The Trump administration has agreed to not distribute devices that turn semi-automatic rifles into machine guns in Washington and other states where they are illegal.
More than a dozen states sued the administration last month over its plan to return nearly 12,000 previously confiscated devices like forced reset triggers installed on rifles that allow them to shoot up to 900 rounds per minute.
In response, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed in a court filing late last month it wouldn’t directly return the triggers to their owners in states where they’re illegal.
“It is unfortunate that litigation was necessary when the federal government could have made these commitments much earlier,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement Friday. “But I will do everything possible to keep Washingtonians safe from dangerous machine-gun conversion devices.”
The other states bringing the litigation are California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont. The District of Columbia is also a plaintiff. Most of the states have laws banning forced reset triggers.
They argued the proliferation of these conversion devices in recent years has led to an increase in crimes committed with machine guns.
The Biden administration filed lawsuits against manufacturers and gun sellers and seized the devices from gun stores and individuals. The administration decided forced reset triggers were basically machine guns that are prohibited under federal law.
But last year, a federal judge in Texas disagreed, and ordered the Biden administration to return some of the conversion devices. The administration was complying but declined to send the triggers back to states where they’re illegal.
President Donald Trump accelerated that work, settling with manufacturers and agreeing to return the seized or surrendered devices to their owners across the country, including those convicted of felonies, the states’ lawsuit filed last month noted.
The states argued this would lead to more gun violence and force them to expend resources to confiscate the devices again. This would result in added costs for police and health care. Gun violence killed over 1,000 Washingtonians in 2023, according to federal data.
In a court filing, an ATF official wrote that there would be two notices for device owners. One will go to those in states where forced reset triggers are legal explaining how to get them returned.
The second, for those in states like Washington where they’re illegal, will give owners three options. They could request the ATF make the transfer to them in a state where it’s legal, request transfer to a third-party in a legal state or abandon the device. If an owner does not want a device returned, the federal government would destroy it.
The triggers also won’t be returned to people prohibited from possessing firearms.
Rare Breed Triggers, a main manufacturer and seller of forced reset triggers, also committed in court papers not to sell or ship its returned products into states where they’re illegal. The company’s president estimated the ATF took custody of at least $2.5 million worth of Rare Breed products.
Because of these commitments, on Friday, the states dropped their request in Maryland federal court for a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration’s return plans.
This story was originally published in the Washington State Standard.
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