Nevada Attorney General sues Trump administration over gun devices

CARSON CITY, Nev. (KOLO) - Aaron Ford is among 16 Democratic state attorneys general are suing the Trump administration over a plan by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to return gun parts previously seized from gun owners. The part at the center of the lawsuit is a forced reset trigger, a device that resets a gun’s trigger after firing to allow for automatic fire.

The Trump administration has directed ATF to reverse a policy classifying FRTs as illegal machine guns and redistribute devices previously seized.

“If the ATF distributes these devices across the country, not only will the agency run afoul of federal law, it will also put Americans at risk of further gun violence across the country,” said Ford. “These devices, which allow normal guns to fire at a rate that exceeds many military-grade automatic weapons, have no legitimate use in our society. Our country’s gun violence epidemic, which Nevadans are sadly far too familiar with, will be made worse by this action.”

The federal lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction to halt the plan to redistribute FRT devices.

New Jersey is leading the lawsuit. Other states taking part include Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of federal lawsuits over gun rights. Multiple lawsuits on the FRT ban were filed during the Biden administration. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a a federal ban on bump stocks as unconstitutional.