JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – In his ongoing fight to defend the Constitution, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced today that he joined a coalition of twenty other states in filing suit against the Biden Administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) over its new rule attacking the ability of gun owners to privately buy and sell firearms.
“When out-of-touch D.C. elites target Missourians’ Second Amendment rights, I will always take action to protect those liberties,” said Attorney General Bailey. “The Framers enshrined the right to keep and bear arms into the Constitution with the promise that those rights shall not be infringed. As a gun owner myself, I will use every legal tool at my disposal to fight government overreach.”
Biden’s new rule requires law-abiding citizens to apply for and receive a federal firearms dealer license anytime they sell a firearm for “profit.” Under the rule, “profit” can mean anything the ATF says it means, including cash, trading for another firearm, or receiving a service. This rule may well turn fathers into felons and grandmas into gun runners for simply selling a gun to a family member or trading a rifle to a hunting buddy.
“Until now, [only] those who repetitively purchased and sold firearms as a regular course of business had to become a licensee… This rule would put innocent firearm sales between law-abiding friends and family members within reach of federal regulation. Such innocent sales between friends and family would constitute a felony if the seller did not in fact obtain a federal firearms license and perform a background check,” the attorneys general assert in the lawsuit.
In the suit, the attorneys general argue that the rule is unconstitutional because it violates the Second Amendment and circumvents congressional authority.
In addition to Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Montana, Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming joined in filing the lawsuit. The States are asking the Court to postpone the rule and declare that it violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit can be read here.