They say everything is bigger in Texas, and a lawsuit recently filed by a gun club in the Lone Star State is, indeed, a big one.
On March 10, the Temple Gun Club filed a federal lawsuit challenging the federal statute that prohibits the possession and transfer of machine guns manufactured after May 19, 1986. Temple Gun Club v. Bondi was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of the club’s 1,000-plus members, with three individual members also listed as plaintiffs.
According to a report at Ammoland.com, the law originated as a floor amendment during the 1986 debate over the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act (FOPA). Sponsored by Rep. William Hughes, D-New Jersey, the amendment was introduced with little committee review or recorded debate. It passed by voice vote and was described by its sponsor as uncontroversial. The final law grandfathered in machine guns already registered with the ATF before the May 19, 1986, cutoff date. While it allowed continued possession by government agencies, it closed the registry to new civilian-owned machine guns.
In the complaint, Temple Gun Club is arguing that banning machine guns is outside the scope of Congress’s limited, enumerated powers, and it is an unnecessary, improper usurpation of power.
“Any ‘powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,’” the complaint states. “There are seventeen specific powers enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, along with the power ‘[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.’ The power to prohibit possessing a firearm is neither implicitly nor explicitly among the federal government’s powers. To the contrary, the drafters of the Constitution included a direct prohibition on ‘infring[ing]’ upon ‘the right to keep and bear Arms.’”
The complaint also notes that plaintiffs aren’t seeking total deregulation of machine guns.
“Machine guns are highly regulated at the federal level,” the complaint states. “The NFA provides a comprehensive registration and licensing scheme that tightly controls who may possess and transfer a machine gun. This case does not challenge the NFA. It only challenges Congress’s extra step in § 922(o) to ban possessing machine guns manufactured after 1986.”
Ultimately, Temple Gun Club and the other plaintiffs are asking the court to strike down the law.
“Plaintiff prays for judgment against Defendants and that the Court: (1) declare that 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) is unconstitutional on its face and as applied to Plaintiffs because it exceeds Congress’s enumerated powers; (2) issue a permanent injunction against the Defendants, as well as all agents, administrators, employees, or other persons acting on behalf of the Defendants, from enforcing 18 U.S.C. 922(o) against TGC and its members, including any corporations, limited liability companies, trusts, or other entities that TCG members own, control, or serve as officers, beneficiaries, or trustees.”
