SEATTLE, Wash. – Forced reset triggers, which accelerate the rate of fire of an AR-15 and are accused of essentially converting guns to machine guns, that had been seized by a federal department were nearly returned to their previous owners throughout the country.
However, a coalition of sixteen attorneys general blocked the initiative to return the devices.
Now, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown announced today that the Trump Administration, which was pushing for the redistribution of the devices, had agreed to withhold redistribution in the states the attorneys general represented.
Additionally, Rare Breed Triggers, the company at the focus of the forced reset trigger lawsuit, agreed not to sell any of that device in any of the plaintiff’s states.
One of the states that will not receive distribution of the devices as a result of this decision is Washington.
In response, the attorneys general that had filed the suit withdrew the motion for preliminary injunction, although in Brown’s announcement he added that the case they filed is still open despite the withdraw of the injunction.
The legal action can be traced back to February 7, 2025, when the Trump Administration released an executive order called Protecting Second Amendment Rights, urging the U.S. Attorney General to reexamine the rules of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) made during the Biden Administration.
This includes ATF’s decision to seize forced reset triggers made by a company called Rare Breed Triggers.
According to Brown, the triggers were seized because ATF classified devices that operate similarly to forced reset triggers as machine guns, which citizens are prohibited from owning according to federal law.
However, on March 16, the U.S. Department of Justice determined that forced reset triggers cannot be classified as a machine gun and ATF announced the redistribution of the devices to the public.
They relied on precedent from the Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision in Cargill v. Garland, which determined that ATF exceeded its authority when it classified a bump stock as a machine gun.
On June 9, attorneys general from several states filed a lawsuit to prevent redistribution of the devices, arguing that the devices still classify as machine guns and that the cited precedent is not relevant to this case.
In the court documents, they relied heavily on the already-prevalent issue of gun violence and aimed to prove that forced reset triggers would “aid and abet” the violation of state laws.
The plaintiffs in the case were Washington , Delaware, Maryland, Colorado, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and the District of Columbia.
