Texas Gun Rights warned that Rare Breed’s patent campaign could become useful to ATF. DOJ then confirmed that private injunctions could advance the agency’s interest in limiting Forced Reset Triggers. Now the Second Amendment Foundation wants the Attorney General to explain why.
First came the warning.
Then came the admission.
Now come the questions.
In August, the Texas Gun Rights Foundation warned that Rare Breed Triggers’ sweeping patent campaign risked turning a hard-won victory over ATF into a government-assisted chokepoint over lawful Forced Reset Trigger technology.
Two weeks later, that concern stopped being theoretical.
As we reported on August 31, the Justice Department told a federal court in Texas that ATF has an interest in “limiting the sale and distribution of FRTs.”
DOJ went further.
In its August 31 Statement of Interest, the government argued that successful patent injunctions obtained by Rare Breed Triggers and ABC IP could support ATF’s public-safety efforts by restricting third-party FRT activity. DOJ told the court that the public-interest factor in the preliminary-injunction analysis should weigh heavily in the plaintiffs’ favor.
Different motives.
Same injunctions.
Now the Second Amendment Foundation has taken the next logical step.
In a September 23 letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche, SAF asked DOJ to explain the factual and legal basis for ATF’s position, including why the agency claims an interest in limiting FRT distribution and why the federal government is inserting itself into private patent litigation in a way that could favor one marketplace participant over others.
Those questions matter because DOJ has already established the basic premise.
ATF sees Rare Breed’s private patent litigation as useful to its own policy objectives.
What SAF wants to know is why that should be ATF’s business in the first place.
SAF Targets What DOJ Still Hasn’t Explained
SAF is careful about what it is—and is not—arguing.
The organization does not take a position on whether the defendants in the Rare Breed multidistrict litigation actually infringe the patents being asserted against them. That remains a patent question for the court.
Instead, SAF focuses on the government’s involvement.
Its letter effectively puts four questions in front of the Attorney General.
First: Why does ATF claim an interest in limiting the sale and distribution of FRTs?
The government’s filing says some devices allow semiautomatic firearms to fire at a “near-automatic rate.” But federal law does not define a machinegun simply by how fast a firearm can be fired. The statutory definition turns on whether a weapon fires automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The government’s own filing recites that definition.
That distinction matters.
In *Garland v. Cargill*, the Supreme Court held that ATF exceeded its statutory authority when it classified bump stocks as machineguns. Cargill involved bump stocks, not FRTs, but the decision reinforced the importance of applying the machinegun definition Congress actually enacted.
The lower courts have not been uniform on FRTs. DOJ’s own filing acknowledges that the Northern District of Texas and Southern District of Texas concluded that the FRTs before them were not machineguns, while an earlier Eastern District of New York decision reached the opposite conclusion.
The federal government ultimately resolved much of that litigation through its 2025 settlement with Rare Breed and other gun-rights plaintiffs. The settlement imposed conditions on Rare Breed, including restrictions involving handgun FRTs and patent enforcement.
But settling litigation is not the same thing as Congress enacting a categorical prohibition on FRTs.
That is why SAF’s question lands.
If ATF believes particular products violate existing federal firearms law, it can identify the statutory basis and defend that position in court.
If the products do not violate federal law, the agency’s asserted interest in reducing their availability deserves a much more precise explanation.
Second: Why is the federal government placing its weight behind one marketplace participant?
This may be the most important new issue raised by SAF.
Rare Breed has private intellectual-property rights. It is entitled to assert valid patents and attempt to prove infringement.
But DOJ is not Rare Breed’s patent counsel.
ATF is not the Patent and Trademark Office.
And federal firearms regulators should not treat the success of one private company’s infringement lawsuits as an independent policy victory unless they can explain why doing so serves a lawful federal interest.
SAF warns that government participation of this kind could tip the marketplace toward one participant while restricting lawful consumer choice and competition.
That concern becomes harder to dismiss when DOJ itself says that successful private injunctions would advance ATF’s interest in limiting FRT distribution.
Third: What actually distinguishes Rare Breed’s products from the competing products ATF wants restricted?
SAF asks DOJ to explain how Rare Breed’s FRT is mechanically and legally different, for ATF’s purposes, from competing products alleged to produce substantially the same result.
That is not a minor technical question.
If the government is going to tell a federal court that restricting certain competitors serves the public interest, it should be able to explain what regulatory distinction separates the favored product from the products it wants restricted.
“Near-automatic rate” does not answer that question.
Neither does the existence of a private patent dispute.
And fourth: What does the settlement’s handgun restriction have to do with the products actually before the court?
The Rare Breed settlement specifically addressed FRTs designed for handguns and defined “handgun” for purposes of the agreement. SAF asks how the defendant products in the current litigation implicate that provision at all.
Again, the point is straightforward.
If DOJ’s asserted public interest is tied to specific safety provisions in the settlement, the government should identify the connection.
If it cannot, then its argument starts looking less like enforcement of defined settlement concerns and more like a generalized federal preference for fewer competing FRTs in the marketplace.
Patent Law Is Not a Substitute Firearms Code
There is an important line here that should not be blurred.
Patent rights are real.
A company that owns a valid patent is entitled to protect the invention covered by its patent claims. A proven infringer can face damages and, when the legal requirements are satisfied, injunctive relief.
Nothing about the Second Amendment nullifies legitimate intellectual-property rights.
But patent law and firearms regulation answer different questions.
The patent question is whether a particular product infringes legally enforceable patent claims.
The firearms-law question is whether a particular product is regulated or prohibited under statutes enacted by Congress.
ATF’s current position risks mixing the two.
DOJ expressly says it is not taking a position on the other preliminary-injunction factors and is not telling the court whether an injunction ultimately should issue. Its argument is narrower: because ATF wants to limit FRT distribution, the government says the public-interest factor weighs heavily toward Rare Breed and ABC IP.
That qualification matters.
But it does not eliminate the concern.
The federal firearms regulator is still asking a court to treat the restrictive effect of private patent litigation as serving a federal policy objective.
That is the issue Texas Gun Rights identified in August.
Our first analysis focused on Rare Breed’s own litigation campaign and warned that a company that defeated ATF’s direct effort to restrict FRTs should be careful not to become a mechanism for producing a similar market result through private lawsuits.
Our second report documented what DOJ then put on the record: ATF sees those private injunctions as potentially useful to its own efforts to limit FRTs.
SAF is now asking the question that naturally follows: What gives ATF a legitimate governmental interest in that outcome?
Patent owners should win or lose patent cases based on patent law.
If Rare Breed proves that a defendant infringes valid and enforceable patent claims, the court can provide whatever remedies the law permits.
But the federal firearms regulator should not get to transform that private dispute into an auxiliary firearms-regulatory system simply because ATF prefers the market consequences of one side winning.
The Question Is Bigger Than Rare Breed
That is why this fight now matters beyond Rare Breed.
The issue is not whether one company is good or bad.
It is not whether every Rare Breed lawsuit is justified or unjustified.
And it is not whether every FRT design presents precisely the same legal question.
The issue is institutional.
What happens when a federal agency cannot secure its preferred restriction through the firearms statutes Congress enacted but discovers that private civil litigation can produce a similar practical result?
Today, that question involves Forced Reset Triggers.
The principle does not have to stop there.
The same logic could arise around another firearm component, another accessory, another manufacturing technology, or another lawful product that federal regulators regard as undesirable.
That is why SAF’s request for clarification is important.
The government’s authority should be identifiable before its power is placed behind a private litigant.
ATF should be able to explain why restricting these products serves a lawful regulatory interest.
It should be able to explain why supporting one market participant’s injunction arguments does not improperly distort private competition.
And it should be able to identify the connection between the specific products before the court and the public-safety concerns DOJ invokes.
Patent owners have rights.
Federal agencies have authority.
Courts have jurisdiction.
Those boundaries matter.
The danger comes when they begin to collapse into one another—when private patent enforcement becomes useful as a substitute mechanism for a firearms restriction the government could not otherwise establish.
Texas Gun Rights warned about that danger before DOJ’s August filing.
DOJ then confirmed that ATF views private injunctions as advancing its interests.
Now SAF has put the next question directly before the Attorney General:
What is the legal and factual basis for putting the federal government’s weight behind that result?
That answer matters far beyond one company and one patent fight.
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