FPC Files Brief With Supreme Court In VanDerStok Case

Because the U.S. Supreme Courtroom prepares to listen to the ATF’s “Body or Receiver” Remaining Rule case on Oct. 8, gun-rights organizations are busy submitting court docket briefs.

Within the case Garland v. VanDerStok, the Firearms Coverage Coalition (FOC) filed a merits-stage Response temporary with the Supreme Courtroom on Aug. 13 explaining why the federal government’s rule can’t survive scrutiny and have to be vacated.

“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris used the ATF as a legislative physique and weapon to attain coverage objections by illegal rule-making that they may not obtain by constitutional means,” mentioned Brandon Combs, FPC president. “Each step of the way in which, courts in our case have held the ATF’s ‘Body or Receiver’ Rule exceeded the boundaries of the company’s authority and definitions discovered within the statutes enacted by Congress. And rightly so. Individuals have Individuals have lengthy loved a constitutionally protected proper to craft their very own firearm for lawful functions and we look ahead to additional securing that proper on this case.

Cody J. Wisniewski, president of the FPC Motion Fund and common counsel for the FPC plaintiffs. mentioned the rule was nothing greater than an government department energy seize by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to impose their anti-Second Modification agenda on peaceful Individuals.

“We look ahead to placing ATF as an alternative and an finish to this illegal regulation,” Wisniewski mentioned.

Within the temporary, FPC acknowledged: “Individuals have at all times had the constitutional proper to make private firearms with out presidential permission. The Second Modification each stems from and protects this proper, which has utmost assist within the nation’s historical past and custom. There isn’t a historic custom of regulating, not to mention criminalizing, the self-manufacture of firearms.”

FPC additionally urged the court docket to make a speedy resolution due to the harm that’s being performed to lawful Individuals by ATF’s Remaining Rule.

“As a result of ATF is being allowed to implement the Rule’s new ‘firearm’ definition whereas this motion is pending, Respondents and the remainder of the nation are struggling immense irreparable harms,” the temporary acknowledged. “Quickly the Rule will achieve destroying a whole area of historically lawful Second Modification enterprise exercise that ATF has no proper to control—to not point out the constitutional rights of the law-abiding people these companies serve. For everybody being wrongly ruled by this Rule’s extreme legal penalties, time is of the essence.”

In November 2023, a three-judge panel of the fifth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals unanimously struck down the “Body and Receiver” Rule as a result of ATF was making legal guidelines as a substitute of doing its actual job—imposing the legal guidelines handed by Congress.

“The company [ATF] rule at situation right here flouts clear statutory textual content and exceeds the legislatively-imposed limits on company authority within the title of public coverage,” the ruling acknowledged. “As a result of Congress has neither licensed the enlargement of firearm regulation nor permitted the criminalization of beforehand lawful conduct, the proposed rule constitutes illegal company motion, in direct contravention of the legislature’s will.”