We’ve chronicled many times in the past the gun-rights community’s love-hate relationship with the Trump Administration concerning the Second Amendment.
President Donald Trump came into office vowing to protect the right to keep and bear arms, and in many ways, he has done so. However, his Department of Justice has been somewhat schizophrenic on the matter, often supporting Biden-era infringements instead of working to overturn them.
In a positive move, the DOJ is now backing out of the fight over the Biden-era final rule that redefined who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms. According to the gun-rights group Gun Owners of America (GOA), the DOJ has asked the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss its appeal of the preliminary injunction that GOA, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, Utah Attorney General Derek Brown and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch obtained against enforcement of the rule.
As GOA pointed out in a news release announcing the court action, the rule was simply a backdoor scheme by anti-gun President Joe Biden, “to move the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation. Under the rule, even a single private firearm sale could suddenly become a federal crime.
Through the final rule, the Biden Administration hoped to squelch the private sale of firearms by scaring gun owners into believing they might be violating the poorly worded, hard-to-understand law. Additionally, the Biden ATF inverted the ordinary judicial process, presuming gun owners guilty until proven innocent.
After the enormous pressure brought to bear by gun owners and gun-rights organizations, the DOJ is seeking a dismissal, allowing the case to return to the district court. GOA’s preliminary injunction blocking the rule remains in effect, and the organization will pursue a final order permanently striking down Biden’s unconstitutional and unlawful regulation.
Erich Pratt, GOA senior vice president, called the move by the DOJ a “massive step toward fulfilling President Trump’s campaign promise to gun owners to end this Biden rule.”
“Biden’s criminalization of private gun sales was a naked attempt to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of millions of gun owners,” Pratt said. “GOA and GOF once again have triumphed over ATF overreach.”
John Velleco, executive vice president of the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) expressed his organization’s thanks to the administration for dismissing its appeal of the earlier ruling.
“We are grateful that the Trump administration has abandoned this Biden-era appeal,” Velleco said. “This sets the stage to protect the rights of millions against Biden’s anti-gun overreach. Future administrations should think twice before they reinterpret federal law to criminalize the Second Amendment like President Biden.”