FPCAF WIN: DC Circuit Court Bump Stock Decision is Reversed

WASHINGTON (June 28, 2024) – Today, FPC Action Foundation (FPCAF) released the following statement following the United States Supreme Court’s decision to grant, vacate, and remand (GVR) FPCAF’s challenge to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) Final Rule banning bump-stock devices, Guedes v. ATF,. Case documents in Guedes can be viewed at BumpstockCase.com.

FPCAF filed its initial complaint on December 18, 2018. This remand back to the D.C. Circuit directs that court to follow the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Garland v. Cargill, a similar case that vacated the federal government’s unlawful administrative rule reclassifying “bump-stock” devices as machinegun conversion devices. FPCAF also filed an important brief in support of Cargill, which was directly cited by the Supreme Court in its majority opinion in that case.

“The Supreme Court has formally acknowledged what we have argued all along: ATF lied to the public about bump-stock devices and exceeded its authority in reclassifying them as machineguns,” said FPCAF President Cody J. Wisniewski. “After nearly six years of litigation, to see it struck down permanently is a huge victory.”

In a prior iteration of this case, Justice Gorsuch issued an important statement regarding the federal government’s unlawful behavior:

“The agency used to tell everyone that bump stocks don’t qualify as ‘machineguns.’ Now it says the opposite. The law hasn’t changed, only an agency’s interpretation of it. And these days it sometimes seems agencies change their statutory interpretations almost as often as elections change administrations. How, in all this, can ordinary citizens be expected to keep up—required not only to conform their conduct to the fairest reading of the law they might expect from a neutral judge, but forced to guess whether the statute will be declared ambiguous; to guess again whether the agency’s initial interpretation of the law will be declared “reasonable”; and to guess again whether a later and opposing agency interpretation will also be held “reasonable”? And why should courts, charged with the independent and neutral interpretation of the laws Congress has enacted, defer to such bureaucratic pirouetting?”

FPCAF is joined in this lawsuit by two individuals, Florida Carry, and the Madison Society Foundation. FPCAF is represented by FPCAF President Cody J. Wisniewski, and David H. Thompson and Peter A. Patterson of Cooper & Kirk PLLC.

FPC Action Foundation (FPCActionFoundation.org), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, exists to create a world of maximal human liberty through charitable legal action, public policy, education, and research programs. Individuals who want to support this and other cases can make a tax-deductible donation to the FPC Action Foundation here.