Rare Breed Triggers Say They Won’t Comply with ATF Cease-and-Desist Order

[Charlie T Waite]

The president of a Florida-based gun company released a recorded statement Friday saying his company will not be complying with a cease-and-desist order issued by the ATF in late July.

According to the cease-and-desist letter issued on July 26, the ATF alleged that Rare Breed Triggers’s FRT-15 trigger was actually a machine gun, and the agency ordered Rare Breed Triggers to halt production and sales, and create a plan to address the triggers that had already been sold and distributed.

In the video, Lawrence DeMonico, president of Rare Breed Triggers, says his company will not be complying with the order by the federal agency and lays out his case for why they are choosing to civilly disobey the order.

According to DeMonico, contrary to the ATF’s allegations, DeMonico says the fact of the matter is that the FRT-15 cannot fire more than one round by a single function of the trigger. That’s important to note, because that is probably the most pertinent portion of the definition of a machine gun as defined by the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act, DeMonico says.

Beyond making the case for why they would not be complying, DeMonico says the company immediately responded to the ATF’s cease-and-desist order to inform them that they did not agree with the ATF’s claim. Additionally, DeMonico says they have also followed up by filing a lawsuit in the United States Federal Court for the Middle District of Florida.

“To put it simply, our trigger is not a machine gun as the ATF alleges, and we have complied fully with the law throughout the manufacture and production of this product,” DeMonico said. “What’s dangerous is that the ATF is no longer just enforcing the law, but starting under the Trump administration and continuing through the Biden administration, the ATF and other agencies which are supposed to enforce the law, now believe that they can reinterpret and change the law, whenever it suits their desires.”

According to the complaint, Rare Breed Triggers sought the opinion of four independent experts, which provided testimony stating that the FRT-15 is not a machine gun. According to DeMonico, it’s important to note that all of these witnesses are renowned firearms experts. They have even testified countless times on behalf of the ATF in the past and they all have acknowledged that the FRT-15 is not in-fact a machine gun as defined by federal law.

“We’re going to see this through, because this is a fight to protect not only the second amendment, but really all of our freedoms,” DeMonico said. “We’re seeing more and more examples of our government’s agencies acting without the authority to do so, and far too few seem to be standing up for our freedoms.”