Despite decades of warnings from crime prevention and law experts, the Biden administration has taken a page out of FDR's book to crack down on legal gun owners.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has followed through on their plan to turn millions of lawful gun owners into felons in the name of "public safety" by reclassifying pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, effectively expanding the unconstitutional national gun registry.
Stabilizing braces are devices that can be attached to pistols to aid the user in balancing their arm. Originally created to help people with disabilities, the accessory is now more popular amongst mainstream shooters who use them to adapt pistols into guns that can be shot from the shoulder, which has been legal to do in the past. Now, there's a big hoop to jump through if you don't want to be hit with fines and/or jail time.
As the Department of Justice first proposed on June 7, 2021 and put into practice on January 13, 2023, those who wish to add stabilizers to their pistols "must comply with the heightened regulations on those dangerous and easily concealable weapons."
Under the new rules, any pistol modified with such a brace is now considered to be a short-barreled rifle. As the DOJ explained themselves, the National Firearms Act (NFA) has, since the 1930s, "imposed requirements on short-barreled rifles because they are more easily concealable than long-barreled rifles but have more destructive power than traditional handguns."
"Beyond background checks and serial numbers, those heightened requirements include taxation and registration requirements that include background checks for all transfers including private transfers," the statement reads. The tax required for anyone making or buying a short-barreled rifle is $200.
The Biden administration has generously granted all of the impacted manufacturers, dealers, and individuals a 120-day period to comply—by registering the firearm, removing the brace, surrendering the firearm to ATF, or destroying it.
Attorney General Merrick Garland "directed" the ATF to "address the issue of stabilizing braces" within 60 days at an April 2021 event with President Joe Biden, prompting the swift action taken by the DOJ in announcing the proposed rule the next month.
Biden had also previously selected former Obama advisor Steven Dettelbach to serve as the head of the ATF, who helped the administration reach their goal of passing yet another gun control law.
While the bureau claims the new rule won't impact stabilizing braces "that are objectively designed and intended as a 'stabilizing brace' for use by individuals with disabilities, and not for shouldering the weapon as a rifle," there is no "objective" standard listed for what disabled people are allowed to carry, or what is "intended" as an aid.
Experts have been warning about the dystopian consequences of criminalizing stabilizing braces, which are used by disabled and able-bodied individuals alike to increase balance and accuracy.
Dr. John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, wrote for Real Clear Politics: "Few seem to realize that stabilizing braces for pistols were originally designed to allow wounded and disabled veterans who may have lost the use of part of their hand to hold handguns. They are essentially a strap attached to the gun. Disabled individuals are often viewed as easy targets by criminals, and stabilizers make it easier to defend themselves."
He cites Rick Cicero, a disabled veteran who lost his right arm and leg in an explosion while serving in Afghanistan 13 years ago.
"If they take this away, they're violating their own law because this is designed and employed for people like me," Cicero told Spectrum News 9 after the DOJ proposed the rule in 2021.
Cicero, who teaches fellow injured veterans on how to shoot again, added that "the most important thing to me about this brace, this whole aspect, is another avenue of getting injured veterans out of the house."
According to Dr. Lott, the two instances that Biden cited to garner support for the new ATF policy weren't even valid examples of braces being used to better commit a crime.
