Fifth Circuit skeptical of ATF's forced reset trigger ban

(CN) —  A panel of Fifth Circuit judges seemed on Monday to side with gun rights groups in their lawsuit challenging the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ classification of forced reset triggers as illegal machine guns.

Forced reset triggers, or FRTs, are after-market accessories that can be added to semi-automatic weapons to allow them to fire more rapidly. They work by automatically forcing the trigger into the reset position after each shot, allowing the shooter to fire multiple rounds with a continuous trigger pull, with the trigger moving forward again after each shot. The ATF has said testing has shown forced reset triggers can fire at or above the rate of the military’s M-16 machine gun, which can fire 700 to 970 rounds a minute.

In 2023, the National Association for Gun Rights and Texas Gun Rights, joined by several individuals, filed a lawsuit challenging the ATF’s broadened definition of a machine gun, a decision that classified forced reset triggers as machine guns in 2021.

Justice Department attorney Brad Hinshelwood argued before a three-judge panel Monday a Texas federal court incorrectly ruled in July that the ATF exceeded its authority and misapplied the U.S. Supreme Court’s Garland v. Cargill ruling in this case.

The Supreme Court ruled in Cargill that bump stocks — which use the firearm’s recoil to slide the weapon back and forth within the stock, causing the trigger to “bump” against the shooter’s stationary finger and thereby allowing for a rapid rate of fire without the shooter having to move their finger for each shot — do not meet the statutory definition of machine guns.

Hinshelwood argued that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Cargill was specific to bump stocks, while forced reset triggers operate in a different manner that makes them legally machine guns.

The National Firearms Act defines machine guns as as firearms that fire “automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger,” as well as parts designed to convert a weapon into a machine gun.

“The crucial distinction for these purposes between a non-mechanical bump stock, the devices the court actually opined on, and the specific devices at issue here … is that these devices don’t have a disconnector, they don’t have that component that forces, physically, a need to release and then re-engage the trigger for every shot,” Hinshelwood said.

However, U.S. Circuit Judge Leslie Southwick seemed skeptical of this argument.

“It seems to me … you’re trying to get us not to focus on the trigger,” Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, said. “Obviously, that’s part of the statute, ‘single function of the trigger.’”

In the district court’s ruling from July, the government had argued that the phrase “function of the trigger” should be understood as a single trigger pull by the shooter’s finger. However, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor — applying the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cargill that bump stocks are not machine guns — found that because the trigger returns to the reset position after each shot, guns equipped with FRTs don’t fire more than one shot per trigger function and therefore are not machine guns.

Gary Lawkowski, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the government is trying to “stretch the definition of machine gun beyond what the statute text will bear, and beyond what the statutory interpretation of Cargill will bear.”

“We understand there are lots of policy reasons why the government … may want to ban FRTs,” Lawkowski said. “However, that doesn’t change the statute. Those are great arguments that they are welcome to present to Congress and ask to change the law. However, as the law is written right now … FRTs do not function automatically by a single function of the trigger.”

Senior U.S. Circuit Judge James Dennis, a Bill Clinton appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Kurt Engelhardt, a Donald Trump appointee, joined Southwick on the panel.