Fifteen Democratic-led U.S. states filed a lawsuit on Monday to stop the Trump administration from returning thousands of seized devices capable of converting semiautomatic rifles into rapid-fire weapons comparable to machine guns.
The states filed the lawsuit in federal court in Baltimore in the wake of the administration’s May 16 settlement that resolved litigation involving a ban on certain “forced-reset triggers” imposed by the government under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. The states in the lawsuit said such devices remain illegal to possess under federal law.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under Biden issued the ban after it determined that some of these devices should be classified as illegal machine guns under a federal law called the National Firearms Act.
“We will not stand by as the Trump administration attempts to secretly legalise machine guns in an effort to once again put firearms industry profits over the safety of our residents,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said in a statement.
New Jersey Leads Lawsuit
The lawsuit was led by New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, and also included the states of Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.
The Trump administration’s settlement reversed course on the Biden administration’s policies.
The settlement resolved lawsuits brought by a gun rights group challenging the ban and cases brought by Biden’s Justice Department against a manufacturer of the devices. Those cases had resulted in conflicting court rulings over the legality of classifying these devices as illegal machine guns.
As part of the settlement, the Trump administration agreed not to apply the machine gun ban to such devices as long as they are not designed for use with handguns and agreed to return nearly 12,000 forced-reset triggers that had been seized by the government to their owners. The new lawsuit seeks to block the return of these devices to their owners.
The states said conversion devices like forced reset triggers have been frequently used in recent years in violent crimes and mass shootings, and that at least 100,000 such devices that were distributed nationally in recent years should be considered illegal machine guns.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(With inputs from Reuters)
