Judge Hands Biden Big Win

(WatchDogReport.org) – US District Judge for Kansas Toby Crouse has refused to block President Joe Biden’s new rule that will require firearms dealers to run background checks of customers at gun shows. Crouse’s ruling means that Texas is currently the only state where a legal challenge against the new law has succeeded.

Kansas and 19 other states joined the lawsuit, along with three gun collectors and Kansas-based Wichita, an association for collectors. The suit aims to prevent the law from being enforced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) since it entered effect in May.

Gun owner groups, individual collectors, and Republican-led states filed three federal lawsuits against Biden’s government in May. These suits argued that the rule violates the Constitution’s Second Amendment. Republican Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin released a statement, arguing that the new expansion of background checks expected of firearms dealers was “dramatic” and that Biden could not impose the rule unilaterally.

In March, Bryan Malinowski, an executive for Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport at Little Rock, Arkansas, was shot dead in a shootout with ATF agents after an investigation was launched into his involvement in gun sales. Malinowski allegedly purchased over 150 guns between May 2021 and February 2024 and sold the firearms at gun shows. ATF agents later recovered six guns and purchased three others at gun shows. One gun referenced in the affidavit was in the possession of a teenager member of the Norteño gang in California.

Critics of Biden’s new rule on background checks have argued that he lacks the authority to impose such measures. In his ruling, however, Trump-appointee Crouse dismissed concerns about the rule’s impact on sales as overly speculative. The judge expressed his doubt that unproven concerns about the impact on gun sales gave the state grounds to sue the Biden administration. Crouse concluded that it was unlikely that the lawsuit could succeed based on such doubts.