Judge orders ATF to return last ‘legal’ bump stock

The last “legal” bump stock is set to be given back to the owner this month after the Biden administration lost on its latest gun control effort.

A federal district court judge, reacting to a Supreme Court decision knocking down a ban on the device from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, ordered it returned to Clark Aposhian, the Utah resident who took on the agency and won.

Sheng Li, the litigation counsel for New Civil Liberties Alliance, which brought the case for Aposhian, said their client voluntarily gave his bump stock up to ATF with the stipulation that he would get it back if he won the case to overturn the ban.

That technically means it is the last “legal” device in America since ATF had required others to be destroyed or surrendered.

He plans to go to ATF’s office in Salt Lake City and retrieve it this month.

“This is kind of symbolic,” Li said.

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They won their case when the Supreme Court agreed that federal agencies can’t make up laws and rules that Congress should write. The case has implications for other gun control actions by President Joe Biden’s ATF, such as the ban on “pistol braces” on AR-style rifles.

“If self-government means anything, it must mean that only our elected officials can write criminal laws. Mr. Aposhian’s original appeal to the 10th Circuit, and his subsequent trip to the Supreme Court, illustrated the multiple problems with Chevron deference, and his case likely helped convince the justices that doctrine needed to die, even though they denied certiorari. But the main takeaway from Mr. Aposhian’s willingness to take a stand for his civil liberties is that bureaucrats at the ATF and other federal agencies are not empowered to write or reinterpret rules that take away more freedom. That’s why this is a glorious victory for all liberty-loving people,” said Mark Chenoweth, president of NCLA.