FPC Files Brief With Supreme Court In VanDerStok Case

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear the ATF’s “Frame or Receiver” Final Rule case on Oct. 8, gun-rights organizations are busy filing court briefs.

In the case Garland v. VanDerStok, the Firearms Policy Coalition (FOC) filed a merits-stage Response brief with the Supreme Court on Aug. 13 explaining why the government’s rule cannot survive scrutiny and must be vacated.

“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris used the ATF as a legislative body and weapon to achieve policy objections through unlawful rule-making that they could not achieve through constitutional means,” said Brandon Combs, FPC president. “Every step of the way, courts in our case have held the ATF’s ‘Frame or Receiver’ Rule exceeded the limits of the agency’s authority and definitions found in the statutes enacted by Congress. And rightly so. Americans have Americans have long enjoyed a constitutionally protected right to craft their own firearm for lawful purposes and we look forward to further securing that right in this case.

Cody J. Wisniewski, president of the FPC Action Fund and general counsel for the FPC plaintiffs. said the rule was nothing more than an executive branch power grab by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to impose their anti-Second Amendment agenda on peaceable Americans.

“We look forward to putting ATF in its place and an end to this unlawful regulation,” Wisniewski said.

In the brief, FPC stated: “Americans have always had the constitutional right to make personal firearms without presidential permission. The Second Amendment both stems from and protects this right, which has utmost support in the nation’s history and tradition. There is no historical tradition of regulating, let alone criminalizing, the self-manufacture of firearms.”

FPC also urged the court to make a speedy decision because of the damage that is being done to lawful Americans by ATF’s Final Rule.

“Because ATF is being allowed to enforce the Rule’s new ‘firearm’ definition while this action is pending, Respondents and the rest of the nation are suffering immense irreparable harms,” the brief stated. “Soon the Rule will succeed in destroying an entire field of traditionally lawful Second Amendment business activity that ATF has no right to regulate—not to mention the constitutional rights of the law-abiding individuals these businesses serve. For everyone being wrongly governed by this Rule’s severe criminal consequences, time is of the essence.”

In November 2023, a three-judge panel of the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously struck down the “Frame and Receiver” Rule because ATF was making laws instead of doing its real job—enforcing the laws passed by Congress.

“The agency [ATF] rule at issue here flouts clear statutory text and exceeds the legislatively-imposed limits on agency authority in the name of public policy,” the ruling stated. “Because Congress has neither authorized the expansion of firearm regulation nor permitted the criminalization of previously lawful conduct, the proposed rule constitutes unlawful agency action, in direct contravention of the legislature’s will.”