For those of you keeping score at home, back in May, a three-judge panel of the Northern District of Texas issued an emergency injunction blocking the ATF from enforcing its new rule effectively banning pistol stabilizing braces. The court concluded that not only were the plaintiffs in Mock v. Garland likely to win the case on the merits, but the rule the ATF issued bore no resemblance to the one it proposed and was hopelessly vague.
As was later clarified, the ruling applied only to the named plaintiffs in the case, including Maxim Defense, its customers, and the Firearms Policy Coalition and its members. But that injunction was temporary, good only until an appeal could be heard.
A number of other gun rights orgs got similar injunctive relief as well. The full District Court, however, took another view of Mock and denied a preliminary injunction, ruling the plaintiffs were not, in fact, likely to prevail.
Refusing to take that as an answer, the Firearms Policy Coalition appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. A Fifth Circuit three-judge panel agreed that the plaintiffs are likely to win when the case is fully heard and sent it back down to the District Court. Late last night, the District Court issued a full preliminary injunction.
As Judge Reed O’Conor wrote in his order . . .
The Court finds that Mock, Lewis, and other individual FPC members are threatened with irreparable injuries in the absence of an injunction. The threats to individual FPC members are twofold: (i) sustaining permanent and nonrecoverable costs from their compliance with an unlawfully issued regulation; and (ii) suffering impairment of their fundamental right to keep and bear lawful arms in self-defense. The Court finds that such threats of irreparable harm posed by enforcement of the Final Rule are credible, imminent, and intertwined with one another. …
The ATF’s own regulatory analysis concludes that the Final Rule has effectively reclassified 99% of all pistols with stabilizing braces to NFA rifles. Through seminal Final Rule adjudications, the ATF has already reclassified a whole host of specific weapons platforms and commercially available braced firearms to NFA rifles. Upon review of this record in conjunction with Plaintiffs’ declarations, there is no doubt that the Final Rule will subject both FPC members to criminal liability for currently possessing each of their braced pistols. The moment the Fifth Circuit’s injunction dissolves, Mock and Lewis will become felons because their braced pistols have become unregistered SBRs under the Final Rule’s reinterpretation of the NFA.
Well yeah. That was the ATF’s entire motivation for inflicting the rule on law-abiding gun owners as part of its weaponization by its hoplophobic Biden administration masters.
My FPC donations continue to be some of the best damn money I spend. https://t.co/nhCeyOGk0c
— Corv (@Corvaiex) October 3, 2023
That being the case, Judge O’Connor concluded with this . . .
Accordingly, the Court ORDERS that the Government Defendants—the Attorney General of the United States; the United States Department of Justice; the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—and each of their respective officers, agents, servants, and employees—are hereby:
1) ENJOINED from implementing and/or enforcing against the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc. and all of its members the provisions in 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.11 and 479.11 that the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has determined are unlawful;
2) ENJOINED from implementing and/or enforcing against Maxim Defense Industries, LLC and any downstream customers of Maxim Defense Industries, LLC (including all direct consumer purchasers and all intermediary distributors, dealers, retailers, and OEM purchasers of Maxim Defense products, and any of their respective customers) the provisions in 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.11 and 479.11 that the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has determined are unlawful;
3) ENJOINED from implementing and/or enforcing against William T. Mock and any of his family members the provisions in 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.11 and 479.11 that the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has determined are unlawful; and
4) ENJOINED from implementing and/or enforcing against Christopher Lewis and any of his family members the provisions in 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.11 and 479.11 that the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has determined are unlawful.
This preliminary injunction protects the named plaintiffs from prosecution until the case can be fully decided. You can read the full order here.
