ATF downplays impact of new gun ruling, expects 60% to register AR ‘pistols’

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in the new assessment that other government reports that millions of gun owners will be impacted are wrong by huge margins.
What’s more, the agency said in a 95-page impact analysis of its 293-page rule regulating AR-style pistols that most owners will give in and register their guns despite online campaigns calling for a mass boycott of the new rules and threats from Congress and Second Amendment groups to immediately file suits to stop implementation of the changes.
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Opponents, citing industry data and even the bipartisan Congressional Research Service, have claimed that the rule will impact millions of gun owners and up to 40 million firearms.
But in the impact statement, ATF said those figures are inflated. It estimated that just three million people might be impacted.
It estimated that of those with the firearms, 826,000 will decide to register their 1.6 million weapons with the rest turning them into ATF or destroying or altering them.
Oh my. The only really bad thing about this report is that it’s out there for public consumption.
I think that information is way, way off. It doesn’t account for the numbers of ARs with < 16″ barrels that have been sold, the number that have been built, and the number of existing ARs that have been modified by replacing a 16″ barrel with a 12.5″ barrel (by a simple order and shipment from a machine shop).
Moreover, the notion that half of them will register their guns while the other half turns them in to the ATF or destroys them is simply ridiculous.
But I don’t really think the ATF believes this analysis, do you?