A gun-rights organization is sounding the alarm over the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice’s strategy in its challenge to the ban on interstate handgun sales.
On August 21, the Firearms Policy Coalition issued a press release detailing the DOJ’s recently filed brief in the case Elite Precision Custom v. ATF. The case is FPC’s challenge to the federal interstate handgun transfer ban.
At issue in the case is whether the ban meets the Supreme Court precedent that requires the government to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the text and historical understanding of the Second Amendment. According to the plaintiffs, that’s not true with this law.
According to the FPC, the DOJ, apparently seeing a bad ending in the case, is seeking to limit the damage as it continues to fight for the ban. The recent DOJ brief argued that if FPC is successful in striking down the law, the court should enter an extremely narrow injunction that would leave the unconstitutional law in place for everyone except two individuals and one Texas firearms retailer. That would allow the government to continue enforcing the ban against millions of peaceable Americans.
“If the Court grants an injunction, that injunction should extend no further than to bar enforcement of any laws the Court deems unconstitutional against the named plaintiffs specifically identified in the complaint,” the DOJ argues in its brief. “Because the [FPC] has not identified any of its members other than the named plaintiffs, the government would have no way to know whom an injunction restricting enforcement of the challenged laws covers.”
FPC President Brandon Combs said the Trump DOJ’s scheme would gut nearly every lawsuit against the federal government unless and until the Supreme Court steps in.
“This isn’t just a threat to Second Amendment supporters—it’s a threat to every American,” Combs said. “The Trump Administration must stop playing keep-away with constitutionally protected rights and put an end to this misguided strategy to obstruct justice.”
The recent request to limit the judgment aside, the government continues to argue that the ban is constitutional under the Second Amendment and should be upheld.
“The regulatory regime Plaintiffs challenge, which neither prevents Plaintiffs from possessing a handgun in any state for self-defense nor prevents Plaintiffs from purchasing a handgun from their retailer of preference, are presumptively constitutional commercial regulations,” the DOJ argued in the most recent brief. “Furthermore, the challenged laws fit comfortably into the nation’s tradition of government regulation over the commercial trade in firearms due to concerns that the arms might fall into dangerous hands.”
Of course, the Bruen ruling never said anything about whether a law “fits comfortably” into the nation’s tradition. Nevertheless, the DOJ argues that’s good enough.
Ultimately, we can only hope that the court rejects the DOJ’s request to limit the ruling to a few individuals and one company, and ultimately overturns the law as a Second Amendment infringement.
