The National Shooting Sports Foundation has filed a motion this week seeking to block new gun reporting rules from continuing to affect the four states bordering Mexico.
The NSSF’s motion asks District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer to issue a preliminary injunction preventing the new measures from operating during the group’s suit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The gun organization sued the ATF earlier this month on behalf of two Arizona firearms dealers, J&G Sales LTD of Prescott and Foothills Firearms of Yuma.
The reporting requirements were announced by the Justice Department in July and took effect Aug. 14. They require an estimated 8,000 gun dealers to report multiple sales of high-caliber, semi-automatic firearms with detachable magazines in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole has said that the new rules are intended to combat gun trafficking to Mexico. But in its complaint, the NSSF alleges that the ATF exceeded its legal authority to regulate gun sales under the Gun Control Act.
“This is the proverbial ’slippery slope.’” Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF’s senior vice president and general counsel, said in a statement. “Our industry abhors the criminal misuse of firearms, whether on the streets of El Paso or in Juarez, Mexico. Though we can understand ATF’s motive is to try to curtail violence in Mexico, Congress simply has not granted ATF regulatory carte blanche.”
The motion also includes a footnote saying the new gun regulations affect “many of the most commonly used firearms for sporting purposes, including target shooting and hunting.”
The ATF’s adoption of the rules prompted near immediate criticism from firearms groups and several Republican congressmen, some of whom succeeded in attaching an amendment to a House appropriations bill that would block the new rules last month.
