Attorney General Merick Garland is proposing new ATF regulations that would expand definitions in the Gun Control Act to require ever-more gun owners to obtain federal dealer licenses. This follows a new regulation redefining "frame or receiver" and another one reclassifying pistols with braces as "short-barreled rifles." As I've posted previously,
those regulations have run smack into the Fifth Circuit's brick wall, The Fifth Circuit preliminarily enjoined enforcement of the pistol brace rule. It allowed a vacatur of the frame or receiver rule to remain in place, although the Supreme Court stayed the vacatur of that rule pending disposition of the case in that Court.
These three new, expansive regulatory schemes are unprecedented since passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA). This third proposed rule reminds one of dinosaur Rex's scream in Toy Story: "He's at it again!"
