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Brooklyn judge rules that special triggers likely turn rifles into illegal machine guns
By
Samantha Max
Published Sep 6, 2023
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Courtesy, U.S. Attorney
By
Samantha Max
Published Sep 6, 2023
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A federal judge in Brooklyn has banned a firearms company from selling a special type of trigger that allows shooters to quickly fire a fusillade of bullets while a lawsuit challenging the trigger’s legality plays out in court. It’s the latest twist in a legal case that experts say could either bolster or weaken the federal government’s powers to regulate the gun industry, even if Congress does not act.
In a preliminary injunction filed on Tuesday, Judge Nina Morrison told the executives of Rare Breed Triggers they cannot sell the devices while a federal lawsuit is pending against the company, because she believes they are likely illegal and that scores of customers have already spent hundreds of dollars on a “worthless” product.
CEO Kevin Maxwell referred comments to his lawyer, who did not respond to several requests for comment.
The lawsuit came about when the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York sued Rare Breed Triggers earlier this year, arguing that the company’s FRT-15 trigger can turn a legal, semiautomatic rifle into an illegal machine gun. Federal prosecutors also accused the company of misleading its customers into believing that they were purchasing legal triggers.
In a 129-page ruling issued this week, Morrison agreed with the prosecutors’ argument.
“Defendants fraudulently induced their customers to buy a product that is illegal to possess — falsely representing that the FRT-15 was ‘absolutely’ legal, while withholding material information in their possession that revealed otherwise,” she wrote. “In the process, defendants placed tens of thousands of their customers at risk of criminal prosecution and the loss of their right to own firearms.”
According to the ruling, the company has sold about 100,000 potentially illegal triggers since December 2020, bringing in $39 million in less than two years.
Federal law prohibits most civilians in the U.S. from owning or selling a machine gun, which is defined as a weapon that can shoot more than one round of ammunition with a “single function of the trigger.”
While typical semiautomatic rifles fire just one bullet each time someone pulls the trigger, the FRT-15 can shoot multiple rounds with a single trigger pull. The technology thing that makes that possible is known as a forced reset trigger, because the inner mechanics of the device force the shooter’s finger back and forth as the gun fires a series of bullets, so they don’t have to manually pull and release the trigger for every shot. The gun will keep firing as long as the shooter continues to pull the trigger backward, unless it runs out of bullets or the trigger malfunctions.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives classified the FRT-15 as an illegal machine gun and issued a cease and desist letter to the company in 2021. But Morrison said Rare Breed Triggers continued to sell the triggers anyway while assuring customers that they were legal, and used fake company names on packages that delivered the devices.
She wrote that the company, “far from believing in good faith that the FRT-15 was legal — knowingly sold their customers a device that was very likely illegal and thereby worthless.”
Executives from Rare Breed Triggers defended their device during a two-day court hearing in August and said they had no intent to mislead their customers or market a product they believed was illegal. They also said the company sometimes used alternative names on shipping labels without the word “triggers” to thwart package thieves from stealing the $380 devices.
At the hearing, Rare Breed Triggers President Lawrence DeMonico said he stood by his decision to sell the FRT-15 and said it took courage to do something that he knew the ATF wouldn’t like.
“Did I know that it was going to be controversial? Sure,” DeMonico testified. “But did I think I was doing anything wrong? No. I still don’t believe I was doing anything wrong.”
Machine gun definition likely to go before U.S. Supreme Court
Much of Morrison’s ruling centers on a debate between prosecutors and Rare Breed Triggers about what lawmakers meant by the phrase “single function of the trigger.” In court, the two sides called current and former ATF employees who offered opposing takes.
The judge ultimately sided with prosecutors.
Morrison’s ruling is not expected to be the last say on this question.
Beyond further developments in the Rare Breed Triggers case, another lawsuit involving the definition of a machine gun and the ATF’s powers to regulate the firearms industry is also likely to go before the U.S. Supreme Court in the coming months.
That case, Cargill v. Garland, challenges a rule issued by the ATF that banned bump stocks, another device that makes it easier to quickly fire a barrage of bullets. The federal government classified bump stocks as illegal machine guns after a man used rifles equipped with bump stocks to fire more than 1,000 bullets into a crowd at a Las Vegas music festival, killing 58 people and harming hundreds more.
Adam Skaggs, chief counsel of the Giffords Law Center, which advocates for stricter gun laws, said the technology in the two cases is different, but the legal questions in the two cases are related: “How broadly can you define a machine gun? And what does it require for a gun to be treated as and considered a machine gun?”
Skaggs anticipates that the bump stock case will prompt the Supreme Court to issue a broad ruling about the definition of a machine gun and the ATF’s authority to decide when a firearm or accessory falls within that category, which would impact a case like the one against Rare Breed Triggers.
Amy Swearer, a Second Amendment expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said she thinks it’s time for the Supreme Court to decide if the ATF has overstepped its bounds by classifying devices like bump stocks and FRT-15s as machine guns.
Swearer said external factors, like the rate of fire or how quickly a shooter can pull the trigger, aren’t part of the federal definition of a machine gun. And she said it’s Congress’ job — not the ATF’s — to write legislation.
“It is not these unelected officials in the ATF, in this executive agency, who get to arbitrarily rewrite that law in such a distinct way,” she said.
Skaggs and Swearer both think the federal government made an intentional choice by bringing the case against Rare Breed Triggers in the Eastern District of New York, which Swearer called the “least sympathetic” circuit in the nation when it comes to Second Amendment rights.
“This is a particularly difficult path, I think, for any Second Amendment plaintiff,” she said.
Tagged
public safety
brooklyn
Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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