DOJ permits sale of triggers that allow rifles to fire like machine guns
May 18 (UPI) -- The federal government will allow the sale of devices that enable standard rifles to operate like machine guns, a move that angered gun control groups.
The Justice Department said Friday it reached a settlement with Rare Breed Triggers. This is in accordance with President Donald Trump's Feb. 17 executive order Protecting Second Amendment Rights and the attorney general's Second Amendment Enforcement Task Force announced on April 8.
"This Department of Justice believes that the Second Amendment is not a second-class right," Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. "And we are glad to end a needless cycle of litigation with a settlement that will enhance public safety."
There are two ways to speed the firing of bullets. Bump stocks use the recoil of the weapon to repeatedly bump the trigger, while trigger devices are aftermarket items that directly engage the trigger.
During the first Trump administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives banned bump stocks, which mimic rapid trigger pulls to fire rapidly in a way similar to a machine gun. In 2017, the gunman in a mass shooting killed 58 people in Las Vegas while firing from his hotel room window using bump stocks.
In 2022, ATF included specific trigger devices under the National Firearms Act of 1934. The ATF determined that the devices allow a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle to fire as fast as a military M-16 in automatic mode.
In 2023, the Justice Department, as part of the Biden administration, brought a lawsuit in New York against Rare Breed Triggers.
The National Association of Gun Rights filed a separate lawsuit in Texas challenging the ban and a judge there ruled the ban was unlawful.
In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote in Cargill v. Garland, ruled ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a rule classifying a bump stock as a "machine gun."
The Court's majority found that bump stocks do not meet the definition of a machine gun because they didn't allow for automatic fire with the single pull of a trigger.
The next month, the Northern District of Texas applied the case to a device called a "forced-reset trigger" and concluded that they also cannot be classified as a "machine gun."
DOJ is avoiding additional legal action against Rare Breed Triggers in appeals and related cases concerning the similar issue, Bondi said.
The settlement with Rare Breed Triggers includes agreed-upon conditions that significantly advance public safety with respect to FRTs, including that Rare Breed will not develop or design them for use in any pistol and will enforce its patents to prevent infringement that could threaten public safety.
Rare Breed also agreed promote the safe and responsible use of its products.
"The cuffs are off. As of May 16, 2025, we're free! Expect the website to be updated on Monday, May 19," the company posted on its website.
The decision was condemned by Vanessa Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Giffords, the national gun violence prevention group led by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in 2011 while meeting with constituents in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz.
"The Trump administration has just effectively legalized machine guns. Lives will be lost because of his actions," Gonzalez said. "This is an incredibly dangerous move that will enable shooters to inflict horrific damage. The only people who benefit from these being on the market are the people who will make money from selling them, everyone else will suffer the consequences."
The national gun control advocacy group Brady United said in a press release that "highly dangerous weapons of war can now be purchased anonymously" and without a background check.
"The Trump Administration's secret settlement with the gun lobby to permit the sale of Forced Reset Triggers will turn already deadly firearms into weapons of mass destruction," Kris Brown, president of Brady United, said in the release.
"Machine guns are weapons of war that have absolutely no place in our communities. This dangerous backroom deal is not only an astonishing abuse of power, but undermines decades of sensible government gun safety policy and puts whole communities at immediate serious risk," he said.
Brady previous was called the National Council to Control Handguns and founded in 1974 by Dr. Mark Borinsky, whose son was shot and killed in 1974.
In 1981, White House Press Secretary Jim "the Bear" Brady suffered a bullet to the head, and the organization now bears his name.
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