While the anti-gunners typically act like there’s only one pro-gun organization out there, in reality, there are quite a few. One of those is the Firearms Policy Coalition.

It seems that the organization has decided to file a brief recently.

That’s nothing new. Most gun rights organizations file briefs in various cases, but this is a particularly important matter since it deals with an anti-gun attempt to make the ATF define a firearm the way the anti-gunners want.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (December 6, 2022) – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced the filing of an important brief with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in the case of California v. ATF. Initially filed in 2020 by California, Giffords, and two individuals, the case sought to force the ATF to re-define “firearms” under federal law to include numerous non-firearm items. Now, the plaintiffs are trying to “amend” their lawsuit to claim that the ATF’s frame or receiver rule published this year doesn’t go far enough. FPC’s brief, along with its previous motion to intervene, can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint is, in reality, an entirely new lawsuit based on a new agency action taken subsequent to Plaintiffs’ filing of this lawsuit,” argues the brief. “The basis of Plaintiffs’ lawsuit is Defendants’ prior implementation of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which Plaintiffs sought to collaterally attack by challenging a series of classification letters issued to non-firearm producers by the [ATF]. That prior implementation of the GCA is currently defunct, and those classification letters are no longer controlling. Accordingly, Applicants in Intervention request that this Court grant Defendants’ motion and dismiss Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint because it concerns an entirely distinct agency action and the basis for Plaintiffs’ original lawsuit is moot.”

“California and Giffords are attempting to hijack their old lawsuit designed to force the ATF to issue the frame or receiver rule to now say that the rule doesn’t go far enough,” said Cody J. Wisniewski, FPC’s Senior Attorney for Constitutional Litigation. “Plaintiffs’ argument that the ATF is required by federal law to regulate even more than it already does is nonsensical, and their attempt to disguise a new lawsuit as an ‘amendment’ to their prior case is legally infirm.”

The Firearms Policy Coalition is basically taking the stand that Giffords and the state of California are talking out of their posteriors.

Which, of course, they are.

What they’re trying to do is to use the courts to pressure a federal agency to reach the determination they want it to reach, regardless of the constitutionality of such determination.

It’s especially ridiculous in a post-Bruen world where even the restrictions on things as they currently stand may well be ultimately found to be unconstitutional. How do they honestly think there are constitutional grounds to create more restrictions when existing restrictions may not even survive legal challenge?

It’s beyond ridiculous, to say the least.

Then again, this is Giffords and the state of California. Ridiculous is pretty on-brand for them, really.