Category: Courts
Mexico’s Frivolous Lawsuit: What SCOTUS Got Wrong About the Firearm Industry
Predicting how the U.S. Supreme Court might rule on a particular petition is risky business. Most legal analyses of the Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., et al. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos hearing this week are leaning in one direction – that the Court is likely to reject Mexico’s claims and ultimately dismiss their frivolous $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. firearm manufacturers.
After all, there’s no evidence to support their claim. Mexico can’t show the court how a lawfully-made and lawfully-sold gun that is illegally straw purchased, illegally smuggled across an international border, illegally possessed in Mexico and criminally misused by narco-terrorist drug cartels is the responsibility of U.S. gun makers. There was discussion among the justices and the lawyers about legal concepts and terms like “proximate cause,” “foreseeability” and “aiding and abetting,” but the simple understanding is that the justices seemed skeptical that they should accept that U.S. firearm manufacturers should be on the hook legally because they might foresee that someone, somewhere and years from when a gun is made, could criminally misuse that gun to cause harm that requires the government of Mexico to spend money in response. That’s the part that gives common sense and sanity a fighting chance in this case.
Some of the justices’ questions demonstrated that they did not all seem to fully understand how the industry legally conducts business. Here are a couple of examples.
So it’s now obvious, SCOTUS woman judges, even supposedly ‘conservative ones’ are problematic when it comes to goobermint power.
Roberts is just his squishy self.
Supreme Court Rules Against Trump’s Bid to Stop $2 Billion in USAID Funding.
On Wednesday morning, in a 5-4 emergency decision, the Supreme Court upheld a decision from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali that essentially says that Donald Trump can’t withhold $2 billion in USAID money from existing contractors. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the three liberal members of the court. From the ruling:
On February 13, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia entered a temporary restraining order enjoining the Government from enforcing directives pausing disbursements of foreign development assistance funds. The present application does not challenge the Government’s obligation to follow that order.
On February 25, the District Court ordered the Government to issue payments for a portion of the paused disbursements—those owed for work already completed before the issuance of the District Court’s temporary restraining order—by 11:59 p.m. on February 26.
Several hours before that deadline, the Government filed this application to vacate the District Court’s February 25 order and requested an immediate administrative stay. THE CHIEF JUSTICE entered an administrative stay shortly before the 11:59 p.m. deadline and subsequently referred the application to the Court. The application is denied.
Given that the deadline in the challenged order has now passed, and in light of the ongoing preliminary injunction proceedings, the District Court should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines. The order heretofore entered by THE CHIEF JUSTICE is vacated.
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh voted in favor of Trump, with Justice Alito writing the lengthy dissent that begins with:
Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.
So, what exactly does this mean? Judge Ali, who was appointed by the Biden administration, ruled that the Trump administration must maintain USAID agreements that were in place before Trump officially took office on January 20. According to The Hill, Ali “found the Trump administration wasn’t complying with his order to resume the unpaid USAID contracts and grants. Last week, Ali demanded the funds be released by the end of the following day.”
Red State’s Susie Moore writes, “SCOTUS temporarily paused that order, but now, since the deadline is past (and moot), rather than vacate it altogether, they’re lifting the pause and sending things back to the district court to sort out further.”
According to NBC, “Specific projects affected by the payment freeze include the installation of new irrigation and water pumping stations in Ukraine; waterworks upgrades in Lagos, Nigeria; the supply of medical equipment in Vietnam and Nepal; and measures to combat malaria in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Ethiopia.”
While it’s not great news for Trump, as Moore says, “This isn’t the end of the story on this case — not by a long shot.”
BLUF
It looks like we did very well. Justice ‘Squish’ Roberts signaled he’s not in favor of assault weapons bans. And even Justices Jackson and Sotomayor didn’t seem to be convinced of Mexico’s argument.
SCOTUS Oral Argument Transcript: S&W v. Mexico
23-1141_09m1
Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, Inc. v. Garland
Document #60 District Court, D. North Dakota
BLUF
Guns firing both a cartridge and a shotgun shell are deemed non-NFA firearms. Franklin Armory made the Antithesis, a gun that shoots both .45 Long Colt and .410 shotgun shells. ATF said it was an SBR. FRAC sued and the court sided with them.
No movement on the ‘Assault Weapon’ (Snopes) or ‘Large Capacity’ Magazine (Ocean State) cases as of March 3rd Morning Orders.
Well what does this mean? We get to wait more.
It more than likely means that SCOTUS will not take the case this term. That’s not a hard and fast rule, but the longer the wait, the more likely it becomes.
This will be the fourth relisting whenever it next goes to conference. Generally speaking the more relists after two, the less likely they take it. HOWEVER, NYSRPA v. Bruen was relisted four times. Dobbs v. Jackson, the abortion case that did away with Roe v. Wade, was relisted TWELVE times.
That we did not get a denial is good. This order was full of denials. That we did not get granted cert is bad. Nothing has happened.
Thomas (and others) have had plenty of time to write a denial. If they were going to deny it, my view is they would have by now. But we simply do not know.
Second Amendment Roundup: Supreme Court Should Hold its Decision in VanDerStok
The new Administration should notify the Court of its change in position on ATF regulations.
As of now, of the nine cases argued in the Supreme Court’s October calendar, five have been decided. Still pending is Garland v. VanDerStok, which was argued on October 8. Before rendering a decision, the Court should give the Trump Administration an opportunity to express its views of the case with the Court. It’s a challenge to the Final Rule of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) redefining and expanding the definitions of “firearm” and “firearm frame or receiver” that criminalizes conduct not made unlawful by Congress, with Second Amendment implications.
The new Administration is sure to hold views adverse to those presented by the Biden Administration. Indeed, the Plaintiffs’ arguments in the case are similar to those made by DOJ in defense of the previous, longstanding regulatory definition of “firearm” before the Biden Administration upended that definition in the Rule.
On February 7, the President issued the Executive Order Protecting Second Amendment Rights directing the Attorney General to examine all regulations and other actions of executive departments to assess any ongoing infringements on Second Amendment rights and to propose a plan of action to the President to protect those rights. That includes rules promulgated by ATF and the positions taken by the United States in ongoing litigation that could affect the ability of Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Prompted by the Executive Order, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) and 29 other U.S. Senators wrote to ATF Deputy Director Marvin Richardson requesting that ATF immediately rescind several regulations promulgated by the Biden Administration, including the “so-called ‘ghost gun’ rule, which cracks down on law-abiding hobbyists who are exercising their Second Amendment rights to privately build firearms—a longstanding tradition that traces back to the Colonial Era.” That’s the rule at issue here.
If the Supreme Court is on the verge of issuing an opinion in VanDerStok, it should delay to give Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris an opportunity to review the matter and advise the Court of the new Administration’s position. That office must be overwhelmed by the deluge of cases in which the district courts are enjoining actions of the President, such as the DOGE efforts to weed out fraud and abuse from the executive branch and the effort to exclude birth-right citizenship to unlawful aliens and temporary visitors.
The SG’s Office should act quickly to ensure that the Court is advised of the Administration’s views on VanDerStock. If it doesn’t make this a top priority, it risks a decision that is uninformed by the Executive Branch’s position on a constitutional right exercised by millions of Americans.
The Department of Justice has already taken steps to ask courts to put cases on hold to give counsel an opportunity to advise the courts on the government’s position consistent with the Executive Order. In Colon v. BATFE (11th Cir.), a challenge to ATF’s pistol brace regulation, DOJ filed a motion to postpone the oral argument scheduled for March 5 and to hold the appeal in abeyance. Similarly, in Kansas v. U.S. Attorney General (D. Kansas), involving ATF’s “engaged in the business rule,” the DOJ submitted a brief requesting that the Court stay the case, including all deadlines on pending motions, in light of the Executive Order.
In VanDerStok, the Department of Justice should promptly file a letter to notify the Court that the position of the United States has been reconsidered and that the government’s previously stated views no longer represent the United States’ position. It recently filed such a letter in United States v. Skrmetti, advising the Court that the new Administration would not have intervened to challenge Tennessee’s ban on gender-altering medical “experimentation” on minors. The letter did not seek further “likely duplicative briefing from the same parties about the same court of appeals judgment in the underlying suit.”
Here, it is unlikely that the Court would accept any further briefing from the United States, which in any event would likely duplicate the excellent briefing from the respondents and their amici. I commented on two of such amici briefs here and here (which I coauthored). Whatever alternative the Acting Solicitor General chooses, she should notify the Court quickly of the government’s change in position.
For a comprehensive review of the issue on the merits, see my article “The Meaning of ‘Firearm’ and ‘Frame or Receiver’ in the Federal Gun Control Act: ATF’s 2022 Final Rule in Light of Text, Precedent, and History.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts on Wednesday paused a federal judge’s order that required the Trump administration to pay around $2 billion in foreign aid funds to contractors by midnight.
The ruling comes after the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court for an emergency order to block the release of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding, which the federal judge had required by midnight. Officials had said they would not be able to comply with the judge’s order.
The Trump administration said U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali’s order had created “an untenable payment plan at odds with the President’s obligations under Article II to protect the integrity of the federal fisc and make appropriate judgements(sic) about foreign aid – clear forms of irreparable harm.”
Any response from the groups that are fighting the Trump administration is due before Friday at 12 p.m., meaning the pause could potentially be relatively short-lived.
The Trump administration said it was eliminating more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world, putting numbers on its plans to eliminate the majority of U.S. development and humanitarian help abroad.
FPC WIN: The Third Circuit has DENIED Pennsylvania's en banc petition in our lawsuit challenging its ban on 18-to-20-year-olds open carrying during declared states of emergency, which means our win remains in place. https://t.co/zuDLq1M73W pic.twitter.com/B2LomcUf8I
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) February 26, 2025
Sixth Time the Charm for Snope at SCOTUS?
We can only hope. The Supreme Court has once again scheduled both Snope v. Brown and Ocean State Tactical v. Neronha for debate in conference this week, keeping hope alive that the justices will grant cert to one or both cases next week.
This Friday’s conference will be the sixth appearance for Snope (which is the challenge to Maryland’s ban on so-called assault weapons), while Ocean State Tactical (taking on Rhode Island’s ban on “large capacity” magazines) is up for its seventh go-round behind closed doors as the justice decide what cases they’ll accept. The good news is that neither of these cases were disposed of in today’s orders, but that still doesn’t mean that either or both are guaranteed to be heard by SCOTUS in the future.
Ditto Ocean State Tactical.
Again, makes little sense to hold onto that interlocutory case just for a dissent from denial of cert, when Thomas and whoever else can say their piece in Snope.
So that gives me some hope still. However, my read could be totally wrong, and it may…
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) February 24, 2025
I have to say that I’m still cautiously optimistic as well. Both Snope and Ocean State Tactical have been heard in conference since mid-December (December 4, in the case of Ocean State Tactical), which is more than enough time for Justice Thomas, Gorsuch, or Alito to write a dissent from denial of cert.
Of course, that’s also plenty of time for four justices to vote to hear one or both of these cases, and that doesn’t appear to have happened yet either.
We have no idea what’s being said during conference, or what’s causing the hold up, but there’s a slate of other Second Amendment cases that are heading the Court’s way, so the justices will have plenty of 2A topics to choose from in the near future.
A cert petition was filed in Antonyuk v. James (taking on New York’s post-Bruen carry laws) last month, and a reply is due from the New York AG this Wednesday, so that could be heard in conference in early March.
The Court has requested a response from the University of Michigan in Wade v. UofM, which challenges the university’s ban on concealed carry, and that response is due on March 10. That’s the same day that the Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation must submit their response to the state of Minnesota in Jacobson v. Worth. The challenge to Minnesota’s ban on carrying for under-21s was successful at the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, but Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is intent on defending the ban til the bitter end.
The DOJ has a deadline of March 17 to reply to the cert petition in Perez-Garcia v. United States, which is an as-applied Second Amendment challenge to firearms-related pretrial release conditions. It’ll be interesting to see how AG Pam Bondi responds to the lawsuit and whether the Justice Department will defend the current law that allows for defendants to be prohibited from possessing a firearm before they’re convicted of a crime.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta have a March deadline of their own in B&L Productions v. Newsom, which takes on the state’s prohibition on contracting for, authorizing, or allowing the sale of any firearm or ammunition on state-owned property. The law is designed to kill off the biggest gun shows in the state, and has been upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The state’s reply brief is due on March 20, about one week before the federal Justice Department’s deadline to reply in the last 2A-related case to come before the Court’s attention next month.
On March 28th the DOJ’s reply brief in Missouri v. United States is due before the justices. Missouri is seeking to defend the Second Amendment Preservation Act, which lower courts have thrown out a violation of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The law was mean to block local and state law enforcement from cooperating with the feds in enforcing constitutionally suspect firearm statutes, but Missouri argues that the state has the power under the Tenth Amendment to decide which laws should be treated as null and void in the Show Me State.
As great as it would be for the Court to greenlight every one of these cases, that’s not likely to happen. Heck, at this point it’s an open question as to whether the justices will grant cert to any of these lawsuits. Fingers crossed that by this time next week we’re celebrating a grant in Snope and Ocean State Tactical instead of gritting our teeth in frustration.
The AP’s feelings get hurt; it’s a First Amendment crisis!
The Associated Press (AP) makes its money selling stories to other media outlets. It pays “stringers”—reporters and photographers—around the world to submit stories, which it makes available to its subscriber outlets who can’t afford to send reporters and photographers around the globe.
That’s a good thing for smaller media outlets like local new stations, but it’s also a very bad thing because then the AP makes mistakes, or goes woke, so do its subscribers who have no way of knowing they’re making those mistakes. They do know they’re going woke, but even if they’d rather not, their choice is to play along or drop the AP feed. A good example of the AP’s wokeness and anti-Americanism is this:
Shira Bibas’ sons “died in captivity.” An honest and accurate account would say Bibas and her boys, 4 and 10 months, were savagely strangled by Hamas terrorists, and their bodies were clumsily mutilated so Hamas could claim they died in an Israeli airstrike, a perversely stupid and easily exposed lie.
The AP also uses its style guide to enforce wokeness and media outlets, including the majors, happily go along. It’s an enviable perch atop the media hierarchy and the AP has become used to certain perks, among them, a prominent chair in the White House Press Room.
Until, that is, the AP decided to keep calling the Gulf of America the Gulf of Mexico, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, surely with the permission of President Trump, banished them, also from Air Force One and other places and events. This is also surely a part of Leavitt’s reshuffling the Press Room deck, booting established outlets replacing them with new media.to give new media a chance.
The horror.
Massachusetts vs. the Second Amendment
In Massachusetts, a legal battle is unfolding that should resonate with every conservative who values the sanctity of the Second Amendment. Escher v. Mason isn’t just about firearms; it’s a litmus test for how we view adulthood, responsibility, and constitutional rights in contemporary America.
The Massachusetts law in question, House Bill 4885, strips legal adults aged 18 to 20 of their right to purchase, possess, or carry semiautomatic firearms and handguns. This isn’t merely overreach; it’s a direct assault on the clear text of the Second Amendment, which does not discriminate by age among “the people.” If we are to take our Constitution seriously, we must defend the rights of all citizens, not just those deemed “mature enough” by the state’s paternalistic gaze.
At the heart of this legal challenge lies a fundamental conservative principle: the inviolability of individual rights. The Founders did not carve exceptions into the Second Amendment for age. They understood that freedom and responsibility go hand in hand, which is why 18-year-olds have been historically recognized as adults — capable of voting, joining the military, and, yes, bearing arms. The Militia Act of 1792, enacted shortly after the ratification of the Second Amendment, explicitly included 18-year-olds in the national defense, expecting them to be armed like their elders.
This historical precedent is not just a footnote but the bedrock upon which the plaintiffs in Escher v. Mason stand. They argue that there is no traditional basis for denying these rights to young adults. The Supreme Court’s decisions in Heller and Bruen have made it abundantly clear that firearms “in common use” are constitutionally protected. Semiautomatic firearms and handguns are the dominant tools of self-defense in modern America. To deny these to a segment of the adult population is not only anachronistic but egregiously unconstitutional.
Franklin Armory and FRAC Defeat ATF, Judge Rules Words Mean Things.
The U.S. District Court in North Dakota today issued its opinion in the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition (“FRAC”)-Franklin Armory firearms classification-related lawsuit against ATF. In his ruling, Judge Daniel M. Traynor vacated the ATF’s prior misclassifications of Franklin Armory’s Reformation and Antithesis firearms. Judge Traynor’s ruling solidifies what the firearms industry has known for years—that the ATF has been abusing its firearms technology classification powers.
Per the Court’s opinion:
Franklin Armory presented a square peg, and ATF shoved it into a round hole. If Congress wanted “shotgun” to be a catch-all category for anything that doesn’t fit “rifle,” it could have done so. . . . . It is not for ATF to redefine the terms because it thinks Congress didn’t intend a certain outcome. Therefore, ATF exceeded its authority in defining “smoothbore” as anything lacking “functional rifling.”
FRAC and Franklin Armory are reviewing the Court’s ruling and seeking further guidance from legal counsel as to the future of both Reformation and Antithesis under the law. Judge Traynor’s opinion declares that the “ATF classification of the Antithesis and reclassification of the Reformation [are] VACATED.” In response to ATF’s arguments, Judge Traynor retorted that “Administrative agencies need to remember they are in the executive branch and leave legislating to Congress.”
FRAC President & CEO, Travis White, stated that “the ATF has egregiously abused the firearms technology classification process, and this is a landmark ruling in reining in such abuses.”
Franklin Armory President Jay Jacobson said, “we spent years trying to reason with ATF leadership as they failed to classify firearms correctly. We hope that future agency leaders will stick to the law as passed by Congress. All we ever wanted was a good referee, not someone to throw the game.”
Judge Traynor’s summary judgment ruling in FRAC v. Garland, No. 1:23-cv-00003, can be found here.
Reason for Mexico Terror Threat Against U.S. Gunmakers Suggests Government in Pocket of Cartels
“Mexico threatens to escalate US gunmakers lawsuit with terror charges,” The Guardian reported Friday. “Claudia Scheinbaum warns of reciprocal action if Washington designates country’s cartels as terrorist groups.”
“If they declare these criminal groups as terrorists, then we’ll have to expand our US lawsuit… The lawyers are looking at it, but they could be accomplices,” Mexico’s president told the press, adding a time-worn disinformation go-to:
“She said the US justice department itself has recognized that ‘74% of the weapons’ used by criminal groups in Mexico come from north of the border.”
That’s the bit of calculated propaganda that primed ATF to implement Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking,” creating calls for a renewed “assault weapon” ban (Note: Some of the links that follow go to the Internet Archive and may load slowly). The numbers may vary, but the lie remains constant.
It started out with voices like Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and then-Brady Campaign president Paul Helmke, claiming “American gun sellers supply the cartels with 95 to 100 percent of their guns.” The BBC put it at “90%.” Then it was 80%.
Here’s what they were all intentionally misstating:
“According to ATF’s Tracing Center, 90 percent of the firearms about which ATF receives information are traceable to the United States.”
“About which ATF receives information…” That’s not “all,” that’s what’s been selectively submitted for tracing. A Fox News analysis at the time concluded
“There’s just one problem with the 90 percent “statistic” and it’s a big one: It’s just not true. In fact, it’s not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.”
Here we are in 2025 and those lies are still being thrown out and “reported” unchallenged by media hacks who either don’t know, which makes them incompetent and unqualified informants, or do know, which makes them complicit in the deliberate deception and manipulation of their readers and viewers.
Colorado Democrats Eyeing Ammo Restrictions in Addition to Semi-Auto Ban
While the constitutional abomination known as SB 3 has rightfully been getting a lot of attention as it makes its way through the Colorado legislature, it’s far from the only assault on our right to keep and bear arms under consideration in Denver this year.
On Thursday, a bill barring adults under the age of 21 from purchasing ammunition cleared a House committee, and could be up for a vote on the House floor as early as next week.
Though multiple courts around the country have shot down age-based restrictions that deny under-21s from keeping, bearing, and buying firearms since the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen back in 2022, anti-gunners in the Rocky Mountain State have been empowered and emboldened by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which declined to block the state’s law banning firearm purchases to under-21s last November.
In their decision overturning a preliminary injunction against the age-based prohibition, the appellate court bizarrely concluded that age-related purchasing restrictions fall outside the scope of the Second Amendment, leaving the door open to Colorado imposing a ban (however unlikely) on adults of any age purchasing firearms. As the Duke Center for Firearms Law (which typically loves it when courts uphold gun control restrictions) elaborated at the time of the decision:
After determining that at least one plaintiff had standing to challenge the restriction, the panel outlined the Bruen framework and the threshold textual step of determining whether the regulated conduct is protected by the Second Amendment. The panel found initially that the plaintiff with standing was part of the “people” with the right to keep and bear arms and that the plaintiff intended to purchase a protected “arm.”
However, the panel then noted the Supreme Court’s assessment in Heller that certain types of regulations are “presumptively lawful”—and it placed this inquiry in Bruen “step one,” implying that at least some of these laws simply don’t touch on “keeping and bearing” and thus don’t implicate protected conduct.
While noting that Heller’s “presumptively lawful” paragraph was dicta, the panel nevertheless found itself “bound by Supreme Court dicta almost as firmly as by the Court[’s] outright holdings.”
It’s an utterly absurd decision, given that the right to keep and bear arms is rendered meaningless without the the ability to acquire one. The same goes for ammunition.
Without ammo, a firearm is a paperweight, or maybe a club. Either way, it’s absolutely useless for its intended purpose. But the Tenth Circuit has taken the position that “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms are lawful extends equally to laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial purchase of arms.” The court went on to say that even under the Bruen test Colorado’s law is likely to withstand constitutional muster because setting the age to purchase a gun at 21 is “consistent with both scientific evidence on brain development and historical regulatory practice.”
Other courts have held that laws prohibiting members of the political community from exercising their Second Amendment rights cannot stand, and though the age of majority might have been 21 in 1791 and 1868, today it’s 18, which makes these under-21 gun bans inconsistent with the national tradition of gun ownership.
If HB 1133 does become law I’m sure it will face a legal challenge, but unfortunately, the Tenth Circuit’s illogic holds sway in Colorado. As a result, anti-gun lawmakers can feel at least somewhat confident that the appellate court will green light their ammo restrictions just as it’s allowed the ban on under-21s buying guns to take effect.
Let’s Understand What Maryland, Baltimore’s Lawsuit Against Glock is Really About
Glocks are among the most popular handguns in the country. They’re priced decently, run reliably, and just plain work. Police trust them as do numerous armed citizens. They’re everywhere.
And that bothers a lot of people. Now, though, Glock is being sued by the city of Baltimore and the State of Maryland, with the help of Everytown for Gun Safety, and let’s talk a bit about what’s really going on here.
First, let’s get into the official word.
In an attempt to keep fully automatic guns off the streets, Baltimore and Maryland authorities Wednesday sued Glock, the maker of some of the best-selling handguns in America. The lawsuit demands Glock take steps to prevent its guns from being modified into machine-gun-like weapons capable of firing 120 rounds in one minute.
Small, easily installed devices known as “auto sears” or “switches” that are growing more common have terrified law enforcement because they enable high-powered violence not seen since 1934, when Congress banned machine guns after their prominent use by mobsters.
But police statistics show the number of “modified Glock” shootings is on the rise, including an incident near a Baltimore YMCA in March in which a woman’s car was hit 18 times, and police found 41 shell casings nearby. In Philadelphia last year, eight high school students were shot in one spray, including a 16-year-old who was hit nine times. In Memphis in April, a police officer was killed and two other officers wounded in a firefight with two teenagers, one armed with a modified gun.
The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court, is the first to test Maryland’s new Gun Industry Accountability Act, passed by the General Assembly last year to create liability for gun manufacturers and possibly circumvent an earlier related law. The Maryland lawsuit mirrors others filed in Chicago, Minnesota and New Jersey in recent months.
But here’s the problem: Glock doesn’t make the switches. They didn’t design them. They didn’t have anything to do with them.
Further, they’re illegal to make or possess–at least if you’re not one of the handful that has a transferable switch that was made before 1986 and is registered with the ATF. People are getting them left and right, but they’re not doing it lawfully.
What at least some are claiming is that Glock hasn’t redesigned its reliable handgun so it can’t accept a switch.
Yet they don’t punish Toyota because someone might modify one of their cars and circumvent emissions controls or something. Why would they?
But this isn’t really about full-auto switches or even Glock.
No, this is about making it as expensive as possible to be in the firearm industry and to offer products to the civilian market. Right now, this is the angle of attack they’re taking, but it will not end there.
The federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was created specifically to stop these kinds of nuisance lawsuits aimed at the gun industry, particularly when they’re being attacked for the actions of a third party. That’s what’s happening here. They’re trying to pretend it’s Glock’s fault and to get them to stop selling their guns in Maryland, but does anyone really think that would do any good?
It’s not like the people putting switches on their guns are going to suddenly decide they don’t want Glocks because they’re not sold there.
They’ll just get them from somewhere else.
But if enough states do it and enough companies get sued, they’ll either go out of business or just stop selling to private citizens.
You don’t need to control guns if there are no guns for anyone to buy, after all. That’s what this is really about. That’s the long game at work with anti-gunners, and they’re using anti-gun states to try and do it.
Make no mistake. Glock has done nothing wrong.
These two governments just don’t like the right to keep and bear arms.
Firearms Policy Coalition
LEGAL ALERT: Maine federal judge issues preliminary injunction against the state’s 72-hour firearm waiting period. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
“Though [Attorney General] Frey concedes that the Constitution makes inviolate a right to keep and bear arms, he asserts that it does not protect the corollary right to acquire arms, which is a curious construction indeed.”
“Acquiring a firearm is a necessary step in the exercise of keeping and bearing a firearm. Any interpretation to the contrary requires the type of interpretative jui jitsu that would make Kafka blush.”
Documents filed in an ongoing prosecution for illegal possession of a short-barreled rifle are raising new concerns about ATF’s enforcement policy concerning pistols with attached stabilizing braces. The government’s assertions of authority are truly breathtaking, claiming they can use the terms of an invalid rule to interpret the underlying statute and enforce it against U.S. citizens in felony prosecutions.
We have been reporting on the saga of ATF’s ill-fated 2023 administrative edict, Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached “Stabilizing Braces,” ever since the rule was proposed. The final version of that regulation reversed more than a decade of prior statements by ATF that attaching a stabilizing brace to a pistol did not create a short-barreled rifle (SBR) regulated under the National Firearms Act. Instead, ATF would use a series of vague and open-ended criteria to determine if the braced pistol was intended to be fired from the shoulder. But the rule provided no guidance to owners of such pistols how the criteria would be applied. Instead, ATF essentially claimed, “We’ll know an SBR when we see it.”
The pistol brace rule drew numerous legal challenges – including by the NRA – and several different courts found it defective on various grounds. A series of injunctions against its enforcement issued until, on June 13, 2024, a federal judge in Texas vacated the rule altogether. Owners of braced pistols breathed a sigh of relief as the threat of felony prosecution seemingly abated.
Last month, however, we reported on an alarming email to a gun owner sent by ATF’s Firearm Industry Programs Branch. The owner had asked ATF if attaching a stabilizing brace to a CZ Scorpion pistol would turn it into an SBR subject to the NFA. FIPB’s reply stated: “Federal law requires a pistol with an attached stabilizing brace or stock be registered as a short barreled rifle (SBR).”
The FIPB response also acknowledged that enforcement of ATF’s pistol brace rule was enjoined, and asserted, “While the appeal is pending, ATF is complying with the Court’s order.”
Yet ATF’s idea of “compliance,” according to the email, was to assert an even broader authority to treat ALL braced pistols as SBRs (not just ones fulfilling the “factoring criteria” specified in its rule), based on the agency’s reading of the underlying statutes.
After our reporting on that email, ATF quickly issued another statement, walking back the categorical statement about braced pistols. “ATF agrees that the statement ‘Federal law requires a pistol with an attached stabilizing brace or stock be registered as a short barreled rifle (SBR)’ is overbroad.” But the follow-up also continued to assert that ATF remained responsible for enforcing the underlying statutes.
“A firearm designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder that meets the statutory definition of a short-barreled rifle contained in the NFA must be made and transferred in accordance with the requirements of the NFA,” it stated. It did not, however, elaborate on how the agency would make this determination with respect to braced pistols or how owners of such guns might know whether ATF considers their firearms SBRs subject to the NFA.
Last week, however, NRA was made aware of a pending prosecution for illegal possession of a short-barreled rifle that answers this question in a shocking way. Documents the government filed in that case acknowledge ATF’s enforcement of the underlying statute continues to be informed by the terms of the agency’s illegal rule. The case is U.S. v. Taranto in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
BREAKING: A federal judge has ruled that President Trump does in fact have constitutional authority to freeze or limit certain federal funding. This means the Trump White House can withhold funding without the district court's prior approval. pic.twitter.com/KMfAj2E97w
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 12, 2025