In a move that has stunned many in the firearms community, the United States government, through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), filed a rare “Statement of Interest” on January 26, 2026, in a private patent infringement lawsuit in the Eastern District of Tennessee. The case pits ABC IP, LLC and Rare Breed Triggers, Inc. against Timothy Hoffman, an individual inventor, and his small Tennessee-based company, Hoffman Tactical LLC. Rather than remaining neutral in what is ostensibly a civil dispute over intellectual property, the Department of Justice chose to weigh in heavily on the side of the plaintiffs, urging the court to consider the “public interest” as strongly favoring a preliminary injunction against Hoffman.

At the heart of the dispute are forced reset triggers (FRTs). These devices allow semi-automatic firearms to achieve a faster cyclic rate by mechanically resetting the trigger after each shot. Rare Breed Triggers holds several patents on its version of this technology, and it alleges that Hoffman infringed those patents by designing and publicly sharing 3D-printable files for a similar “super safety” trigger design. Hoffman, like many innovators in the 3D-printing and home-gun-building community, openly released his files, enabling hobbyists to experiment and manufacture their own parts.

What makes this case extraordinary is the federal government’s intervention. The ATF’s filing explicitly states that it has a “strong interest… in discouraging unregulated manufacture of forced reset triggers.” It argues that enjoining Hoffman would advance public safety and support the agency’s broader efforts to limit the proliferation of FRTs. Remarkably, the government cites a May 2025 settlement agreement it reached with Rare Breed, after years of aggressive enforcement actions against the company, as justification for now backing Rare Breed’s private patent enforcement crusade.

This settlement is worth examining closely. After the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Garland v. Cargill struck down the ATF’s bump-stock rule, the agency’s legal position on other rapid-fire devices like FRTs became precarious. Facing multiple adverse court rulings, the ATF chose to settle its civil enforcement actions against Rare Breed. In exchange for dropping the lawsuits, Rare Breed agreed not to design FRTs for handguns and crucially to “take all reasonable efforts to enforce its patents and seek injunctions” against anyone else making or distributing FRTs. In essence, the government outsourced part of its regulatory agenda to a private company, turning a former enforcement target into an ally.

Now, when a small inventor like Timothy Hoffman independently develops and shares a competing design, the federal government steps in, not to prosecute him criminally, but to lend its considerable weight to a corporate plaintiff seeking to shut him down. This move is a profoundly troubling development for several reasons.

First, it represents an unusual and arguably improper use of government power in a purely private patent dispute.

The ATF openly admits it is not taking a position on whether Hoffman actually infringed the patents or on the other factors required for an injunction. Its sole contribution is to argue that the “public interest” factor should be “weighed heavily” in favor of Rare Breed because stopping Hoffman supposedly advances public safety. Yet the ATF provides no evidence, no crime statistics, no incident reports,  linking 3D-printed FRTs or Hoffman’s specific design to criminal misuse. The agency’s concern appears to be purely prophylactic: it simply doesn’t like the idea of unregulated rapid-fire technology existing outside its preferred channels.

Second, the intervention sends a chilling message to independent inventors and the open-source firearms community.

Hoffman is not alleged to be selling complete triggers commercially on a large scale; instead, the complaint centers on his decision to release printable files for free. This action by Hoffman is a common practice among hobbyists who believe that firearm technology should be accessible to law-abiding citizens for self-fabrication. By siding with Rare Breed, the government is effectively endorsing the use of patent law as a tool to suppress non-commercial sharing of technical information, an outcome that feels more akin to censorship than public safety enforcement.

Third, the government’s position is inconsistent with recent judicial trends. Post-Cargill, several federal courts have ruled that forced reset triggers do not meet the statutory definition of a machine gun because they still require a separate trigger pull for each shot (albeit a very rapid one facilitated by mechanical reset).

While the circuits are split, the Northern and Southern Districts of Texas have both held that FRTs are not machineguns. The ATF’s own settlement with Rare Breed implicitly acknowledges the weakness of its prior legal stance. Yet, the agency now seeks to achieve indirectly, through private litigation, what it could not accomplish through direct regulation.

Timothy Hoffman appears to be precisely the kind of small-scale American innovator the patent system was meant to protect: an individual experimenting in his workshop, improving on existing ideas, and sharing knowledge openly. Instead, he finds himself facing not only a well-funded corporate plaintiff but the full moral and rhetorical support of the federal government. The DOJ’s filing reads less like a neutral statement of interest and more like an amicus brief on behalf of Rare Breed, urging the court to use the “extraordinary remedy” of a preliminary injunction in furtherance of ATF policy preferences.

The broader implications are concerning. If the government can intervene in private patent cases to tip the scales whenever the subject matter touches on its regulatory turf, then intellectual property litigation risks becoming a proxy battlefield for policy disputes that should be resolved through legislation or proper rulemaking. Congress, not the ATF, defines what constitutes a machine gun. And courts, not executive agencies, determine whether a patent has been infringed.

Timothy Hoffman deserves a fair chance to defend his design on the merits without the specter of federal law enforcement hovering in the background, lending aid to his corporate adversary. The firearms community has long valued innovation, self-reliance, and the free exchange of technical knowledge. By throwing its weight behind patent monopolists against independent creators, the government risks stifling exactly the kind of grassroots ingenuity that has driven American firearm development for generations.

As this case moves forward, observers should watch closely whether the court accepts the ATF’s invitation to treat “public interest” as synonymous with “agency preference.” The stakes are higher than one inventor’s 3D files; they concern the balance between legitimate intellectual property rights and the freedom to tinker, improve, and share in a field central to Second Amendment rights.

Timothy Hoffman may be a small player facing powerful opponents, but he represents something much larger: the enduring American tradition of the garage inventor standing against overreaching corporate and governmental alike.

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About John Crump

Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons, follow him on X at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.