It came after the NRA filed a lawsuit against the ATF, or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, arguing that the agency’s rule to reclassify the brace-equipped pistols as short-barreled rifles is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay sided with the gun rights group, arguing that the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals already concluded that the ATF pistol-brace rule “fails the logical outgrowth test and violates” the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and is “unlawful” under the act.

“The court, therefore, sees no reason why it should not consider this argument and APA claim in ruling on Plaintiff’s Motion,” the judge added. “To not do so would be exalt form over substance, particularly since the Fifth Circuit has already determined that this claim has a substantial likelihood of succeeding on the merits.”

The judge agreed with the NRA’s arguments that its members would be substantially harmed by the ATF rule, which was finalized in January 2023.

“Compliance with the Final Rule is not discretionary, and the NRA’s members face severe penalties for their failure to comply with the Final Rule,” Judge Lindsay wrote in the ruling last week. “Accordingly, both of the final requirements for injunctive relief are satisfied because the threatened injury to the NRA’s members outweighs the threatened harm to the Defendants, and enforcement of the Final Rule under the circumstances will not disserve the public interest.”

Pistol braces were first marketed in 2012 as a way of attaching a pistol to the shooter’s forearm, stabilizing it and making it easier to use for disabled people. However, many users found that the braces could also be placed against the shoulder, like the stock on a rifle.

The disputed ATF rule classifies some guns equipped with pistol braces as short-barrel rifles, based on several factors including their size and weight and the manufacturers’ marketing materials. Short-barrel rifles are subject to special registration, longer waiting periods for purchase, and higher taxes because officials have claimed they are potentially more dangerous than handguns.

“While firearms equipped with ‘stabilizing braces’ or other rearward attachments may be submitted to ATF for a new classification determination, a majority of the existing firearms equipped with a ‘stabilizing brace’ are likely to be classified as ‘rifles’ because they are configured for shoulder fire based on the factors described in this rule,” the ATF rule says.

Because the brace-equipped firearms will have a barrel fewer than 16 inches in length, they are “likely to be classified as short-barreled rifles” that are subject to the enhanced federal regulation, it adds.

In a 2–1 ruling last year, the Fifth Circuit found that the ATF finalized the rule without giving the public a meaningful chance to comment on it. That made it invalid under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, the panel found.

The court at the time did not immediately block enforcement of the rule, instead sending the case back to a lower court judge who found that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

“[T]he Court finds that the Government Defendants’ implementation and enforcement of the Final Rule substantially threatens to inflict irreparable constitutional harm upon the [Firearms Policy Coalition] members,” Judge Reed O’Connor wrote last year. “Absent injunctive relief, the Final Rule will impair and threaten to deprive them of their fundamental right to keep and bear commonly used arms as a means of achieving the inherently lawful ends of self-defense.”

Other than NRA members, the previous Fifth Circuit ruling allowed members of the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Gun Owners of America to not face ATF enforcement regarding the braces.

In a news release last week, the NRA, which has millions of members nationwide, said that Judge Lindsay’s order represents a big win for its members. It noted that members of the group who need to use a pistol brace will be shielded from potential ATF enforcement.

“This is a major victory for the NRA, its members, and all who believe in Second Amendment freedom,” NRA President Charles Cotton said in the release. “From day one, we vowed to fight back against President Biden and his rogue regulators—and to defeat this unlawful measure.”

Under the rule, if a person is caught using a pistol brace that has not been registered, the weapon can be seized by federal officials and the owner could face a fine of $10,000 or prison time of up to 10 years, according to the ATF. The agency says gun owners must either remove the brace from the pistol, register it as a short-barreled rifle, remove the barrel and attach a longer one, forfeit the firearm at a local ATF office, or destroy it.

The ATF or the Department of Justice have not yet issued a response to the ruling.

The Hobby Distillers Association, an organization with over 1,300 members represented by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), filed a federal lawsuit this month against the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TBB) and Department of Justice (DOJ) over the government’s ban on at-home distilling. The ban is not just “bad policy,” CEI’s General Counsel Dan Greenberg told the Daily Caller News Foundation, it’s also “inconsistent with a proper view of the limited government constraints of the Constitution.”

“The Constitution created a Federal Government of limited and enumerated powers,” the lawsuit states. “The at-home distilling ban is beyond all of the powers of Congress to enact under the Constitution.”

President Jimmy Carter signed legislation legalizing the practice of homebrewing federally in 1978, though home distilling remained illegal, according to the Smithsonian.

The lawsuit argues that the ban does not fall under Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce, as it operates locally, or the federal government’s taxing power, as it “raises no revenue.”

“The interstate sales of beer and wine are regulated in much the same way as the interstate sales of distilled beverage alcohol are regulated, but beer and wine can lawfully be produced at home under federal law,” it states.

Distilling alcohol at home carries consequences of up to five years in prison or up to a $10,000 fine, per the TTB.

“While individuals of legal drinking age may produce wine or beer at home for personal or family use, Federal law strictly prohibits individuals from producing distilled spirits at home,” the TTB website states.

The activity would be properly regulated at the state level, CEI attorney Devin Watkins said in a statement. In some places, such as Alaska, Arizona, Massachusetts and Missouri, state laws allow individuals to distill alcohol at home, according to Reason.

The Ohio state senate introduced a bill in January 2023 that would permit any citizen over 21 to make up to 100 gallons of moonshine a year, according to News 5 Cleveland.

But because it’s still banned at the federal level, even home distillers in states that permit the practice could risk prosecution.

“Like so many laws in our overcriminalized society, however, there is uncertainty about how rigorously these laws are enforced,” C. Jarrett Dieterle, resident senior fellow at the R Street Institute, wrote for Reason earlier this year. “Similar to homebrewers in the ’70s and ’80s, it’s likely that some of America’s craft distilleries started out as clandestine home distilling operations.”

“We believe that, under the Constitution, at-home distilling is an activity properly regulated at the state and not the federal level."

CEI's @LibertyDevin on our lawsuit with the Home Distillers Association against the federal ban on at-home distilling.https://t.co/Ci4w1w5fQW

— Competitive Enterprise Institute (@ceidotorg) December 15, 2023

Greenberg said the ban is “somewhere between 100 and 150 years old” and is part of a federal tax collecting statute, which appears “completely unrelated to the legitimate use of the powers of the federal government.”

“It’s perfectly legal to distill beverage alcohol in some circumstances, as long as you don’t do it on your home property,” he said. “And it’s perfectly legal to distill fuel alcohol on your home property, in some circumstances, as long as you have a permit…the product that is produced with respect to fuel alcohol and beverage alcohol are chemically identical.”

The plaintiffs are just trying to explore the hobby of distilling beverage alcohol, but want to do it legally, Greenberg said. The lawsuit notes that multiple “have legally distilled before and would be able to distill if the law allowed them to do so.”

The Hobby Distillery Association’s efforts to lobby Congress to repeal the federal prohibition have “been blocked by an industry that does not want more competition,” the lawsuit states.

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The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), an Executive Branch agency that promulgated the rule containing the restrictions in 2022 with President Biden’s support, overstepped its authority, according to a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

“The agency rule at issue here flouts clear statutory text and exceeds the legislatively-imposed limits on agency authority in the name of public policy,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote in the ruling. “Because Congress has neither authorized the expansion of firearm regulation nor permitted the criminalization of previously lawful conduct, the proposed rule constitutes unlawful agency action, in direct contravention of the legislature’s will.”

The ATF declined to comment. The White House and the U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to queries.

The regulation required that sellers of kits that could be made into guns run background checks before selling them.

It also implemented requirements for putting serial numbers on kits and placing the numbers on already-erected “ghost guns.”

So-called ghost guns refer to guns that can be made in private from kits, lacking serial numbers. Critics say the guns pose a problem because they cannot be traced.

“Buyers aren’t required to pass background checks. Because guns have no serial numbers—these guns—when they show up at a crime scene, they can’t be traced,” President Biden said when announcing the new rule. “Harder to find and prove who used them. Meaning you can’t connect the gun to the shooter and hold them accountable.”

Gun owners and groups said shortly after the restrictions went into effect that they were illegal because the Executive Branch does not have the authority to impose new regulations without approval by Congress.

“Congress also did not give the Agencies the authority to regulate the broad array of materials that may, at some point in the future, be manufactured into firearms by private individual,” the suit stated.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled twice in favor of plaintiffs, finding that the ATF changed the definition of, among other terms, “frame or receiver” as outlined in the Gun Control Act of 1968 from its longstanding interpretation.

The changed definition enabled authorities to regulate parts that had not yet become guns, which strayed from the careful definitions in the law, Judge O’Connor said. The ATF’s redefinition, he said, “conflicts with the statute’s plain meaning.”

Starting in 1978, the ATF defined a “frame or receiver” as “That part of a firearm which provides housing for the hammer, bolt or breechblock, and firing mechanism, and which is usually threaded at its forward portion to receive the barrel.”

The redefinition held that the terms “shall include a partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frame or receiver, including a frame or receiver parts kit, that is designed to or may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to function as a frame or receiver, i.e., to house or provide a structure for the primary energized component of a handgun, breech blocking or sealing component of a projectile weapon other than a handgun.”

Congress did not include a definition for “frame or receiver,” meaning the words retain their common meaning, and that the ATF “cannot add … language where Congress did not intend it to exist,” Judge Engelhardt said in the new ruling.

“There is also a clear logical flaw in ATF’s proposal. As written, the final rule states that the phrase ‘frame or receiver’ includes things that are admittedly not yet frames or receivers but that can easily become frames or receivers—in other words: parts,” he added. “Such a proposition defies logic: ‘a part cannot be both not yet a receiver and a receiver at the same time.'”

In a concurring opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham said that the new restrictions replaced “a clear, brightline rule with a vague, indeterminate, multi-factor balancing test,” which resulted in a “new uncertainty” that “will act like a Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of American gun owners.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Don Willett joined with his colleagues, making the ruling unanimous.

“We are elated with this unanimous court ruling,” Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, which is one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “The ATF clearly exceeded its authority. This is a major victory for gun owners and the rule of law.”

All three judges were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

Judge O’Connor was appointed by former President George W. Bush.

The case is likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices have twice in recent months stayed orders blocking the rule as the litigation continues.

Now, the video from the arrest is making its rounds on social media:

https://twitter.com/FrenEugenics/status/1555212926029631491

Burk is suing Columbus Police an the city for “excessive use of force.” Perhaps instead of suing he should have complied and this wouldn’t have been an issue. He probably wouldn’t have gotten tazed, either.

This may be fodder for those of us who are increasingly untrusting of federal law enforcement, but it makes a powerful point. Local, county, and state law enforcement may be our best defense against an overbearing federal law enforcement apparatus. We have seen in recent years an increase in the draconian nature of agencies like the ATF and FBI, as well as non-law-enforcement government agencies like the IRS and postal service.

Our first line of defense is ourselves. We must be ready to defend ourselves against threats both foreign and domestic. But as a secondary line of defense, it’s our local law enforcement who can and should be protecting us. The Obama regime advanced the authoritarianism of agencies like the FBI and ATF. Unfortunately, it didn’t decrease under Donald Trump. Now, the Biden-Harris regime has turned the FBI in particular into their personal Gestapo.

The moral of the story is this: Protect yourself and use local law enforcement as your backup. There are criminals, terrorists, and federal law enforcement agencies that are all out to get us.

Here’s the full video: