Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A federal appeals court in North Dakota has found that a rule issued by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that restricts ownership of pistol attachments known as stabilizing braces is “arbitrary and capricious,” ordering a lower court to re-consider a motion that would block enforcement of the brace ban.

In a 2–1 decision issued on Aug. 9 by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, the majority found that a coalition of 25 Republican attorneys are likely to succeed in their legal challenge against the ATF rule that treats pistols fitted with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles and subjects them to various restrictions.

“The Final Rule, as a whole, is arbitrary and capricious because it allows the ATF to arrive at whatever conclusion it wishes without ‘adequately explain[ing] the standard on which its decision is based,’” the majority opinion states. “Thus, we conclude the Coalition is likely to succeed on the merits of its challenge.”

The states and other plaintiffs sued the ATF in February 2023, with U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland in North Dakota declining to grant their motion for a preliminary injunction and block the rule. Arguing that they were unlikely to succeed on the merits, Hovland found that ATF had adequately explained its rulemaking process.

The majority on the 8th Circuit disagreed, and in their Aug. 9 decision ordered Hovland to reconsider the plaintiffs’ motion for a injunction that would block the ATF rule’s enforcement.

“We reverse the order denying a preliminary injunction and remand with instructions to reconsider the motion consistent with this opinion,” the judges wrote in the majority opinion.

Circuit Judge Bobby Shepherd dissented, saying that the panel should have affirmed Hovland’s order because there was no need for a preliminary injunction after the rule was vacated in June by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas.

O’Connor argued in his 12-page decision that the ATF’s rule that treated roughly 99 percent of pistols fitted with the braces as short-barreled rifles violated the Administrative Procedures Act’s procedural requirements because it was not a “logical outgrowth” of the proposed version of the rule.

“The Court finds that the adaptation of the Final Rule was arbitrary and capricious for two reasons,” O’Connor wrote. “First, the Defendants did not provide a detailed justification for their reversal of the agency’s longstanding position. And second, the Final Rule’s standards are impermissibly vague.”

The judge granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and ordered the rule vacated.

The ATF told The Epoch Times that it had no comment on the 8th Circuit ruling.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who were among the 25 attorneys general who challenged the ATF rule, praised the 8th Circuit ruling.

“This victory upholds Americans’ constitutional rights and stops the Biden-Harris ATF’s illegal attempt to make millions of law-abiding citizens felons overnight,” Bird said in a statement.

Bailey issued a statement saying: “The Constitution was meant to be a floor, not a ceiling, for our God-given rights. We will continue to do everything in our power to safeguard Missourians’ right to keep and bear arms against encroachment by unelected federal bureaucrats.”

Stabilizing Braces

The pistol stabilizing brace, introduced over a decade ago, was designed to aid disabled individuals and others who require assistance when shooting large-format pistols, such as those built on AR-15 platforms. This accessory attaches to the rear of the pistol and the shooter’s forearm, providing a steadier aim for one-handed shooting.

Restrictions on stabilizing braces have been the subject of intense debate after the ATF proposed them in 2020. Initially, the ATF said in open letters that it did not consider the braces as converting pistols into short-barreled rifles but in the final rule, the agency cited changes in the braces’ design in saying they convert pistols into restricted short-barreled rifles.

In January 2023, the DOJ announced that it had submitted the final rule to the Federal Register, formalizing the regulation that President Joe Biden advocated for in April 2020 after it was found that a man killed 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, using a gun with a stabilizing brace.

The rule went into effect immediately upon publication. Any firearms with stabilizing braces or similar attachments that qualified them under the new rule as short-barreled rifles had to be registered no later than within 120 days, or modified by removing the brace and restored into a regular pistol, or turned into a local ATF office, or destroyed.

Short-barreled rifles are subject to more strict regulations under the National Firearms Act (NFA), with those found in possession of unregistered NFA firearms can face fines of up to $10,000, 10 years in prison, and a felony conviction that disqualifies them from future firearm ownership.

The rule faced pushback from Republicans and gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association, which pointed out they were originally designed for disabled veterans.

The rule faced several legal challenges. In one of the lawsuits, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals determined in August 2023 that the rule was finalized without giving the public a meaningful chance to comment on it, in violation of the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which sent the case to O’Connor in Texas, who in June this year vacated the rule, setting up a possible U.S. Supreme Court appeal.

The number of Americans impacted by the ATF’s brace rule is difficult to determine. The ATF estimates that 3 million pistol braces have been sold. Second Amendment advocates say the number is closer to 40 million.

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

France, 1788.    Russia, 1916.    Germany, 1937.

These dates have something in common.

In France in 1788, political conditions had been getting questionable, but there was no apparent need to panic. That came the following year, with the sudden outbreak of the French Revolution. From that point on, it was dangerous even to go out in the streets of Paris. So many people had become enraged, that even if you were not a member of the aristocracy, you could easily become collateral damage.

And so, it would have been wise if, in 1788, you had decided to pack your bags and remove yourself from the epicentre of what was developing.

Similarly, in 1916, Russia was at war with the Germans, and the populace was becoming increasingly vocal about the state of the economy. Yet, even the czar believed that the people simply had to accept the situation and muddle through.

A year later, soldiers were deserting, a host of political wannabes were vying for power and anyone who simply wanted to be left alone to run his own life was now afraid to go out on the streets.

And of course, in Germany, prior to Kristallnacht in November of 1938, all the warnings were there that the country was beginning to unravel, but virtually everyone assumed that, somehow, things would be all right.

A year later, Germany was at war with five nations and had invaded three others. People were being rounded up, imprisoned and/or shot. Those who sought to get out of Germany found that they were no longer allowed to do so.

And history is full of similar cases. In hindsight, the warning signs have always been there: an increasingly autocratic government, increasingly volatile and irrational political struggles, mounting debt, increased taxation, a declining economy and the removal of basic freedoms “for the greater good.”

In 1929, if you lived in the US, you might have just paid $2,735 for a new Packard Custom 8 Roadster – a means of showing off your recent gains in the stock market. A year later, you might well have offered it for sale for only $100, as, for all your previous price offers, there were no takers. And you, like they, had been wiped out in the crash, and $100 meant the difference between eating and not eating.

In 1958, you might have been enjoying a daiquiri at El Floridita in Havana and joking to friends about ‘las barbudas’ – the tiny rebel force hiding in the Sierra Madre. A year later, the joking had ended and private businesses like El Floridita had been nationalized by the new government.

For millennia, the playbook has been the same. Countries that had been wonderful to live in, began to deteriorate from within, and the great majority of residents had failed to read the tea leaves – the warning signs that, in the future, conditions were not going to get better; they were going to get worse.

But why should this be so?

Well, in 1787, in the midst of the Scottish Enlightenment that gave rise to Adam Smith, economist and historian Alexander Tytler is credited as having said:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

He further noted that the latter stages of any such decline are marked, first, by complacency, then by apathy. The final stage is invariably one of bondage.

In some cases of collapse, the country is taken over by an outside force, but invariably, as stated above, the rot always starts from within. It’s simply human nature for the majority of any population, when passing through challenging times, to fall prey to promises that, somehow, a change in the form of government can and will result in the elimination of problematic conditions.

But how do those who make such claims sell their ideas? Do they suggest that everyone should work harder and practice a greater level of abnegation?

Well, no. Although such people may exist and may even become outspoken, they are, historically, never the individuals whom the majority of the population follow. Invariably, the majority (having become complacent and pathetic), choose those who promise to take from one group and share the spoils amongst those who are less productive.

As illogical as this promise is, most people, even if they doubt the reality of the claim, tend to think, “Well, it couldn’t be any worse. I might get something, so let’s give it a try.”

A very simple case in point is the Bahamas election of 1967, in which Bahamians elected their first ‘man of the people’ as their premier. Under his rhetoric of ‘Bahamas for Bahamians,’ he promised the large underclass of Bahamians that he would take the top jobs away from the British bankers and other business leaders and that the spoils would go to the average Bahamian.

Of particular interest were the luxury vehicles driven by successful businessmen. Bahamians in their thousands imagined that the senior staff in banks would be fired, that they themselves would be given the jobs… and the fancy Jaguar Saloons.

And that did happen to some extent. Those who were loyal to Prime Minister Lynden Pindling did move up to management positions overnight – positions for which they were not qualified. Not surprisingly, they were unable to learn decades of knowledge overnight. They subsequently either lost their new jobs, or the banks lost business on a massive scale.

And the Jaguars? Well, it turned out that there were thousands of Bahamians for every Jaguar that existed, and for 99.9%, there would be no previously imagined spoils.

Instead, their lives soon headed south in the coming months and years, as wealth flowed away from the Bahamas, most of it never to return.

In other countries the details have often been quite a bit more complex, but the scenario and the outcome have been the same.

Once the warning signs begin to appear, it’s important to remember that, historically, the process never reverses itself. An apathetic population is not one that will suddenly decide to roll up its sleeves and get the country, once again, on a productive footing.

Invariably, the population jumps on the toboggan of empty promises and rides it downhill until it reaches the economic bottom.

And so, circumventing such a situation becomes a question of timing. When it becomes clear that the telltale signs are reappearing once again, those who are wise will acknowledge that the sands are running out and it’s time to move on.

The signs tend to be the same in any locale, in any era. They’re quite easy to see. The difficult part is choosing to make an exit whilst it’s still easy to do so.

*  *  *

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