{"id":116257,"date":"2026-04-16T17:17:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T22:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=116257"},"modified":"2026-04-16T17:17:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T22:17:48","slug":"116257","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=116257","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

DOJ Reverses Course on Defending Biden’s ‘Engaged in the Business’ Rule for Gun Sales<\/a><\/p>\n

Gun Owners of America is celebrating a win in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals after the Department of Justice abruptly reversed course in a lawsuit challenging the ATF’s expanded definition of who is “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms that was put into effect under the Biden administration and then-ATF Director Steve Dettelbach.<\/p>\n

The rule was explicitly designed to get as close as possible to “universal” background checks without a new law being passed by Congress, and treated the vast majority of private, person-to-person sales as those that should be conducted by a federally licensed firearms dealer. The attorneys general of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Utah, along with GOA, the Virginia Citizens Defense League, and Tennessee Firearms Association filed a lawsuit to block the law from being enforced, and a district court granted a preliminary injunction barring enforcement against the plaintiffs in June, 2024.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Biden’s DOJ appealed that decision, though, and the Trump administration continued to defend the rule even as officials said that virtually every one of Biden’s executive actions on firearms were in the process of being undone.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, however, the DOJ filed a request with the Fifth Circuit to voluntarily dismiss its appeal with the plaintiffs’ consent. In their request, the DOJ’s attorneys said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives \u201cplans to revisit\u201d the rule and \u201crevis[e] the guidelines for determining who is considered \u2018engaged in the business\u2019 of selling firearms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DOJ also informed the court (and the rest ofus) that a notice of proposed rulemaking addressing the “engaged in the business rule” is “forthcoming”, and that in light of the proposed rule on the horizon the government “has determined that it is not appropriate to continue this appeal.”<\/p>\n

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This is good news on two fronts, even if’s overdue. For one, it shows the DOJ is actually capable of declining to defend every federal rule and regulation regarding firearms. Even with the ban on mailing handguns, which the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel determined likely violates the Constitution, the DOJ is asking the courts to allow them to continue enforcing the current statute while a new rule that complies with the Constitution is going through the rulemaking process.<\/p>\n

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