More than a dozen state attorneys general, all Democrats, asked on Thursday to join federal legal efforts to preserve two Biden-era gun control policies, reports the New York Times. One would require buyers at gun shows to undergo a background check, a rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that is almost sure to clash with the views of President-elect Trump, who promised in a campaign speech to the National Rifle Association to “roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment.” The other, to ban a kind of trigger that can make a semiautomatic weapon fire like a machine gun, is similar to a policy that Trump embraced in his first term when he banned so-called bump stocks, which achieve the same purpose.
The attorneys generals' move is a sign that partisan legal fights are likely to begin on Day 1 of the Trump White House, despite the wishes of some Democratic politicians who have called for a more cooperative stance after four years of incessant fighting in Trump’s first term. “We know it’s a very real likelihood, based on what the president-elect has said, that his Justice Department won’t defend these rules,” said New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin. Twenty-six Republican attorneys general sued last year to challenge the administration’s new requirement of background checks for buyers at gun shows, which White House officials said was facilitated by a modest gun law passed after a school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., that killed 19 children and two teachers. Republicans accused President Biden of overstepping the law, and suits over the background check regulation are now being heard by four district courts. The second gun control measure that the Democratic attorneys general want to keep is a federal ban on “forced-reset triggers,” an accessory that allows gun owners to fire their semiautomatic weapons more rapidly. The triggers are somewhat similar in their intended effect to bump stocks, which Trump’s administration banned during his first term. “We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns,” Trump posted on social media in 2018.
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