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Update to Mock v Garland at district court level - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...ace-rule-lawsuits.920838/page-5#post-12816618
Great news!
FPC WIN: BIDEN/ATF “PISTOL BRACE” BAN VACATED - https://www.firearmspolicy.org/biden-atf-pistol-brace-ban-vacated
From the ruling - https://assets.nationbuilder.com/fi...8287457/2024.06.13_110_OPINION.pdf?1718287457
Great news!
FPC WIN: BIDEN/ATF “PISTOL BRACE” BAN VACATED - https://www.firearmspolicy.org/biden-atf-pistol-brace-ban-vacated
FORT WORTH, TX (June 13, 2024) – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition announced a major legal victory in its Mock v. Garland lawsuit challenging the Biden Administration’s “pistol brace” ban rule issued by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). In the decision, United States District Court Judge Reed O’Connor granted summary judgment in favor of FPC and its co-plaintiffs and issued a final judgment and order vacating the ATF’s rule. The case and opinion can be found at FPCLegal.org.
“The Biden Administration’s ATF hates us so much that it lawlessly acted to turn millions of gun owners into felons, but FPC and our members ran towards the fire and defeated this evil,” said FPC President Brandon Combs. “Today’s order shows that our community can take on an immoral government and win. FPC members should be proud of what was accomplished today. We look forward to defending this victory on appeal and up to the Supreme Court, just as we have in other cases.”
Today’s victory is one in a line of FPC community successes against the Biden Administration. Indeed, the United States Supreme Court recently agreed to hear one of FPC’s cases in which it prevailed in the courts below.
The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Cody Wisniewski of FPC Action Foundation, Bradley Benbrook and Stephen Duvernay of the Benbrook Law Group, and R. Brent Cooper and Benjamin Passey of Cooper & Scully. Plaintiffs in this case are two individual FPC members, Maxim Defense, and FPC. FPC Action Foundation represented the Plaintiffs, alongside Benbrook Law. FPC expects the Mock decision and remedy to be appealed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
From the ruling - https://assets.nationbuilder.com/fi...8287457/2024.06.13_110_OPINION.pdf?1718287457
... the Court finds that the Final Rule violated the APA’s procedural requirements because it was not a logical outgrowth of the Proposed Rule. Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED ... (Page 6)
Plaintiffs contend that the adoption of the Final Rule was arbitrary and capricious ... For close to a decade, the ATF concluded that “attaching the brace to a firearm does not alter the classification of the firearm or subject the firearm to NFA control.” The ATF changed course on this position for the first time in 2023, when it issued the Final Rule reversing the agency’s otherwise long-standing policy. “When an agency changes course, as [the ATF] did here, it must ‘be cognizant that longstanding policies may have engendered serious reliance interests that must be taken into account.’” “It would be arbitrary and capricious to ignore such matters” But this is exactly what Defendants did when they inexplicably and fundamentally switched their position on stabilizing braces without providing sufficient explanations and notice.
Under the Final Rule, the ATF estimated about 99% of pistols with stabilizing braces would be reclassified as NFA rifles. The ATF contemporaneously issued approximately sixty adjudications pursuant to the Final Rule that reclassified different configurations of firearms with stabilizing braces as NFA rifles. The ATF provided no explanations for how the agency came to these classifications and there is no “meaningful clarity about what constitutes an impermissible stabilizing brace.” In fact, the Fifth Circuit “[could not] find a single given example of a pistol with a stabilizing brace that would constitute an NFA exempt braced pistol.” Such “‘unexplained’ and ‘inconsistent’ positions” are arbitrary and capricious ... (Page 8)
Final Rule at 6480, would hold citizens criminally liable for the actions of others, who are likely unknown, unaffiliated, and uncontrollable by the person being regulated. None of those factors was included in the Proposed Rule.” ... This “monumental error” did not provide each Plaintiff with proper notice “that his [or her] firearm is subject to criminal penalties” or an opportunity to comment on the Final Rule. The Defendants’ decision to skirt notice-and-comment provisions is arbitrary and capricious ... the Supreme Court made clear in Perez, the public is not without recourse even if an agency attempts to ‘skirt’ the strictures of notice and comment with an interpretive rule.” (Page 9)
Moreover, the Court finds that the standards set forth in the Final Rule are impermissibly vague. While the Worksheet in the Proposed Rule would allow “an individual to analyze his own weapon and gave each individual an objective basis to disagree with the ATF’s determinations, the Final Rule vests the ATF with complete discretion to use a subjective balancing test to weigh six opaque factors on an invisible scale.” ... Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED (Pages 9-10)
Furthermore, the Supreme Court has encouraged lower courts to avoid expending “scarce judicial resources to resolve difficult and novel questions of statutory interpretation that will have no effect on the outcome of the case.” Because, as discussed above, the Court finds that Defendants’ adoption of the Final Rule violated the APA’s procedural requirements, and that those claims are dispositive, the Court declines to address the constitutional questions presented, as well as the question of whether Defendants exceeded their statutory authority in interpretating “rifle” under the NFA and GCA. (Page 10)
CONCLUSION ... For the reasons set out above, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment on the grounds that the Final Rule violated the APA’s procedural requirements because it was arbitrary and capricious and was not a logical outgrowth of the Proposed Rule; DENIES Defendants’ Cross Motion for Summary Judgment; DENIES Plaintiffs’ request for a permanent injunction; and VACATES the Final Rule.
SO ORDERED
ETA: Explanation of the ruling by ex FPC attorney on post #132 - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...ace-rule-lawsuits.920838/page-6#post-12920563
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to read your compilations etc.
and gun owners feel our 2A rights have been violated way too long over several decades 
