Is ATF’s New Counsel Butting Heads With DOJ?

That’s the allegation from the Washington Post, which used anonymous sources on Thursday to allege that the DOJ’s recent settlement on forced reset triggers was done over the objections of the ATF’s new counsel; a law professor who’s widely seen as a pro-Second Amendment legal scholar. 

According to the Post, Robert Leider was inclined to defend the ATF rule treating FRTs as machine guns after a group of ATF employees took him to a gun range for a demonstration. 

In a bid to explain the classification, ATF workers took Leider to a shooting range to see how the triggers operate, according to people familiar with the outing, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution. At the end of the process, Leider, an Antonin Scalia Law School professor and gun rights attorney, agreed: The devices were dangerous, and the classification as machine guns should stand, the people said. 

But Leider’s opinion did not prevail. After tense conversations between Leider and powerful Justice Department officials, including Emil Bove, principal associate deputy attorney general, the department announced late Friday that it was settling the litigation, clearing the way for the items to be sold and used.

Under the terms of the settlement, “forced reset triggers” will remain legal so long as their manufacturer refrains from developing similar devices for pistols and enforces its patents to stop copycats, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

“This Department of Justice believes that the 2nd Amendment is not a second-class right,” Bondi said. “And we are glad to end a needless cycle of litigation with a settlement that will enhance public safety.”

Reporter Perry Stein claims that the settlement “shows how far the administration is willing to go in undoing gun restrictions, even those supported by a devout proponent of the Second Amendment tapped by Trump’s advisers to help lead the gun regulation agency.” But as Stein herself acknowledges, a federal judge in Texas had already ruled that the ban on FRTs was illegal. Another federal judge in New York had opined that the ATF rule was kosher, and the Supreme Court could have weighed in at some point after the various appeals in the cases were exhausted. 

But with the Supreme Court already ruling that the ATF’s administrative ban on bump stocks was unfounded because those items do not meet the federal definition of “machine guns”, it makes sense that the DOJ would want to avoid a costly and unnecessary legal battle over another item that can increase a gun’s rate of fire without turning it into a full-auto. 

While Leider didn’t comment about the alleged dispute to the paper, a DOJ spokesman told Stein, “[t]he Justice Department has hundreds of excellent attorneys who often engage in discussions and the best legal path forward,” and that “exchange of ideas is an asset to the DOJ and not a weakness.” 

According to the Post, Leider’s still on the job, so if he disputed the DOJ’s decision to settle the lawsuits over forced reset triggers it must be a disagreement he can live with.  

The bigger issue appears to be those unnamed ATF employees who don’t seem to be on board with the efforts to reform the agency and curb its attacks on gun owners and the firearms industry. Maybe it’s time for Acting Director Dan Driscoll and Assistant Director Robert Cekada to remind agents that can always take the Trump administration’s offer for early retirement (or risk being fired) if they’re not happy with the agency’s new direction. 

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