Brady Campaign Sues ATF for Doing Its Job
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
The anti-gunners formerly known as Handgun Control Inc. are so adept at changing their name that a new moniker is suggested by their continuing focus on litigation: “Lawsuits ’R’ Us.”
Two weeks after the Senate debated and rejected amendment-poisoned legislation to prevent frivolous lawsuits against the firearms industry, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and its “Million” Mom March subsidiary has launched another such federal lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and Edgar Domenech, acting director of ATF.
Neither the Justice Department nor ATF would comment on the litigation immediately after the suit was filed Mar. 18 in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
This latest anti-gun sortie in the courts alleges that the named officials, the Justice Department and ATF violated federal law by allowing gun manufacturers to make thousands of new “illegal assault weapons.”
The Brady Campaign claims its suit is based in part on documents obtained from ATF through the Freedom of Information Act—before Congress moved authorized the agency to disallow FOIA requests. The suit charges Ashcroft and ATF with allowing gunmakers to violate the 1994 Clinton Administration ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of certain specific semi-automatic firearms and others defined by a set of cosmetic features as “assault weapons.”
When the law was passed, Congress included a 10-year sunset provision, which means the “Assault Weapons Act” will expire this coming Sept. 13. One of the anti-gun amendments narrowly approved in the Senate which helped bring down the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act at the beginning of March would have made the ban permanent.
The Brady Campaign and its allies have been lobbying for an extension and expansion of the ban using a variety of public relations techniques of which the new lawsuit against ATF appears to be the latest. The Brady Campaign was aiding and abetting all of the novel municipal lawsuits designed to drive the gunmakers out of business.
The newest Brady lawsuit claims that documents obtained through FOIA included private correspondence between ATF and Bushmaster Firearms of Windham, ME, in which ATF repeatedly gave Bushmaster permission to manufacture new “receivers” to replace damaged or defective receivers for semi-automatic rifles of the AR-15 variety that were possessed before the ban went into effect in September1994 and thus were protected under the Act’s “grandfather” clause.
The “receiver” of a gun is the housing for the firing mechanism of the gun and has a special legal status. Under the Act, the “receiver” is legally considered the firearm. Therefore, argues the Brady Campaign, by allowing gunmakers to manufacture new receivers, ATF has been allowing the manufacture of new assault weapons in contravention of the statute.
The Brady Campaign claims that documents obtained through FOIA show that ATF has authorized Bushmaster to manufacture at least 96 new “assault weapons” since 1997—but Bushmaster is only one of many gun manufacturers who made such guns before the Act was passed, and who continued to manufacture non-assault-weapon versions of the guns after the ban. The Brady Campaign alleges that it is likely that ATF has allowed thousands of what it terms “illegal assault weapons” to be manufactured.
The Brady Campaign claims that when Congress “grandfathered” “assault weapons” legally possessed when the ban was passed, it expected that over time the number of grandfathered “assault weapons” in circulation would gradually decline, as the guns became nonfunctional due to wear and tear. According to the lawsuit, the Justice Department’s enforcement policy ensures, instead, that thousands of grandfathered “assault weapons” will remain functional into the foreseeable future. At the time the statute was enacted in 1994, ATF estimated there were approximately two million “assault weapons” in circulation.
In its suit, the Brady Campaign seeks a court order prohibiting the government from continuing to allow the manufacture of new receivers for semi-automatic “assault weapons.”
The Brady Campaign claims the Clinton gun ban is being violated because manufacturers are being allowed by the government (under terms established during the Clinton Administration) to replace defective receivers on pre-ban produced “grandfathered” guns, according to the National Rifle Association (NRA).
The law does not prohibit the manufacturing of receivers or replacement receivers for grandfathered guns, said NRA, and it authorizes ATF to regulate the industry as well as enforce the law.
What is involved is a commingling of technically legal terms. In normal circumstances, ATF considers a receiver, which carries the serial number, as a “firearm.” However, the receiver in AR-15-type firearms does not itself incorporate any of the “forbidden” features set forth in the law that would qualify the firearm as an “assault weapon.”
The political nature of the Brady lawsuit seems quite apparent. As the National Shooting Sports Foundation noted, “Oddly, Attorney General John Ashcroft is now being sued for the receiver replacement recommendations ATF advises, which were communicated in January 1997, when then-President Bill Clinton’s attorney general was Janet Reno.”
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