Florida – July 21, 2023 – America’s Future, Inc., a national leader in the fight to preserve individual rights, promote American values and traditions, and protect the nation’s Constitutional Republic, announced that it filed an Amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in Guedes, et al. v Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco, Firearms and Explosives, SCOTUS Dkt. 22-1222. The brief was filed on July 20, 2023, and calls on the Court to reverse the judgment of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (USCA-DC) in this case, and strike down a regulation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) known as the “Bump Stock Rule”(Rule). Eight other nonprofits joined the filing in support of the petitioner.

As background, this case comes before SCOTUS from the USCA-DC court, which upheld ATF’s Rule, including the ATF’s new definition that any gun modified with bump stock is a machine gun, thus banned from use and possession by individuals. Essentially, the issue is that ATF jumped through statutory hoops to conjure up a new definition of bump stock to re-interpret the statute in a manner that contravenes ATF’s longstanding definition of bump stock and the ATF’s interpretation of the same statute. In addition, the ATF’s Rule now criminalizes possession of bump stock-modified guns as a felony.

“Americans are endowed with an inalienable, God-given right to bear arms, embodied in the Bill of Rights Second Amendment,” said Mary O’Neill, Executive Director of America’s Future. “We urge the SCOTUS to uphold our constitutional rights and reverse the circuit court decision.”

The brief explains that the ATF’s Rule is an unreasonable infringement of the Second Amendment and unlawful overreach by the ATF, an Executive branch agency. The petitioner’s brief to SCOTUS highlights the clear need for SCOTUS to hear this case due to a circuit split about the Rule. In fact, the petitioner wrote, “at least 30 opinions authored or joined by 57 different federal judges, totaling over 400 reported pages, have addressed [the Rule]”

To read more details about this filing, along with other briefs filed by America’s Future, please visit our Law & Policy page.