Attorney General Phil Weiser sues ATF to stop return of seized machine gun devices

On June 9, Attorney General Phil Weiser joined a coalition of 16 attorneys general in suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives over Trump administration plans to redistribute thousands of devices that allow a semiautomatic weapon to function like a machine gun. ATF’s action involves forced reset triggers, or FRTs, which dramatically increase the firing rate of semiautomatic weapons. Although ATF previously classified FRTs as machineguns, on May 16 the bureau—under a directive from Trump administration leadership—signed a settlement agreement that promises to stop enforcing federal law against FRTs and to redistribute thousands of these devices that ATF had previously seized. The multistate litigation seeks to prevent that imminent redistribution, because FRTs are illegal to possess under federal law. “It’s hard enough for our local law enforcement officials to protect Colorado communities from gun violence without the federal government willfully ignoring the law,” said Attorney General Weiser. “The law is clear: machine guns, and devices that turn a semiautomatic weapon into a machine gun, are illegal. We’re suing to stop the ATF and the administration from making our communities more dangerous by distributing thousands of devices that turn firearms into weapons of war. These weapons have no place in our communities, and I will continue to fight to keep Coloradans safe from gun violence.” In recent years, machine gun conversion devices like FRTs, have been frequently used in violent crimes and mass shootings. Firearms equipped with these types of devices can exceed the rate of fire of many military machine guns, firing up to 20 bullets in one second. ATF has noted a significant rise in the use of these types of devices, leading to incidents of machine-gun fire increasing by 1,400% from 2019 through 2021. Despite the federal prohibition, ATF estimates that at least 100,000 FRTs have been distributed across the country in recent years. ATF’s records also establish that machine gun conversion devices, including FRTs, are showing up more often at crime scenes. Multiple lawsuits seeking either to enforce or challenge the prohibition on FRTs were filed during the Biden administration. A federal judge in New York agreed that FRTs are banned under federal law. A federal judge in Texas disagreed and held that FRTs do not qualify as machine guns under federal law, but that ruling was on appeal. In January, Attorney General Weiser announced that he was joining more than a dozen other states in intervening to defend the Biden-era regulations in court. Today’s lawsuit explains that the federal government cannot violate U.S. law, even when it tries to bury those violations in a settlement agreement. The lawsuit asks the court to stop ATF from distributing FRT devices in ways that directly harm the states suing in contravention of federal law, including, as ATF admits, that returning FRTs in states that prohibit them would “aid and abet” violations of state laws. Read the complaint filed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland (PDF). Attorney General Weiser is joining Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington on the lawsuit. For more on Attorney General Weiser’s efforts to defend Colorado from illegal federal actions, visit coag.gov/defending-colorado.