Amicus Curiae Brief — W. Clark Aposhian, Petitioner v. Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General, et al.

No. 21-159

444444444444444444444444444444444444444444

IN THE

Supreme Court of the United States

____________________

W. CLARK APOSHIAN, Petitioner,

v.

MERRICK B. GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL.,

Respondents.

____________________

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari

to the United States Court of Appeals

for the Tenth Circuit

____________________

Brief Amicus Curiae of

Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Fdn.,

Virginia Citizens Defense League, Tennessee

Firearms Association, Grass Roots North

Carolina, Oregon Firearms Federation,

Arizona Citizens Defense League, Heller Fdn.,

and Conservative Legal Def. and Ed. Fund

in Support of Petitioner

____________________

DAVID BROWNE

SPIRO & BROWNE, PLC

6802 Paragon Place

Suite 410

Richmond, VA 23230

ROBERT J. OLSON*

WILLIAM J. OLSON

JEREMIAH L. MORGAN

WILLIAM J. OLSON, P.C.

370 Maple Ave. W., Ste. 4

Vienna, VA 22180

(703) 356-5070

JOHN I. HARRIS, III

SCHULMAN, LEROY &

wjo@mindspring.com

BENNETT P.C.

*Counsel of Record

3310 W. End Ave., #460

Attorneys for Amici Curiae

Nashville, TN 37203

Co-counsel for

September 3, 2021

Amici Curiae

444444444444444444444444444444444444444444

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

INTEREST OF THE AMICI CURIAE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

STATEMENT OF THE CASE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

ARGUMENT

I.

CHEVRON DEFERENCE IS NOT BEING UTILIZED

BY LOWER COURTS AS THIS COURT INTENDED . . 7

A. Chevron Deference Cannot Apply if All

Parties Allege a Lack of Ambiguity . . . . . . . 7

B. The Final Rule Is Entirely Political and

Contradicts All Agency Expertise . . . . . . . . 9

II. COURTS BELOW ARE USING CHEVRON AS A

CRUTCH TO AVOID PROPER JUDICIAL

INTERPRETATION OF STATUTORY LANGUAGE . . 12

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

ii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Page

U.S. CONSTITUTION

Amendment II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

STATUTES

26 U.S.C. § 5845(b). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 6, 8

REGULATIONS

83 Fed. Reg. 66514 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

86 Fed. Reg. 27720 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

CASES

Aposhian v. Wilkinson, 989 F.3d 890

(10th Cir. 2021) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Atrium Med. Ctr. v. United States HHS,

766 F.3d 560 (6th Cir. 2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense

Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984). . . . . 2, passim

Clinton v. City of N.Y., 524 U.S. 417 (1998) . . . . . 11

Guedes v. ATF, 920 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2019) . . . 8, 13

Guedes v. ATF, 140 S. Ct. 789 (2020) . . . . . . . . . 8, 9

Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch, 834 F.3d 1142

(10th Cir. 2016) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) . . . . . . . . 12

United States v. Davis,

139 S. Ct. 2319 (2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 12

Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA,

573 U.S. 302 (2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Whitman v. United States, 574 U.S. 1003 (2014) . 11

iii

MISCELLANEOUS

Hill, E.W., “How Many Guns are in the United

States: Americans Own between 262 Million and

310 Million Firearms,” Urban Publications

(2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

R. Kethledge, “Ambiguities and Agency Cases:

Reflections After (Almost) Ten Years

on the Bench,” 70 VAND. L. REV.

EN BANC 315 (2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

INTEREST OF THE AMICI CURIAE1

Gun Owners of America, Inc., Virginia Citizens

Defense League, Tennessee Firearms Association,

Grass Roots North Carolina, Oregon Firearms

Federation, and Arizona Citizens Defense League are

nonprofit social welfare organizations, exempt from

federal income tax under Internal Revenue Code

(“IRC”) section 501(c)(4). Gun Owners Foundation,

Heller Foundation, and Conservative Legal Defense

and Education Fund are nonprofit educational and

legal organizations, exempt from federal income tax

under IRC section 501(c)(3).

Amici organizations were established, inter alia,

for the purpose of participating in the public policy

process, including conducting research, and informing

and educating the public on the proper construction of

state and federal constitutions, as well as statutes

related to the rights of citizens, and questions related

to human and civil rights secured by law.

Three of these amici, Gun Owners of America, Gun

Owners Foundation, and Virginia Citizens Defense

League, together with certain individuals brought suit

in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of

Michigan to enjoin the same ATF rulemaking being

1

It is hereby certified that counsel for Petitioner filed a blanket

consent, and counsel for Respondents consented to the filing of

this brief; that counsel of record for all parties received notice of

the intention to file this brief at least 10 days prior to its filing;

that no counsel for a party authored this brief in whole or in part;

and that no person other than these amici curiae, their members,

or their counsel made a monetary contribution to its preparation

or submission.

2

challenged in this case. There, the district court

upheld the regulation, but on March 25, 2021, a

divided panel of the Sixth Circuit reversed and

remanded with an opinion written by Judge Alice M.

Batchelder. Gun Owners of America, Inc. v. Garland,

992 F.3d 446 (6th Cir. 2021). The Sixth Circuit

granted rehearing en banc on June 25, 2021, which is

now being briefed, with oral argument scheduled for

October 20, 2021.

Other amici are state-level nonprofit organizations

which, collectively, have members and supporters

numbering in the hundreds of thousands throughout

the country. These organizations exist in order to

promote and support the right to keep and bear arms

under the Second Amendment and corresponding state

constitutional provisions, as well as to provide and

promote training and education to both the public and

government officials regarding technical and legal

aspects of firearms. Each amici organization has

members and supporters who were affected by the

ATF’s regulation reinterpreting the definition of

“machinegun,” and were deprived of their right to own

bump stocks as a result.

The use of Chevron deference in deciding cases

involving ATF’s interpretation of criminal firearms

statutes is of significance and increasing importance to

the amici organizations, their members, and their

supporters. The members of the amici organizations

have a strong interest in having the Court resolve

these broader questions, given the severe criminal

penalties for violations of federal firearms laws, the

administrative reclassification of lawfully owned

3

firearms and accessories as contraband, and the effects

of the same on the right to keep and bear arms.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE

In January 2019, the Petitioner filed an action in

the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah

seeking, among other remedies, a preliminary

injunction to enjoin enforcement of a regulation

promulgated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,

Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) which reclassified socalled “bump stocks” as “machineguns” in 26 U.S.C. §

5845(b). See Final Rule, Bump-Stock-Type Devices, 83

Fed. Reg. 66514 (Dec. 26, 2018). The district court

denied the preliminary injunction, holding that the

ATF’s interpretation of the statutory language was the

best reading of the statute. Petitioner then filed an

interlocutory appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for

the Tenth Circuit, challenging the denial of a

preliminary injunction.

On appeal, a divided panel of the Tenth Circuit

upheld the denial of a preliminary injunction, but

applied and expressly relied upon Chevron deference

without addressing the best meaning of the statutory

language in § 5845(b). The panel majority noted that

the parties themselves were “oddly in agreement” that

Chevron should not apply in deciding the case.

Petition Appendix (“App.”) 12a. Yet panel majority

went on first to conclude that Chevron, rather than

traditional tools of statutory interpretation, should be

used at the outset, announcing the court’s task to

determine merely whether the ATF “‘acted within its

authority’” in promulgating the Final Rule. Id.

4

Having determined that Chevron applied, all aspects

of the panel majority’s opinion were built upon that

assumption. The panel also rejected arguments in

favor of applying the rule of lenity, and that Chevron

should not apply in light of the parties having

disavowed its applicability.

The panel majority ultimately found that the

ATF’s rewriting of the statutory term “single function

of the trigger” into “single pull of the trigger” was a

permissible “interpretation” of the statute, and that

the agency’s conclusion that a bump stock fired

“automatically” was reasonable in light of the panel

majority’s view that this “term ... is ambiguous” — at

least when extracted and considered independently of

its statutory context. App. 25a-33a. The panel

majority reached this conclusion despite the parties

themselves arguing that the statutory language was

unambiguous.

On September 4, 2020, the Tenth Circuit entered

an order granting a petition for review en banc,

indicating that a majority of the active, non-recused

judges wished to rehear the matter. App. 74a. In this

order, the court below went so far as to direct the

parties to address specific questions regarding

Chevron deference, including whether it could be

waived by the government, whether a court “must”

follow it (as a standard of review), whether it is

applicable to statutes having both civil and criminal

implications, and whether the Final Rule is

particularly dependent upon facts within the expertise

of the ATF. App. 75a-76a. After supplemental

briefing, on March 5, 2021, the court below entered an

5

order vacating its prior order granting the petition for

review en banc, and reinstating the panel opinion,

without any explanation from the majority which

reversed its original decision to rehear the matter en

banc. App. 78a. Five judges dissented, strongly

opining, inter alia, that the case should be reheard en

banc given the importance of the issues it raises, and

that the panel decision erred by looking for ambiguity

where none existed in order to justify the application

of Chevron deference. App. 80a.

The Petitioner now seeks a writ of certiorari to the

Tenth Circuit in order to address the questions of

(1) whether courts should defer under Chevron to an

agency interpretation of federal law when the federal

government affirmatively disavows Chevron deference;

(2) whether the Chevron framework applies to statutes

with criminal-law applications; and (3) whether, if a

court determines that a statute with criminal-law

applications is ambiguous, the rule of lenity requires

the court to construe the statute in favor of the

criminal defendant, notwithstanding a contrary

federal agency construction. Petition for Certiorari

(“Pet.”) at i.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

Courts of appeals, including the one below, have

improperly chosen to use Chevron deference to decide

multiple cases involving bump stocks, despite the

parties having argued in each case that the relevant

statutory language is unambiguous, despite the fact

that Congress never gave ATF authority to create new

substantive prohibitions, despite the fact that the

6

statutory prohibition at issue carries stiff criminal

penalties, and despite the principle that a court should

apply traditional tools of statutory interpretation

before resorting to Chevron deference. The court below

failed to fulfill its responsibility to “say what the law

is” in the face of an agency-made regulation which

contradicts both the statutory language and the

agency’s prior interpretations made by apolitical

experts. Instead, the court improvidently deferred to

a wholesale re-writing of the meaning of the term

“machinegun” under § 5845(b), which was a direct

result of a president’s political agenda after a national

tragedy, and not an act of an agency’s subject matter

expertise pursuant to a technical analysis.

This case also raises much broader issues, with

implications far beyond bump stocks, for the hundreds

of thousands of members and supporters of the amici

organizations. The ability of the ATF (or any executive

branch agency) to reinterpret and effectively change

the statutory definitions of entire categories of

firearms puts all members of these organizations —

and all law-abiding firearm owners — in a state of

continuous and ongoing confusion and peril.2 These

issues can already be seen on the horizon, as ATF

moves toward reinterpreting definitions of commonly

2

In 2013, nearly a decade ago, it was estimated that Americans

owned between 262 million and 310 million firearms, of which 28

million were semi-automatic rifles. See E. W. Hill, “How Many

Guns are in the United States: Americans Own between 262

Million and 310 Million Firearms,” Urban Publications, Cleveland

State University (2013). These numbers are generally understood

to have grown substantially since 2013.

7

owned firearms far more numerous than bump stocks.3

ARGUMENT

I.

CHEVRON DEFERENCE IS NOT BEING

UTILIZED BY LOWER COURTS AS THIS

COURT INTENDED.

A. Chevron Deference Cannot Apply if All

Parties Allege a Lack of Ambiguity.

At the foundation of this Court’s landmark

decision in Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources

Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 865 (1984) is the

directive that, if Congress speaks directly to the

precise matter at issue, that is the end of the inquiry.

Likewise, it should be the end of the inquiry for an

executive branch agency charged with administering

the statute. In other words, if a statutory provision is

unambiguous, then Chevron deference is categorically

inapplicable. Under step one of the two-step analysis

set forth in Chevron, the question whether an agency’s

interpretation is reasonable should never be reached

when there is no ambiguity.

In this case, as in the case brought by certain of

these amici — GOA v. Garland now before the Sixth

Circuit en banc — the government has consistently

3

See, e.g., ATF’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking issued in May

2021 (86 Fed. Reg. 27720), proposing to reinterpret the very

foundational definitions of what is a “firearm” by drastically

broadening the meaning of the terms “frame” and “receiver” that

have existed for decades.

8

taken the position that the meaning of the term

“machinegun” as defined in 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b) clearly

includes bump stocks and, for that reason, that

Chevron deference is inapplicable. Notwithstanding

its multiple earlier classification letters, in which ATF

determined with equal vigor and conviction that bump

stocks were unambiguously not machineguns, the ATF

is now, if nothing else, quite certain that bump stocks

are machineguns — no deference to its expertise being

required.

Similarly, the Petitioner in the present case, as

well as the plaintiffs-appellants in the other bump

stock cases, have consistently — and in great technical

and linguistic detail — made the argument that the

statutory definition of “machinegun” unambiguously

excludes bump stocks, as the trigger must “function”

for each shot fired when a bump stock is utilized. The

lower courts thus have been left not with situations

calling for clear application of Chevron deference in the

face of indeterminate language, but instead with

language that all parties contend is unambiguous

(albeit for different reasons). One would think that if

the parties have gone to the effort to interpret the

statute they believe is ambiguous, a court at least owes

them a duty to use the traditional tools of statutory

construction to see if one of them is correct.

Yet the result in this case (as well as in a third

bump stock case to reach the courts of appeals, Guedes

v. ATF, 920 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 140 S.

Ct. 789 (2020)) was that the appellate court adopted

both a methodology and result espoused by neither

side, and in effect deferred to nobody despite invoking

9

and purporting to apply Chevron deference.

Indeed, if the court below truly had been concerned

with deferring to the agency’s expertise with the

statute at issue, then perhaps it should have deferred

to the agency’s conclusion that the statute was clear.

Paradoxically, the approach used by the court below

was exactly the opposite of deference. See Guedes v.

ATF, 140 S. Ct. 789, 790 (2020) (Gorsuch, J.,

statement concerning denial of certiorari) (“courts

must equally respect the Executive’s decision not to

make policy choices in the interpretation of Congress’s

handiwork”).

The use of Chevron deference cannot possibly be

the right approach in a case where the agency litigant

itself expressly alleges, across multiple cases in

multiple circuits addressing precisely the same

subject, that the statutory language is unambiguous

and expressly disavows that its views should receive

deference.

B. The Final Rule Is Entirely Political and

Contradicts All Agency Expertise.

Even if ambiguity did exist and Chevron deference

were applicable, one of the main justifications for

judicial deference to bureaucratic interpretations of

ambiguous statutes is that agencies sometimes are

believed to have specialized “expertise” in highly

“technical” areas of the law.

Chevron at 865

(acknowledging that Congress may deliberately permit

agencies to fill gaps in broader statutory schemes,

owing to their “great expertise” in a particular area);

10

see also Atrium Med. Ctr. v. United States HHS, 766

F.3d 560, 568 (6th Cir. 2014). But, if that is the case,

then the court below would have done far better to

defer to the numerous and repeated technical

classification letters issued by ATF’s Firearms

Technology Branch from 2008 to 2017, all of which

unwaveringly concluded that bump stock devices are

not machineguns under federal law.

Prior to ATF being ordered by the Department of

Justice to reverse its classification of bump stocks, the

agency’s firearms “experts” (and just about everyone

else) recognized that firearms equipped with bump

stocks are not machineguns because they require

“continuous multiple inputs by the user for each

successive shot” in order to operate.4 Then, in early

2018, under political pressure following the October 1,

2017 Las Vegas shooting, President Trump

unilaterally declared that bump stocks should be

machineguns. Turning on a dime, ATF immediately —

with no change to the underlying statutory definition

— began to claim that bump stocks are machineguns,

contradicting the agency’s earlier factual statements

by now claiming that bump stocks permit “continuous

firing initiated by a single action by the shooter. See

GOA v. Garland, Petition for Rehearing En Banc (May

10, 2021) at 1-2. This precipitous change was not

based on any new technical analysis or classification

letters issued by ATF’s firearm experts, but rather

came straight from the top, through a formal notice4

See GOA v. Garland, Exhibit 20.

http://lawand

freedom.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/

Plaintiffs-Complaint-Exhibits.pdf.

11

and-comment rulemaking.

The agency’s volte-face was precipitated not by any

change made by Congress to the statutory language,

nor any new industry innovation or new technical

analysis. Rather, ATF was ordered point-blank by the

President of the United States to simply make bump

stocks into illegal machineguns, and the agency did

what it was told. Thus, even if there were a reason for

the court below to have “deferred” to ATF’s decision

here, it should have deferred to the agency’s

institutional firearm knowledge and expertise, instead

of deferring to the political agenda of a president.

That is not the rule of law, but rather “‘the King ...

creat[ing] an[] offence by ... proclamation, which was

not an offence before.’” Whitman v. United States, 574

U.S. 1003, 1004 (2014) (Scalia, J., respecting denial of

certiorari). An agency cannot “reverse its current view

180 degrees anytime based merely on the shift of

political winds and still prevail.” Gutierrez-Brizuela v.

Lynch, 834 F.3d 1142, 1152 (10th Cir. 2016) (Gorsuch,

J., concurring).

Of course, President Trump never claimed to

possess any technical expertise about firearms to

which any court should defer, and “[t]here is no

provision in the Constitution that authorizes the

President to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes.”

Clinton v. City of N.Y., 524 U.S. 417, 438 (1998). Nor

may an agency “rewrit[e] ... unambiguous statutory

terms” to suit “bureaucratic policy goals.” Utility Air

Regulatory Group v. EPA, 573 U.S. 302, 325-26 (2014).

Rather, “[o]nly the people’s elected representatives in

Congress have the power to write new federal criminal

12

laws.” United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319, 2323

(2019).

The President’s unilateral decision to declare

bump stocks to be machineguns conflicts with all prior

agency technical decisions on the subject by the

government’s subject matter experts. The court below

should not have been deferential, but rather highly

skeptical, of the agency’s purported “interpretation” of

a statute that had been politically forced upon it from

above, particularly when it completely reversed the

agency’s prior course, and the agency’s lawyers at

different times have claimed a lack of ambiguity in

both directions.

II. COURTS BELOW ARE USING CHEVRON AS

A CRUTCH TO AVOID PROPER JUDICIAL

INTERPRETATION OF STATUTORY

LANGUAGE.

Chevron deference has become a tool of avoidance

used by lower courts to shirk their responsibility to

“say what the law is.”5 As a simple illustration, one

need only survey the results of the three bump stock

cases that have been reviewed by the courts of appeals.

Of the thirteen appellate court judges who have

provided reasons for their respective decisions in the

bump stock cases (D.C. Circuit, 6th Circuit, and 10th

Circuit), eight have sided with the plaintiffs and

determined the ATF’s interpretation to be simply

wrong, while five have applied Chevron and deferred

5

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177 (1803).

13

to the ATF, despite ATF’s insistence that the statute

is unambiguous. Not a single appellate judge, whether

in the majority or in dissent, has stated that the ATF’s

interpretation is the “best” or the “correct”

understanding of the statute.

Judge Kethledge of the Sixth Circuit has opined

that “[t]here is nothing so liberating for a judge as the

discovery of an ambiguity.”

R. Kethledge,

“Ambiguities and Agency Cases: Reflections After

(Almost) Ten Years on the Bench,” 70 VAND L. REV. EN

BANC 315, 316 (2017). Indeed, both of the circuits that

have upheld the ATF’s Final Rule regarding bump

stocks reached that conclusion based on the premise

that the statute is entirely ambiguous, and that the

Final Rule offers merely a “permissible” reading of the

text. Guedes v. ATF at 32 (D.C. Cir. 2019); Aposhian

v. Barr, 958 F.3d 969, 989 (10th Cir. 2020). Yet Judge

Kethledge has advised that “[i]t matters very much ...

that judges work very hard to identify the best

objective meaning of the text before giving up and

declaring it ambiguous.” Ambiguities and Agency

Cases at 319.

The court below fell well short of applying all the

traditional tools of statutory construction to find the

“best” meaning of the statute, prematurely throwing in

the towel in favor of simply deferring to the recentlyreversed interpretation of an agency that claims no

ambiguity in the statute. The court below began by

softly and superficially characterizing the ATF’s

process as merely “revisiting” its multiple, prior

analyses of bump stocks, and then described the ATF’s

actions as a decision to “clarify” the terms

14

“automatically” and “single function of the trigger.”

Aposhian v. Barr at 976. The court below went on to

dismiss the government’s complete disclaimer that

Chevron should apply, as well as the district court’s

decision to set aside Chevron and attempt to find the

best meaning of the statute. Instead, the circuit court

decided that it should apply Chevron to answer a

largely irrelevant question that nobody had asked —

whether the ATF “acted within its authority” in

issuing the Final Rule.

Moving forward in total reliance on this brief and

perfunctory conclusion that Chevron applies, and

having implicitly excused itself from any notion of

attempting to discern the meaning of the statutory

language itself, the court below moved much more

freely in its opinion. With relatively little initial

discussion, the court below simply assumed that the

ATF’s rewriting of the statutory language from “single

function of the trigger” to “single pull of the trigger” is

a reasonable “interpretation” of the statute, permitting

the court to avoid recognizing the agency’s wholesale

revision of the statute.

Having decided that Chevron was the correct tool,

and having decided without further reflection that

“function” and “pull” can be synonymous if the ATF

says they are, the panel below went on to search for —

or perhaps more accurately stated, create — ambiguity

in the statutory language that none of the litigants

believe is ambiguous. See Aposhian v. Wilkinson, 989

F.3d 890, 892 (10th Cir. 2021) (Tymkovich, J.,

dissenting) (“the panel majority went looking for

ambiguity where there was none.”).

15

Ignoring the statutory requirement that a

machinegun must function “automatically ... by a

single function of the trigger,” the court below required

only that it fire “automatically” — to be determined in

isolation by whatever a particular dictionary says the

word “automatically” means generically. App. 28a.

Divorced from its statutory context, the panel was free

to declare bump stocks to be machineguns even though

they require far more “human involvement” than a

“single function of the trigger” in order to operate.

Simply put, the conclusion by the court below that

the statutory definition of “machinegun” is ambiguous

— without conducting any serious analysis of the text

or the ATF’s alteration thereof — demonstrates at

least the need for greater judicial restraint in applying

Chevron deference. Firearms equipped with bump

stocks require far more variable human input,

technique, and guidance than a “single function of the

trigger” in order to fire repeatedly, and they do not

operate “automatically ... by a single function of the

trigger,” because they require the trigger to function

each time a round is fired. The willingness of courts to

defer quickly and readily to agency “interpretations”

that contradict the plain text results in plainly

erroneous decisions such as that below, wherein

statutory terms with clear meaning (should courts care

to find it) are summarily given the stamp of

“ambiguity” in order to empower judges to avoid being

required to determine the best meaning of a statute.

16

CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated above, the Petition for a

Writ of Certiorari should be granted.

Respectfully submitted,

DAVID BROWNE

SPIRO & BROWNE, PLC

6802 Paragon Place

Suite 410

Richmond, VA 23230

Co-counsel for

Amici Curiae

JOHN I. HARRIS, III

SCHULMAN, LEROY &

BENNETT, PC

3310 West End Avenue

Suite 460

Nashville, Tennessee 37203

Co-counsel for Amicus Curiae

Tennessee Firearms Assn.

ROBERT J. OLSON*

WILLIAM J. OLSON

JEREMIAH L. MORGAN

WILLIAM J. OLSON, P.C.

370 Maple Ave. W., Ste. 4

Vienna, VA 22180

(703) 356-5070

wjo@mindspring.com

*Counsel of Record

Attorneys for Amici Curiae

September 3, 2021