NRA Files Suit To Protect Our Members’ Freedom

Crime is on the rise and out of control. Even gun-hating residents of our nation’s most left-leaning cities are moving out in droves and fleeing for safer ground. President Joe Biden and his anti-gun allies who caused this catastrophe are feeling the heat.
Their pro-criminal policies—from defunding the police, to refusing to prosecute felons, to no-cash bail for hardened criminals—have emboldened our nation’s worst and most violent predators to a degree we’ve never seen.
So, what is the Biden administration’s response? Roll back their insanely destructive policies? Get tough on crime and prosecute offenders? Nope. True to form, they’ve opted to scapegoat the Second Amendment and persecute law-abiding gun owners.
Biden’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has issued an unconstitutional regulatory edict that bans stabilizing pistol braces—forcing millions of lawful Americans to modify their firearms, destroy them, register them or surrender them to the federal government under threat of criminal prosecution.
Pistol-stabilizing braces allow users to strap their gun to their forearm for more stability. Millions of these devices are used by gun owners across the nation—particularly disabled veterans who need the braces to
safely use a pistol. But now, those same gun owners are being subjected to potential prison sentences for the use of an otherwise-legal plastic apparatus on some firearms.
Protecting the rights and freedoms of law-abiding gun owners, and most especially, our fellow NRA members, is the foremost mission of our great association. That’s why I’m proud to tell you that your NRA recently filed suit against Biden’s ATF and Department of Justice in opposition to this unlawful edict, and to seek permanent injunctive relief for all our members.
Of course, if Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland really cared about protecting the innocent, they’d get tough on the thugs who use firearms to commit crime. It is an undeniable truth that our criminal justice system already has enough laws on the books to put violent felons—the same repeat offenders that are terrorizing countless communities across the nation—away for a very long time.
If a convicted felon is caught possessing a firearm, even if he or she is not using the firearm to commit a crime, that is an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison under federal law.
Anyone caught dealing drugs and possessing a firearm can get five years to life without parole under federal law. Under federal law, any repeat offender, caught with a gun, who has three or more prior violent felony convictions, is subject to a 15-year minimum prison sentence.
And, under federal law, anyone who sells a firearm or ammunition to a known drug user, fugitive, illegal immigrant or felon faces 10 years behind bars. Yet every year, tens of thousands of these federal gun crimes go unprosecuted. These are repeat offenders—remorseless, violent criminals that could be taken off the streets and put in prison where they belong.
We have a roadmap to address the current violent-crime surge that is plaguing our country. When crime spiked horrifically in the 1990s, policies were implemented to focus on arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating the most-violent offenders. Gun criminals were locked up. Those policies worked just as you’d expect they would.
From 1993 to 2014, our national homicide rate fell by more than half. Due to programs like Project Exile and Project Safe Neighborhoods, government resources were focused on putting violent criminals behind bars.
If Biden and so many far-left district attorneys really wanted to protect innocent Americans, they would simply prosecute gun criminals and violent offenders. He knows it works. He knows it would clean up our cities. But he doesn’t care. He’s more interested in getting a pat on the back from the anti-gun lobby than in saving lives. To Biden, the law-abiding, disabled veterans using pistol braces at the local shooting range deserve federal persecution and prosecution—but the hardened criminals terrorizing neighborhoods should be left alone.
It’s sickening. It’s maddening. It’s unjust. And I promise you, NRA will fight this unconstitutional injustice in court and wherever else necessary.

By Wayne LaPierre
Executive Vice President

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