Archive for the 'BATFE' Category

In what may be one of the earliest in many complaints filed, Firearms Policy Coalition legal action in the pistol brace rulemaking.

It can be found here: Mock v. Garland.

The Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty also filed a federal lawsuit in Texas.

Perhaps some enterprising reader/contributor would locate this PDF for us and drop it in the comments.

Source:

The source also has information about how to comply with the new rule.

Also, see: Rep. Andrew Clyde to Use Congressional Review Act to Override ATF Stabilizer Brace Rule.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) announced Monday he will use the Congressional Review Act against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF’s) pistol/stabilizer brace rule.

Breitbart News reported that the ATF’s pistol/stabilizer brace rule was finalized January 13, 2023, and that the agency is giving owners of pistols with said braces 120 days to register the firearms, once the rule appears in the Federal Registry.

On January 14, 2023, Breitbart News noted that the Congressional Review Act offered an avenue by which Congress could block the ATF’s rule.

Rep. Clyde and his colleagues are ready to use the Congressional Review Act and other means to stop the rule from turning millions of law-abiding gun owners into criminals.

Clyde spoke on the House floor Monday, saying:

Next week, I will reintroduce the Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today Act, or the SHORT Act, to repeal elements of the National Firearms Act, thereby prohibiting the ATF from registering and banning pistols with stabilizing braces. Additionally, as soon as the ATF’s unlawful rule is published to the Federal Register, I will introduce a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, to override the Biden administration’s unlawful overreach.

That’s a typically lame move for Republicans, knowing it’ll go nowhere.

Source.

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.

[ … ]

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?

Via reddit/Firearms, the ATF has updated their guidelines on imported pistols with braces here.

The ATF is watching comments, remarks, complaints and questions on their upcoming rule making.  This is the result.  They probably saw that it was unworkable.  That’s why the final rule hasn’t been published yet.

Nonetheless, I don’t trust them.  They have changed their opinion so many times that nothing they say can be relied on tomorrow.  And this answer doesn’t seem to comport with the proposed rule.

I’d also have to review the proposed rule again, along with (and in light of) this answer.  I don’t have time to do that, and I have neither braced pistols nor imported braced pistols (a subset of braced pistols subject to 922r).

If you do, it behooves you to step carefully.

Here are the precedents he cites.

Staples v United States.

Caetano v Massachusetts.

Concerning the last supreme court case, Mark is making the same remarks and observations we cited here.  Common use and dangerous and unusual are mutually exclusive.  Something can’t be dangerous and unusual if it’s in common use.

We should all dislike and disapprove of the Heller court including machine guns in the list of “dangerous and unusual” weapons.  I’ll repeat what I’ve said before concerning my youngest son’s experience in Fallujah.

After the city was barricaded off and locked down from the flow of insurgents through the main points of ingress and egress (and that includes terminating the flow of insurgents across the Euphrates River by deploying airborne assault with helicopter, of which my son took part), every family was allowed to own fully automatic AKs for home defense against the insurgents flowing in from Ramadi.

I ask my son if he ever felt danger from those weapons.  He gave me an unequivocal ‘no’ and stated that the danger came from insurgents, not men protecting their families, and he could always tell the difference.

Having said that, in this case the dangerous and unusual test may be our friend.  I suspect the ATF has written the very prose that will kill the pistol brace rule, and maybe other parts of the NFA if the supreme court is honest about this.

Prior:

Common Use Excludes Dangerous and Unusual

New ATF Brace Rule Forces Destruction of Imported Pistols

Gun Owners of American Discovers Fatal Trap in Pistol Brace Rule

ATF: Byzantine, Arbitrary and Ridiculous Rules to Live By

The Hunting and Conservation Nexus of the National Firearms Act

A friend sends this along (“Dangerous and Unusual: How an Expanding National Firearms Act Will Spell its Own Demise”), written almost as if prescient concerning the ATF circus on braced weapons.

In what must have been an allusion to the NFA, the Court found support for this common-use formulation by recognizing the “historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.'”  Removing the double negative, the Heller rule provides that the Second Amendment protects weapons in “common use” and those “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” but not those that are traditionally thought to be “dangerous and unusual.” What could follow from this formulation is concerning – if the legislature or an executive agency can make a certain type of firearm sufficiently rare to the point that the citizens do not typically possess it for lawful purposes, the firearm presumably loses Second Amendment protection. Using this exception, the Heller Court carved the NFA out of its common-use formulation, granting deference to historical prohibitions and a presumption of constitutionality therefrom. In short, the prevailing [*288] understanding of 2008 was that weapons that are “dangerous and unusual” are antithetical to being in “common use” or even “typical,” at the very least. However, “dangerous and unusual” must be treated as a rebuttable presumption, as it is possible for weapons that once fell into this category to gain such popularity through legal acquisition so as to become quite typical – and indeed common.

I think it’s obvious that the ATF has an uphill battle in court.  Doubtless there will be some lower and appellate courts who side with the administrative state, but in the end, this will all have to be rectified at the supreme court.  If they are true to their previous rulings, this brace ruling will be overturned.

The case against the ATF is clear enough just from the Heller court.  After Bruen, it’s really difficult to imagine why the ATF would be doing this if it were not for political pressure (and the existence of crackpot nutcase Merrick Garland).

We’re beginning to see the effects of the pistol brace rule.  Per reddit/Firearms, this report.

Range USA is refusing to transfer a pistol with a brace. They stated it comes up as a class 3 item in the system when they file with the ATF, so taking off the brace will not make the firearm eligible for transfer.

They stated the rule was effective 1/13/23, but it’s not in the federal register as of this moment.

Since the rule isn’t in effect yet it’s not apparent to me why anyone is “filing anything with the ATF.”  This should be a routine transfer.

Nonetheless, assuming the veracity of this report, the ATF is already interfering with interstate commerce and having averse effects on businesses.  They are also managing to choke an entire industry and errect roadblocks to an entire category of weapons in America.

All by design, of course.

Following what appears to be a terrible flaw in the pistol brace rule that will entrap gun owners, this report comes to us concerning another consequence of what they’ve said.  What a terrible mess, all by design.

This lawyer makes another relevant and disturbing point.

Article 1, Section 9, paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution says this: “No Bill of Attainder or ex-post facto Law will be passed.”

I guess what the constitution says isn’t important anymore.

Apparently some LEOs don’t like it because their Ox is being gored.  It would be nice if they would step up based on principle rather than expedience.  So, go cry me a river unless until you step up and do the right thing regardless of the effect on you.

BLUF.  Your form has 88 days before it turns sour and gets automatically rejected.  In other words, it times out.  The ATF can’t complete approvals at their normal pace in < 88 days, much less with millions of gun owners submitting forms for SBRs.  When your forms time out, it creates enforcement action for the ATF since you now have an unapproved SBR, for which you have sent your name, pictures, address, SS # and virtually every other piece of identifying information. Read that again. ENFORCEMENT ACTION.

It’s a trap.

From a friend, these words, pages 22-23 on the ATF website.

“Because these types of firearms were never designed to be fired from one hand, this rule, as described in the NPRM, does not apply to firearms commonly referred to as pistol grip shotguns.29 86 FR at 30828–29. The 2014 classification described above and any classification that provides that a pistol grip shotgun is not an NFA firearm is no longer valid or authoritative as of [INSERT DATE OF PUBLICATION IN THE FEDERAL REGISTER], and the firearm should be resubmitted to FATD for evaluation.”

Do you own a Benelli M4 for home defense?  If so, you may be rolled into the ATF clown show they’ve created for themselves and you with their awful pistol brace release.

Or based on the caveats, they may be referring to bullpup shotguns, or AOW.  Who knows at this point?