HOUSTON – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed another lawsuit against the Biden Administration, however, this one includes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) over private gun sales.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration issued a rule that firearm dealers across the United States will have to run background checks on buyers at gun shows or other places outside brick-and-mortar stores.
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The rule, which is expected to soon go into effect, looks to stop a loophole allowing gun sales by unlicensed dealers who do not perform background checks. Thereby prohibiting a potential buyer, who is not legally allowed to own/carry a firearm, from getting one.
The Biden administration and the ATF first proposed the rule in August, as a bipartisan compromise in response to the massacre of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
“This is going to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and felons,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “And my administration is going to continue to do everything we possibly can to save lives. Congress needs to finish the job and pass universal background checks legislation now.”
In a press release issued Wednesday, Paxton called the move “a flagrant violation of the Second Amendment,” adding how private sales were purposefully recognized to prevent the ATF from “unlawfully suppressing the private transfer of firearms.” The new move by the Biden Administration and the ATF would suggest that ALL private gun sales are criminal.
“Yet again, Joe Biden is weaponizing the federal bureaucracy to rip up the Constitution and destroy our citizens’ Second Amendment rights,” Paxton said in a press statement. “This is a dramatic escalation of his tyrannical abuse of authority. With today’s lawsuit, it is my great honor to defend our Constitutionally-protected freedoms from the out-of-control federal government.”
Texas is not the only one involved in this lawsuit against the ATF and the Biden Administration. Several other states have joined in the legal battle including Louisiana, Missouri, and Utah.
“Criminalizing untold numbers of Americans for simply selling a firearm in a private party transaction is wrong, unconstitutional, and must be halted by the courts,” Gun Owners of America Vice President, Erich Pratt said in the AG’s press release. “Anything less would further encourage this tyrannical administration to continue weaponizing vague statutes into policies that are meant to further harass and intimidate gun owners and dealers at every turn.”
“Nearly 40 years ago, Congress condemned ATF for targeting innocent gun owners instead of focusing on felons, calling ATF’s actions ‘reprehensible.’ Congress even changed the law to limit ATF’s authority,” Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes added. “But ATF is at it again, this time trying to require a citizen selling even a single firearm to obtain a license. Utah is proud to join the 26 states—in three separate lawsuits—protecting their citizens from this bureaucratic overreach.”
“By seeking to treat every legal gunowner as a commercial gun dealer and every gun sale or trade into a commercial transaction, this rule unmasks the Biden Administration’s anti-gun agenda in ways many of its other actions have not,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch also said. “The Second Amendment could never have contemplated this kind of regulation, and it will not withstand scrutiny in the courts. On behalf of Mississippi gunowners, we are proud to stand with the citizens who have come forward in this lawsuit.”
KPRC 2 digital producer Ahmed Humble reached out to the ATF for a response on the recent lawsuit, but a spokesperson said they were not commenting.