Gun control regulations taken down in court

By Luke Brantley
Staff writer

I’ve tried to cover gun control regulations as they pop up, but it’s been a while since I’ve done that, and I have a lot of good news for once!
Many of the regulations I’ve covered regarding stabilizing braces and private gun sales have either been vacated or placed under injunction.
Last year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), decided to reclassify large-frame pistols with stabilizing braces as short barreled rifles (SBRs).
The regulation, as well as all firearms laws the ATF claimed they were just trying to enforce, are all blatantly constitutional under the second amendment.
But weirdly enough, the second amendment isn’t why the courts ruled against this proposed regulation.
The law that doomed the pistol brace ban was actually the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). When the ATF initially came out with the new rule, it looked drastically different from what the agency had originally proposed months prior, which was enough for the rule to be overturned under the APA.
So as of right now, thanks to the final ruling in the Mock v. Garland lawsuit back in June, the brace rule is vacated for everyone in the country.
The other recent rule the ATF tried to implement targeted the private sale of firearms in order to heavily restrict private sales and require background checks for all sales.
The entire rule is clearly a ploy to implement universal background checks, which would only be enforceable with a federal registry of firearms owners—which is illegal.
The State of Texas filed a lawsuit against the ATF in an attempt to halt the rule from going into effect.
A court in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Northern District of Texas granted an injunction for Texas and the residents of other party states and organizations back in June.  
Those states and organizations are Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah, Gun Owners of America (GOA), the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), the Tennessee Firearms Association (TFA) and the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL).
There are still a few lawsuits ongoing regarding these rules and others, but court rulings have not been favorable for the ATF recently.
One of the most encouraging things I’ve ever seen in the legal battle for gun rights was when a Kansas judge ruled a couple of weeks ago that laws banning the possession of fully automatic machine guns are not constitutional.
We’ve still got a long way to go to take back our rights from tyrannical government overreach, but I think we’re winning.
As a member of Gun Owners of America myself, I would encourage anyone who values their freedom and rights to join.
GOA is willing to actually get out there and do what the NRA (Negotiating Rights Away—I mean, National Rifle Association) should have been doing this whole time.
This November, we need to be sure to get out and vote. As much as I talk about the second amendment, it exists to defend our right to vote and all our other rights.  
In America, voting allows us to peacefully remove politicians from office if we don’t like what they’re doing or we feel like they’re not representing us properly.
We can also speak out against them while they’re in office if we don’t like what they’re doing. We have rights to believe differently than they do, and the right to not be forced into or out of a belief by them.
When you go back and read through the Bill of Rights, you can start to see how amazing our Constitution really is. It doesn’t grant us those rights, but it tells the government that it can’t infringe on those rights, whether it be speech, religion, voting, etc.
We can use those rights to keep the government in check. But when the government begins targeting those rights, that’s where the second amendment comes into play.
This November, let’s all get out and vote to make sure things don’t escalate to that point.
But it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for that possibility.