SAF FILES MOTION TO INTERVENE IN CHALLENGE OF NEW GOV’T. ‘FIREARM’ DEFINITION

For Immediate Release, Nov. 4, 2022: Contact: Alan Gottlieb (425) 454-7012

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed a motion to intervene in a federal lawsuit challenging the federal government’s new regulatory definition of a firearm, including the frame or receiver.

The case is known as VanDerStok, et.al. v. Garland, et.al. and was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division. A company known as Blackhawk Manufacturing Group, Inc., d/b/a/ 80 Percent Arms, has already been allowed to intervene as a plaintiff.

Joining SAF is Defense Distributed, a Texas-based company.

“We are intervening because our members have already suffered massive irreparable harms from this new regulatory move,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “because it contradicts the statute it is supposed to be administering. When Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, it defined a firearm to include the finished frame or receiver. But the new rule expands that definition and criminalizes unfinished frames and receivers, and ‘parts kits’ that include those components.

“Furthermore,” he added, “the new rule violates the Administrative Procedures Act by failing to comply with mandates in the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling in June, and because it is essentially an exercise of legislative power it doesn’t have, because Congress could not constitutionally grant such authority to a federal agency.”

Gottlieb said the new regulatory definition of a firearm is unprecedented. It is a glaring example of agency overreach under the Biden administration, which has been pursuing an anti-gun agenda since Joe Biden was sworn into office in January 2021.

“President Biden and his administration are supposed to protect and defend the Constitution, including the Second Amendment,” Gottlieb observed,” but since taking office, he’s been overseeing efforts to gut the right to keep and bear arms, and discourage citizens from exercising that right.”

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 720,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.