As the Biden administration continues to attempt to limit citizens’ Second Amendment rights, a federal judge in Texas has temporarily blocked Biden’s stabilizing brace rule from going into effect.
According to the ATF, a stabilizing brace is defined as a firearm accessory “that provides surface area that allows the weapon to be fired from the shoulder, provided other factors indicate the weapon is designed, made, and intended to be fired from the shoulder.”
In 2021, President Joe Biden introduced a series of “comprehensive gun crime strategies” in response to two mass shootings in which the shooter used a stabilizing brace.
On January 13, the United States Attorney General signed the ATF’s rule, which categorizes pistols with attached stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles. The rule would also require persons affected by the rule to either permanently remove the item or register it with the ATF or be forced to pay a fine of $10,000 or face 10 years of imprisonment.
The rule was supposed to go into effect on June 1. However, after multiple gun rights advocates and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the ATF last month, Judge Drew B. Tipton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas granted a preliminary injunction.
Paxton filed a separate motion for a preliminary injunction in early April, where he argued that the rule would instantly make millions of law-abiding citizens criminals by May 31 and that Texas police who use guns with stabilizing braces would have to expend funds to register the weapons.
Tipton’s order follows a previous ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in late May that prohibited the ATF from fully enforcing the rule against the plaintiffs’ customers—including the Firearms Policy Coalition and Maxim Defense Industries—that would require them to register their pistol braces with the ATF.
Gun Owners of America, a plaintiff in the case, released a statement expressing their gratitude to Tipton for his ruling.
GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt said:
This assault on millions of Americans was just the latest example of President Biden trying to weaponize the DOJ against law-abiding gun owners, and we doubt it will be the last. We are incredibly grateful to Judge Tipton for hearing the pleas of our members who were facing serious prosecution simply for owning a piece of plastic—all because of an arbitrary reclassification by the ATF. GOA and our millions of members nationwide will continue to fight back against this rogue anti-gun administration at every turn in defense of our rights.
