It Looks Like ATF Got the Law Right in Its Decision About the Franklin Armory Antitheses

Yesterday, the ATF did something it has rarely done. They issued a letter explaining their reasoning regarding the Franklin Armory Antithesis. You can read their letter here. This is good transparency, the kind we haven’t seen and I hope ATF does this sort of explanation more going forward.

Reading through the letter, it seems pretty clear to me that ATF is staying true to what the law actually says in this case. That doesn’t mean the law is good. I would love to have had Republicans fire the Senate Parliamentarian during the Big Beautiful Bill process so that we could have just been rid of SBR nonsense altogether, but that didn’t happen, and we have the law we have.

That law says that a rifle is a weapon designed to fire a single projectile. (I’m simplifying the longer definition, but that is the gist.) So, a gun designed to fire .410 shotshells — the Antithesis — isn’t a rifle. The ATF’s classification was wrong, and they deserved to lose that dispute, as they did.

But under current law, the ATF is pretty clearly correct that an otherwise-standard short-barrel AR with a 5.56 chambering is a “rifle” under the law. It’s certainly a creative argument to create some novel type of ammo that fires multiple projectiles. I don’t blame them for trying, but that is ultimately not what a standard 5.56 barrel was ever made for, nor is it what anyone would seriously use it for.

That would essentially make the legal term “rifle” a nullity, and open up the argument for a future administration to say that because all ARs aren’t “rifles,” the age minimum of 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) applies, so only those 21 or older can purchase ARs.

Ultimately, our beef on SBRs is with the Republicans in the Senate who are delusional enough to think that by not firing the parliamentarian, Democrats will someday return the favor and not kill the filibuster (fools, the lot of them). In this instance, the ATF’s position is consistent with the law as it exists today.

The long-running and valid criticism of the ATF is that they bend the law with bullshit rulemaking to say things the law never was intended to say. Cases in point: the agency’s failed bumpstock and pistol brace rules. Regarding the Antithesis, there is no such rulemaking. It’s literally just the law that Congress passed.

TL:DR version: There’s a lot of stuff historically to be mad at the ATF about, but this doesn’t seem to be one of them.

 

Kostas Moros is Director of Legal Research and Eduction for the Second Amendment Foundation. This post was adapted by SNW from a tweet he posted at X.