The legal status of an FRT trigger now depends almost entirely on where you live. In May 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice settled its litigation with Rare Breed Triggers and agreed not to enforce the federal machine gun ban against people who own or transfer forced reset triggers.1On May 16, 2025, the Department of Justice announced a comprehensive settlement resolving all pending federal litigation involving forced reset triggers. That ended federal prosecution risk for most owners. It did not override state law, and roughly a dozen states and the District of Columbia still ban the devices outright.
What an FRT Is and Why It Matters Legally
A forced reset trigger uses the energy of the rifle’s bolt carrier group to mechanically push the trigger back to its forward position after each shot. The shooter still has to pull the trigger for every round fired, but the reset happens faster than a finger could release and re-pull a standard trigger, so the practical rate of fire goes up substantially.
That mechanical detail is the whole legal argument. Federal law defines a machine gun as a weapon that fires more than one shot by a “single function of the trigger.” In Garland v. Cargill (June 2024), the Supreme Court held that the ATF had exceeded its authority by classifying bump stocks as machine guns, defining a trigger “function” in mechanical terms: if the trigger has to release and reset between shots, the device is not a machine gun. Lower courts applied the same logic to FRTs. On July 23, 2024, Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas ruled in NAGR v. Garland that FRTs do not fire multiple rounds by a single trigger function, vacated the ATF’s classification, and enjoined the government from prosecuting owners, sellers, or manufacturers.
Rare Breed’s FRT-15, the device at the center of all the litigation, has a trigger pull of roughly 6.5 to 7 pounds in FRT mode, heavier than the 4.5 to 5 pounds of its standard semi-auto mode, because engaging the forced-reset mechanism adds resistance from a disconnector spring. The company has sold roughly 100,000 units since late 2020.
Federal Status After the May 2025 Settlement
The DOJ settlement wrapped up three cases at once: the fraud action in the Eastern District of New York, the challenge in the Northern District of Texas, and a forfeiture proceeding in the District of Utah. The government dropped all three and withdrew its pending appeals in the Second and Fifth Circuits, which made Judge O’Connor’s Texas ruling final and non-appealable.
Under the agreement, the United States will not enforce 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) or related National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act provisions against anyone for possessing or transferring an FRT, provided the device operates as the Texas court described. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said the settlement would “end a needless cycle of litigation” and “enhance public safety.”
Two limits on the federal truce are worth knowing. The agreement does not stop state regulators from enforcing their own laws, and it does not prevent the federal government from pursuing FRT manufacturers other than Rare Breed. Rare Breed itself also agreed not to develop or market FRTs for any handgun where the magazine loads through the trigger-hand grip. FRTs for AR- and AK-style pistols, where the magazine inserts ahead of the grip, are still permitted.
States Where FRTs Are Still Illegal
Several states classify FRTs under existing statutes covering machine guns, multiburst trigger activators, or recoil-driven trigger devices. In those states the federal settlement changes nothing for owners.
California treats FRTs as “multiburst trigger activators” under Penal Code Section 16930, and Section 32900 makes it illegal to possess, sell, manufacture, or import them. On June 2, 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a law enforcement bulletin confirming that FRTs remain illegal in the state regardless of the federal settlement and advising California residents not to ask ATF to return devices it had previously seized. Minnesota’s trigger activator statute, Minn. Stat. § 609.67, covers devices that use the recoil or energy of a semiautomatic firearm to reset the trigger and continue firing, which gun rights groups in the state read as including FRTs.
In June 2025, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown led a 16-state coalition in filing NJ v. Bondi in federal court in Maryland to block ATF from shipping almost 12,000 confiscated FRTs back to owners in states where the devices are banned. As part of that case, Rare Breed Triggers committed in court filings not to sell or ship products into Maryland, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, or Washington, D.C. The state coalition withdrew its request for a preliminary injunction on July 11, 2025, after the federal government agreed to a return process designed around those state bans.
If you are in one of those jurisdictions, the federal settlement does not legalize possession and the manufacturer will not ship to you.
Getting a Seized FRT Back from ATF
ATF agreed to return seized or voluntarily surrendered triggers to individual owners who request them. Requests had to be submitted through the ATF website by September 30, 2025. Rare Breed’s president estimated ATF was holding at least $2.5 million worth of the company’s products. The order also required ATF to notify people who had previously received warning letters that those notices were unlawful.
The return process is not the same everywhere. For owners whose addresses are in states that still ban FRTs, ATF will not simply ship the device home. Under the arrangement that resolved the Maryland-led suit, those owners get a notice offering three choices: request a transfer to a state where the device is legal, designate a third party in a legal state to receive it, or abandon the device for destruction.
Buying an FRT Now
Rare Breed resumed FRT-15 sales in May 2025 and reported a sales surge by mid-June. On August 13, 2025, it launched the FRT-15L3, which the company described as its first new forced reset trigger since the legal victories.
The settlement did not grant the same federal protection to competing manufacturers, and Rare Breed has moved aggressively against them. The company and its affiliate ABC IP, LLC filed patent infringement actions alleging violations of four U.S. patents (Nos. 10,514,223; 11,724,003; 12,036,336; and 12,274,807) against numerous defendants, including Peak Tactical, Firearm Systems, SGC, Hawkphin Sales, Cloak Industries, Canuck Tactical, Webcorp, AR-TT, and Optics Planet. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated these as MDL No. 3176, In re: Rare Breed Triggers Patent Litigation, before Judge Amos L. Mazzant III in the Eastern District of Texas. The panel noted that the DOJ settlement itself will “raise factual issues in each case,” particularly regarding whether preliminary injunctions against competing manufacturers serve the public interest. As part of its own settlement, Rare Breed also committed to enforcing its patents to prevent infringement that could “threaten public safety.”
For a buyer, two practical consequences follow. Devices from Rare Breed carry the clearest federal legal status because the non-enforcement pledge runs to its product as described in the Texas ruling. Devices from other sellers may still be sold and shipped while litigation plays out, but those sellers do not have the federal government’s commitment behind them, and some may be pulled from the market by patent injunctions.
The ATF’s Earlier Position, for Context
If you received a letter from ATF between 2021 and 2024, or surrendered a device, the agency’s old stance explains why. On July 27, 2021, ATF sent Rare Breed a cease-and-desist letter classifying the FRT-15 as a machine gun under the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act, taking the position that the device “allow[s] a firearm to automatically expel more than one shot with a single, continuous pull of the trigger.” On March 22, 2022, ATF followed with an open letter to all federal firearms licensees warning that certain forced reset triggers met the statutory definition of a machine gun and citing potential penalties of up to $250,000 per person and up to ten years in federal prison. Owners were told to contact their local ATF field office to “divest possession,” and the agency began seizing devices and pursuing forfeiture.
That classification is the one the Texas court vacated and that the DOJ has now agreed not to enforce. The warning letters it generated are, under the terms of the settlement, no longer valid.