W.Va. joins 17 state legal
challenge over new gun rules

CHARLESTON — West Virginia has joined a 17-state coalition in a new federal fight over guns.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is co-leading the 17 state challenge in a lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Department of Justice over the ATF's new rule redefining "frame and receiver" to regulate most gun parts as firearms.

Morrisey said the multi-state coalition is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief from the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota.

"This new rule contains massive changes that do nothing but infringe on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms," Morrisey said last week. "Again, this is an example of federal overreach wherein an agency run by unelected bureaucrats resorts to regulation rather than legislation."

The ATF published the "Final Rule" in the Federal Register on April 26, according to the attorney general's office. It is slated to take effect on Aug. 24 of this year — unless the 17-state lawsuit is successful in stopping its implementation.

According to the lawsuit, the Final Rule "adopts a vague, standardless definition of the statutory term "readily," and applies it to ban 80 percent of frames and receivers, including when sold as so-called "weapon parts kits."

"The Final Rule represents perhaps the most sweeping gun control scheme since the Gun Control Act of 1968, incorporating many of the restrictions found on the legislative wish lists of the nation's most radical anti-Second Amendment groups, but restrictions which Congress has never seriously considered (much less enacted)," according to the lawsuit.

Morrisey is co-leading the lawsuit with Arizona. The other participating states in the legal challenge are Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

— Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com