At Bearing Arms today, Cam Edwards has the good news that ATF Rules in Trouble After SCOTUS Strikes Down Chevron Doctrine. The Chevron Doctrine was the court invented notion that the three letter agencies should be given deference in their interpretation of the law when challenged by citizens and corporations. There is no Constitution basis, of course, for either the three letter agencies or for giving them any special deference, or indeed for the whole administrative state.
The Supreme Court may not have delivered the opinion that gun owners were hoping for in the Rahimi case, but on Friday the justices gave Second Amendment advocates new ammunition to use in their fights against the ATF's rulemaking abuses by overturning the Chevron Doctrine.
In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, et al, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority that the doctrine, which requires courts to defer to federal agencies so long as they offered “a permissible construction" of a challenged statute even if it was not “the reading the court would have reached if the question initially had arisen in a judicial proceeding,” is no longer operative.
Instead, the majority held that "The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous."
I will leave it to the lawyers among us to determine the intricacies of the ruling. Perhaps David Hardy of the blog Of Arms and the Law will have more on this ruling after he has a chance to chew on it.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, in its amicus brief noted:
"ATF often expects Chevron deference in litigation,which is extraordinary given that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental constitutional right. Such enumerated rights are “[p]remised on mistrust of governmental power.” Given that Second Amendment rights can be exercised only if individuals can lawfully obtain a firearm, it is astounding that the government would request or receive deference on laws regulating the exercise of such rights. But that is precisely what happens frequently with Chevron regarding federal firearms laws, often at the request of ATF."
"... Chevron’s outsized influence is witnessed when ATF interprets other federal gun-control provisions. Even when adjudicating immigration cases, some courts afford deference to ATF’s interpretation of who qualifies as an illegal alien under 18 U.S.C.§ 922(g)(5)(A), even though ATF has no expertise in immigration matters. On occasion, other federal agencies will receive the same deference under Chevron that ATF typically enjoys, such as the Board of Immigration Appeals regarding whether an alien here on a student visa falsified information when filling out a Form 4473to purchase a firearm."
We can hope that this ruling will tamp down, at least, the constant threat of the Biden administration to ban this or that formerly legal gun or weapon devise. I have seen threats to ban so-called "assault weapons," magazines with various cartridge capacities, even all semiautomatic guns of whatever variety. One of the latest is a ban on Glock firearms because someone has devised the "Glock switch" that makes them fully automatic, but, of course, also makes them less accurate.
If we had a Constitutionally based government, the sort of regulation the government would be doing would be specifying how many 5.56 NATO rounds each citizen militiaman should have on hand for his M4 or M16 rifle and how many 9mm he would keep for his Baretta 92 FS pistol. Not trying to ban such things. Furthermore, banning guns for the purpose of reducing crimes is like banning forks to reduce obesity. If a man is willing to prey on his fellow citizens, he will find a way, as he always has since man first walked the earth. No, the reason they are so desparate to ban guns is so they can ram down our throats the Marxist government they desire. We can not let them.
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