Was SCOTUS Ending Chevron Just as Important as Bruen Decision?

The Bruen decision was big. There’s no denying that one, and while Rahimi rolled it back a bit, it was still a vital decision for protecting the right to keep and bear arms.
But another recent decision might have been just as important. In fact, it’s arguably more important from a certain perspective.
See, the ATF has the authority to determine if some things are or aren’t legal. Their job is to interpret the law and determine if a given product meets the legal definition of a given thing.
For example, bump stocks. The ATF decided they were machine guns–after previously saying they weren’t–and suddenly they were banned, despite the law clearly saying otherwise.
The Supreme Court overturned that ruling by the ATF, but the groundwork for that decision was laid by ending the Chevron deference. And ending that abomination is wrecking gun control laws all over the place.
Just over a year ago, the Supreme Court struck down one of the main pillars of how modern federal regulation works — the Chevron doctrine.
This rule, whose name was taken from a 1980s Supreme Court case, had required federal judges to defer to federal agency interpretations of their own authority in cases where the underlying laws were vague.
The Loper Bright ruling that ended so-called “Chevron deference” last June was described as a “return to judicial balance” — a technical correction. But its consequences are now impossible to ignore.
Southern states didn’t waste time. Immediately after the decision, judges began citing it, and one year later we’re seeing regional changes. For example, efforts are now underway to draft looser rules on pistol braces — add-ons that effectively turn pistols into rifle-style weapons — after the stricter Biden-era rule was struck down as impermissibly vague.
A judge in Texas also blocked ATF’s attempts to regulate forced-reset triggers — devices that let semi-auto rifles fire almost like automatics — on the grounds that only Congress can decide what counts as a machine gun. This ruling shows how, after Chevron ended, agencies lost their ability to stretch unclear laws into gray areas.
While Loper Bright’s eradication of the Chevron deference doesn’t change the laws on the books, it makes it so the ATF can’t just decide to add on, as they did with bump stocks, pistol braces, and forced-reset triggers.
Additionally, it means that future products can’t just be determined to be illegal simply because someone at the ATF really thinks they should be.
More importantly, it’s going to be a lot harder for the next anti-gun president to just make laws with the stroke of his pen.
Now, is it perfect? Not really. The Supreme Court upheld the Biden “ghost gun” ban. They didn’t say they could ban homemade guns, but they did rule that previously existing kits were close enough to finished guns that the ATF could regulate them. It’s not earth-shattering, but it was far from good, which means Loper Bright didn’t make everything better.
But it did go a long way, and while Bruen laid the groundwork for laws passed by legislatures to be evaluated based on what our Founding Fathers wanted, this ruling effectively throttled the ATF from deciding to create laws unilaterally.
It’s not enough in and of itself to restore our rights, but it is a major step and we really need to celebrate this massive victory more.
Editor’s Note: Unelected federal judges are rewriting the Constitution and insulting the will of the people.
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