Nat'l Ass'n for Gun Rights v. Garland
| Docket Number | Civil Action 4:23-cv-00830-O |
| Decision Date | 30 August 2023 |
| Parties | NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR GUN RIGHTS, INC., et al., Plaintiffs, v. MERRICK GARLAND, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Texas |
OPINION & ORDER ON PLAINTIFFS' MOTION FOR TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER
Before the Court are Plaintiffs' Motion for Temporary Restraining Order (ECF No. 17), Brief in Support (ECF No 18), and Appendix (ECF No. 19), filed August 14, 2023 Defendants' Response (ECF No. 32), filed August 21, 2023 and Plaintiffs' Reply (ECF No. 33) and Appendix (ECF No 34), filed August 25, 2023. Having considered the parties' briefing and applicable law, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs' Motion for Temporary Restraining Order (ECF No. 17) to preserve the status quo until either September 27, 2023 or such time that the Court rules on Plaintiffs' Motion for Preliminary Injunction (ECF No. 22), whichever is earlier. Therefore, the Court ORDERS that Defendants-along with their officers, agents, servants, and employees-are ENJOINED from implementing or enforcing, in any civil or criminal manner, against Plaintiffs Patrick Carey, Travis Speegle, and James Wheeler the ATF's challenged definition of “machinegun.”
The United States Congress delegated to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) authority to regulate firearms in interstate commerce under the Gun Control Act of 1986. In a 2018 regulation, the ATF expanded the definition of “machinegun.” A few years later, the ATF determined that additional types of firearms qualify as machineguns and are thus illegal to possess or transfer. One of those prohibited firearms is a forced reset trigger. Plaintiffs brought this suit under Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”)[1] to challenge the legality of the ATF's broadened definition.[2]
A forced reset trigger (“FRT”) is a semi-automatic assembly that allows the trigger to reset quicker than it otherwise would using a traditional trigger-return spring. This assembly enables the user to fire the firearm at a quicker rate than with a traditional trigger.
Reviewing the basic mechanism of a firearm is necessary to understand how an FRT works. The function of any trigger is to release the hammer. This occurs when the trigger is pulled back to the point that a “trigger sear” releases the hammer from its retained position. Once released by the trigger, the hammer pivots to contact the firing pin. Once contacted, the firing pin then strikes a chambered ammunition cartridge or “round,” which causes the gunpowder in the cartridge to combust. The combustion effect propels the cartridge's bullet out of the barrel of the firearm. Once fired, a standard semi-automatic trigger returns to its “reset” state-ready-to-fire or “set” position-by allowing the firearm to function once again by starting the mechanism anew. In other words, the firearm only fires again by the user pulling the trigger to release the hammer.
An FRT is a device that forcibly returns the trigger to its reset state. FRTs are designed to achieve this by the hammer resetting the trigger 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 inbattery 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 National Firearms Act of 1934 (“NFA”)[5] regulates certain firearms in interstate commerce. At the time of its proposal, the NFA “was known to many as the ‘the Anti-Machine Gun Bill.'” Cargill v. Garland, 57 F.4th 447, 450 (5th Cir. 2023), pet. for cert. filed, No. 22-976 (2023). Among other things, the NFA criminalized the possession or transfer of certain unregistered firearms while also prohibiting the registration of firearms otherwise prohibited by law. 26 U.S.C. §§ 5812(a), 5861. In the decades following its enactment, the possession or transfer of machineguns was prohibited when Congress enacted the Gun Control Act of 1968 (the “GCA”).[6] It is a federal crime today to possess a machinegun.
26 U.S.C. § 5845(b); see also 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(24) (). In other words, a machinegun is a “rifle capable of automatic fire.” Cargill, 57 F.4th at 452. Firearms incapable of automatic fire are thus not machineguns. Id.
For decades, ATF regulations mirrored the federal statutory definition of “machinegun.” 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.11, 479.11 (2017). The statutory parity was disrupted in 2018, when the ATF broadened the meaning of machinegun in its most recent regulation by re-interpreting the statutory definition to add additional language:
Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun, and any combination of parts from which a machine gun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person. For purposes of this definition, the term “automatically” as it modifies “shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot,” means functioning as the result of a self-acting or self-regulating mechanism that allows the firing of multiple rounds through a single function of the trigger; and “single function of the trigger” means a single pull of the trigger and analogous motions. The term “machine gun” includes a bump-stock-type device, i.e., a device that allows a semi-automatic firearm to shoot more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger by harnessing the recoil energy of the semi-automatic firearm to which it is affixed so that the trigger resets and continues firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.
27 C.F.R § 479.11 (2018) (emphasis added).
Three years after the ATF broadened its interpretation of the statutory definition, two of the ATF's divisions issued reports regarding FRTs. The Firearms Technology Criminal Branch (“FTCB”) issued its Technical Examination Report on July 15, 2021, which purportedly classified the FRT-15-a version of the FRT-as a machinegun.[7] The FTCB issued a similar report several months later on October 21, 2021 regarding the Wide Open Enterprises “WOT” version of the FRT.[8] At the beginning of the next year, the FTCB issued its “Open Letter to All Federal Firearms Licensees” (the “Open Letter”) on March 22, 2022, advising that the ATF “recently examined devices commonly known as ‘forced reset triggers' (FRTs) and has determined that some of them are ‘firearms' and ‘machineguns' as defined in the [GCA].”[9] Most important for this case, the Open Letter further explained that “ATF's examination found that some FRT devices allow a firearm to automatically expel more than one shot with a single, continuous pull of the trigger” and that “any FRT that allows a firearm to automatically expel more than one shot with a single, continuous pull of the trigger is a ‘machinegun.'”[10] One month later, the ATF's Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division (“FATD”) issued yet another report on the FRT-15 trigger.[11]
Plaintiffs comprise of both individuals and organization plaintiffs. Plaintiffs Patrick Carey, Travis Speegle, and James “J.R.” Wheeler are three individual citizens located in the Texas-Louisiana area (the “Individual Plaintiffs”). Each Individual Plaintiff has owned, currently owns, and/or plans to own FRTs in the future. Plaintiffs also include two organizations-National Association for Gun Rights, Inc. and Texas Gun Rights, Inc.-with thousands of members in the Northern District of Texas (the “Institutional Plaintiffs”).
Plaintiff Carey owned two FRTs prior to receiving a warning notice from the ATF on August 22, 2022.[12] The warning notice informed Plaintiff Carey that “ATF has information that you have acquired one or more [FRTs],” that “[t]hese items have been classified as machineguns that were unlawfully manufactured,” that “[p]ossession 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.”[13] Due to the direct threat of civil and criminal enforcement, Plaintiff Carey surrendered his two FRTs to ATF agents.[14] Plaintiff Wheeler personally owns one FRT and has a 50% ownership stake in a small firearms and ammunition business that owns two additional FRTs.[15] Plaintiff Speegle personally owns ten...
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