Posted on 01/14/2023 7:19:09 AM PST by Blood of Tyrants
Republican lawmakers and gun rights groups blasted the Biden administration over a new rule that tightens regulations on pistol stabilizing braces.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (ATF) finalized a new regulation Friday that will treat guns with stabilizing accessories like short-barreled rifles, which require a federal license to own under the National Firearms Act.
The move is part of a comprehensive gun crime strategy President Biden announced in April 2021, in response to the massacre at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, where a gunman using a stabilizing brace killed 10 people. A stabilizing brace was also used in a shooting in Dayton, Ohio, that left nine people dead in 2019.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Yes it has. In 1968 there was a machine gun amnesty in which the government allowed the owners of machine guns to keep them so long as they registered them with the government. Amazingly, the government actually kept it’s word, and to this day, those guns are transferrable
This appears to be something different. It is some weird sort of regulatory mishmash. An official amnesty is not being declared. In 1968, and amnesty and amnesty period were declared. The Secretary of the Treasury is the person who has the authority to declare an amnesty.
This is something different, where the ATF reserves the ability to declare whether an item meets their new specifications as to whether it fits their amnesty or not. The specifications are numerous and byzantine.
That alone makes this whole exercise problematic. The executive branch as the authority to authorize an amnesty; that is *not* what they appear to be doing.
“This doesn’t change the fact that their reasoning is daft. Adding a brace does not turn a low power 9mm pistol into a high power 7.62x39 SBR.”
They aren’t banning all braces. A brace on a 9mm pistol, that is really a brace and not a stock, will still be legal.
Their reasoning is the opposite of what you are suggesting. Swapping a brace for a stock on a 10.5” AR-15 doesn’t turn it from a rifle into a pistol.
They are trying to say that a brace allows for more of the bullet’s power to be focused forward with greater accuracy instead of having some of the energy absorbed by hands and arms. I don’t think it makes that much difference other than helping to steady the gun when aiming and shooting.
The entire concept of why a short barrel rifle and/or a pistol with a removable stock or stabilizing brace is inherently more dangerous than some other type of weapon(s) eludes me. I guess it is just because the gangsters and bootleggers from the ‘20’s & ‘30’s like to use them. Plus the gun grabbers never saw any law restricting gun ownership that they didn’t like.
There are quite a few pistols that are more powerful (and potentially more deadly) than many rifles.
That argument doesn’t hold water.
The bill, as introduced, was never meant to include short barreled rifles.
They were added at the insistence of an Minnesota Representative who gave very muddled thinking.
At first, only short barreled shotguns (sawed off shotguns) were included as gangster weapons, along with all handguns, automatic firearms, and curiously, silencers.
"They" do not really believe that. They just want more control, and to protect their "rice bowl".
There isn't any logic in this.
And how did they come up with an arbitrary barrel length of 16 inches, anyway?
From your article..
The firearms act had been passed as a tax act to circumvent the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and the Tenth Amendment. The reason was openly acknowledged by Cummings and others during the Ways and Means Committee hearings.
Read more: https://www.ammoland.com/2021/09/atf-included-shoulder-stocked-pistols-short-barreled-rifles-1961/#ixzz7qWKzWU7E
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
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It was just arbitrarily a number meant to keep sawed off shotguns from being concealeable. The original number for shotguns was 18 inches.
They reduced it to 16 inches from the 18 inch number for shotguns, because the government wanted people to have the M1 carbines as militia weapons. The carbines barrel is a hair over 16 inches long.
The who NFA was originally aimed at registering and licensing all pistols. The short barreled rifles and shotguns were included mostly to prevent people from converting rifles and shotguns into pistols.
The whole thing never made much sense, once pistols were removed from it, under lobbying by the NRA and members.
“They aren’t banning all braces. A brace on a 9mm pistol, that is really a brace and not a stock, will still be legal.”
You are so wrong... It absolutely includes stabilizing braces on pistols. They claim it turns a pistol into a SBR... Better look close... And they left the list and wording open ended to apply how they like to anything they want.
"Nothing in this rule bans “stabilizing braces” or the use of “stabilizing braces” on pistols"
You can take a look at their Worksheet 4999 which defines the criteria for a braced pistol. It is clear that there is a limited allowance for real pistols to have a brace.
It is clearly a huge change, and almost all current "pistols" (i.e., AR-15s w/braces) will be reclassifies SBRs. But it absolutely does not ban all braces.
They also included an example of a pistol brace that would be legal: 
No... You better read it well in whole. and go look at the examples they use. It can be applied to any and all pistols that have a shoulder stock or brace attached, or a shoulder stock or brace that can be attached to a pistol. It is highly contradictory of it’s self.
I know they are trying to claim certain exclusions, but an in depth reading shows they put the open language right back in to also regulate the very same they claim it does not apply to. Read the definition of “stabilizing brace”. It includes and and all shoulder stocks that can be attached to any firearm including pistols.
They even state that attaching one to a pistol converts it to a SBR therefore making it restricted. You have far too much trust in the honesty of government, they are sneaking in the backdoor with this rule and wording.
“It can be applied to any and all pistols that have a shoulder stock”
“It includes and and all shoulder stocks”
yeah, no duh. That’s the point, braces (steady a pistol with a forearm) were supposed to be legal, not devices that were actually stocks, designed to be shouldered.
The problem is the NFA. SBRs should not be regulated and subject to a tax stamp. All this is, is arguing about the minutiae of whether a brace is secretly a stock (and yes, 99.9% of braces are are really stocks), and those were banned in the NFA.
Not if the overall length is at least 26”.
and the barrel is 16”
No... unless they recently changed it, it was either or...
It’s not helpful that the pistol brace people have been laughing at ATFE for several years about what a simple way an arm brace is to get around the (unconstitutional) 1934 National Firearms Act.
Our bureaucrats do tend to be dense, but they’re not THAT dense.
Depends on which direction you look at it.
Barrel length under 16”, or overall length under 26” = SBR.
Barrel length over 16”, and overall length over 26” = Title I.
Barrel under 16” is either a pistol or NFA.
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/6XhVhGvMpwk/maxresdefault.jpg
https://cdn.rockislandauction.com/dev_cdn/78/1103.jpg?cachebust=2019-10-31T19:16:53.000Z
There are untold millions of stabilizing braces out there. I see this as a scheme to register them and I hope that the SC will see this as an unconstitutional rule change.
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