A coalition of states has come together to sue the Trump administration Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) over Forced Reset Triggers (FRTs) and whether confiscated FRTs should be returned to their owners.
The federal lawsuit was spearheaded by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and two others, with more than a dozen other states signing on in support.
The National Association For Gun Rights describes an FRT as a device that “forces a reset of the firing mechanism, advancing the rate of fire. Understanding this, the shooter would still have to squeeze the trigger for each shot, and you would only get one shot per squeeze.”
The attorneys general involved in the suit are telling the court that FRTs, “are used to turn semi-automatic firearms into fully automatic machineguns that can unleash massive carnage in mere seconds.”
FRT’s were outlawed during the Biden administration. But with President Donald Trump in the White House, the current administration has reversed course. The Department of Justice announced in May that FRTs were no longer considered illegal and it reached a settlement to bring litigation over the devices to a close.
Breitbart reported that part of that process would involve the return of FRTs that were taken or seized from owners around the country.
The new lawsuit from 16 state AGs will attempt to stop that process. “This reckless decision,” reads the case filing, “will not only endanger the public – putting people nationwide at greater risk of deadly violence – but is contrary to federal law.”
According to the DOJ’s May announcement, a federal court had previously ruled that an FRT cannot be classified as a machine gun.
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