A coalition of Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the Trump administration’s reversal of a Biden-era effort to curb the spread of devices that turn semiautomatic rifles into makeshift machine guns.
The lawsuit, filed by 15 states and the District of Columbia in Federal District Court in Maryland, came after the Trump administration abandoned legal efforts to stop distribution of the devices and agreed to return thousands of the devices the government had seized.
The lawsuit focused on one specific device known as a “forced-reset trigger,” which the lawsuit said are commonly installed on assault rifles, and make them capable of firing as many as 900 uninterrupted rounds per minute.
Under the administration of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives determined the devices were effectively machine guns under federal law. Mr. Biden’s administration filed lawsuits against manufacturers and dealers selling them, and seized more than 12,000 from gun stores and individuals.
After President Trump took office, his administration walked away from those legal challenges and settled with the manufacturers. It also took the extra step of agreeing to return the devices that the A.T.F. had seized to their owners, including convicted felons who were barred from owning guns and to people in states that ban them.
The lawsuit argued that the actions not only undermined public safety but would also subject the states that sued to “significant added law-enforcement and health care costs” because of the “massive carnage” the devices were capable of unleashing.
During the Biden administration, the Justice Department fought an uphill battle to make progress toward banning the devices. When Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the government was still in the process of fighting in court for the ban on forced-reset triggers.
Last year, a federal judge in Texas had sided with the National Association for Gun Rights, which sued to block the ban, and ordered the government to return any devices it took from the groups involved in that lawsuit. In response, the Biden administration proposed going slowly, conducting background checks on anyone who requested to have devices returned and declining to send them to residents of states where the devices were banned.
As recently as March, before Mr. Trump’s appointees took charge of the A.T.F. in April, the Justice Department still stood by that proposal, writing in a filing that the judge’s order did not require it to “aid and abet violations of state law.”
But in May, as part of a deal the Justice Department reached to settle that lawsuit and others like it, the administration agreed to return confiscated devices not just to the plaintiffs, but to anyone who had a device seized or who had voluntarily surrendered one to the government.
“This Department of Justice believes that the 2nd Amendment is not a second-class right,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement at the time. “And we are glad to end a needless cycle of litigation with a settlement that will enhance public safety.”
Her statement did not mention the plan to return seized devices, but it was detailed in the government’s settlement agreement.
The states attorneys general wrote in their challenge that the A.T.F. “elected to go well beyond what the court order in that case requires,” returning the devices “not just to the parties in that litigation, but to anyone anywhere, so long as it is practicable to do so.”
A series of recent decisions by the Supreme Court have steadily moved the country away from firearms restrictions under an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Last year, the court struck down a national ban on bump stocks, put in place during Mr. Trump’s first term after a gunman in Las Vegas relied on the device to kill 60 people at a concert in 2017. That ruling effectively opened the door to forced-reset triggers and other devices that dramatically increase the rate of fire.
In another decision in 2010, the Supreme Court markedly limited states and cities from restricting gun ownership through more localized bans. A study released on Monday examining 13 years of data since then found that firearm deaths of children and teenagers rose substantially in places that took up more permissive laws after the court’s decision.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the U.S. Department of Education, the White House and federal courts.
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