer when the bolt carrier cycles to the rear. A “locking bar” mechanically locks the trigger in its reset state, preventing the user from moving the trigger rearward to function by releasing the hammer, until the bolt has returned to the in-battery position and the firearm is safe to fire. When firing multiple shots using an FRT, the trigger must still reset after each round is fired and must separately function to release the hammer by moving far enough to the rear in order to fire the next round.
The ruling was based in part on the Supreme Court’s recent Cargill decision striking down the ATF’s bump-stock-ban rule. Click here to read our coverage of that decision.
Hannah Hill, executive director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights (NAGR), the legal arm of the National Association for Gun Rights, said, “We are absolutely thrilled that the court has dealt such a decisive blow to the ATF’s unconstitutional agency overreach.
“The ATF under the Biden/Harris regime has utterly trampled the Constitution and the rule of law in their eagerness to destroy the Second Amendment. The ATF may appeal this ruling, but precedent and momentum are both on our side, and we fully anticipate the absolute end of the ATF’s unlawful, unconstitutional ban on forced reset triggers.”
The NAGR has 4.5 million members. Rare Breed Triggers and its customers had been targeted by the ATF and the Department of Justice.
The winning plaintiffs were both individuals and organizations. Plaintiffs Patrick Carey, Travis Speegle, and James Wheeler are three individual citizens located in the Texas/Louisiana area. Each individual plaintiff has owned, currently owns, and/or plans to own forced reset triggers (FRTs) in the future. Plaintiffs also include two organizations, National Association for Gun Rights, Inc. and Texas Gun Rights, Inc.
A warning notice from the ATF said that “these items have been classified as machine-guns that were unlawfully manufactured,” that possession of these devices is a violation of law due to their illegal manufacture, and that “the unlawful receipt and possession of any of these devices is a felony violation of Federal law.”
The ruling can be viewed at the link below.
Let’s not forget that it was Donald Trump who mandated the ATFE bump stock rule change, not the Biden Administration.