AUSTIN –Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined a Montana-led multistate amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rulemaking on bump stocks. The unconstitutional rule instantaneously transformed hundreds of law-abiding gun owners in the United States into criminals and compelled them to destroy or relinquish lawfully acquired property. ATF does not have the power to change the definition of a “machinegun” on a political whim, and it should not be allowed to expose the United States to takings-liability for destroying the value of private property.

“In an age when the federal bureaucracy touches the life of every American in countless ways, the Federal Circuit’s ruling profoundly diminishes constitutional protections of lawfully acquired property,” the brief states. “This petition raises important questions about how the ever-growing administrative state threatens ‘the security of Property’—one of the ‘great object[s] of government’—as well as the right to keep and bear arms.”

Read the full brief here.