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Biden doj lists 71-page proposed rule on pistol braces

1ABNDT

.270 WIN
What a Maroon.




https://www.guns.com/news/2021/06/07...64b0013f894321


06/07/2021 03:31 PM | CHRIS EGER
BIDEN DOJ LISTS 71-PAGE PROPOSED RULE ON PISTOL BRACES


Keeping up with promises made to a crowd of anti-gun advocates at the White House earlier this year, the Biden-Harris Administration has unveiled a complicated new rule on the legality of stabilizing pistol braces.

The proposed rule, spanning some 71 pages, was announced by Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Monday. The rulemaking aims to clarify when attached stabilizing brace accessories convert pistols into illegal short-barreled rifles, which, if not registered in compliance with the National Firearms Act and taxed at a rate of $200 per firearm, could earn those possessing such guns a $250,000 fine and as much as 10 years in federal prison.

https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regula...ilizing-braces


To determine if a pistol with a brace installed is legal under the proposed rule, or is in fact an SBR, the Justice Department has developed a worksheet, ATF 4999, to wade through the minefield of potential disqualifiers. It has three sections:

Score four or more points on either of its latter sections and the gun is an SBR.

Right off the bat, Section I covers weight and length. If a pistol with the brace attached weighs less than 64 ounces and or is shorter than 12 inches, owners are out of the woods. However, that same bar, just four pounds, is a tough one to clear for most AR or AK style pistols with anything but the shortest barrels.

Section II, centered on the brace itself, questions the adjustability, support, design, and rear surface area of the device. Score four or more points, and you may have a stock rather than a brace.


60be7253e55adda96ed8e3a869898cfbac56e71d82d11.jpg


Section I/II


If the brace in question is still a brace after passing Section I and II, Section III covers the configuration of the firearm including length of pull, how the brace is attached, what kind it is, and "peripheral accessories." A hand stop or bipod will ding the user 2 points each while a heavy gun (over 120 ounces when fully equipped) or presence of an optic without extended eye relief is a full four-point fail.



60be72887b9e27b2a700eb9180ba417a6cdb79ef1ebcb.jpg

Section III


The proposed rule includes these three examples of the grading process.
60be72b498dc05f4daef965d64523f228f952eabc21f0.jpg


This example, with an SB-Mini brace installed, would score three points on Section II and three points on Section III, meaning it would, just barely, still be a legal braced pistol under the proposed rule.
60be72d893d0f4dba845b7eadaff3cf2ea1ffad2167d6.jpg

This example, with an SBA3 brace installed, would score eight points on Section II and five on Section III, making it an SBR under the proposed rule, racking up points due to the material added to the rear of the brace, the fact the cuff does not extend fully around the forearm, and its length of pull.
60be72f86ddcc63b53828e0f51fd84fefa26e8e279a84.jpg

The third example, fitted with a Shockwave Blade on a KAK tube, earns five points on Section II and a whopping 15 on Section III since there is no forearm strap, has a long length of pull, and is outfitted with a secondary grip and a scope. The ATF would see this as an SBR under the proposed rule.


As there is no grandfathering allowed under the rule-- even for guns lawfully purchased with braces pre-installed by the manufacturer-- owners of such firearms would have to either turn the braced pistol over to Uncle Sam, permanently remove or alter the brace so that it cannot be reattached, remove the short barrel from the firearm and install one at least 16-inches in length, destroy the firearm, or submit a Form 1 and $200 to convert it to an SBR.

Estimates are as high that manufacturers have sold between 3 million and 7 million “stabilizing braces” between the years 2013 to 2020 and the ATF feels the proposed rule may "affect upwards of 1.4 million individuals, 13,210 Type 1 Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs), and 3,881 Type 7 FFLs."

Once published to the Federal Register, those interested will have 90 days to make a public comment on the proposed new rule. Comments made during last year's pistol brace rulemaking proposal do not carry over to this one.





Stay Strong America
 
Well, looks like I sold my CZ Scorpion EVO S3 with a KAK tube and Shockwave brace just in time (last week?). It would have definitely put me in SBR territory.

I THINK I would have had 15 points on it. The threshold is what, FOUR?

Bastards.
 
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Yes nitesite.

Yes they are.

They have stopped enforcing existing regulations and started making up their own.

So, yes, they are bastards.

A few congresspersons have written a harshly worded letter though.

https://hudson.house.gov/press-rele...on-atf-to-withdraw-stabilizing-brace-guidance

And while I don't believe this would ever pass, I applaud her for submitting it.

https://thepoliticalinsider.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-introduces-bill-to-abolish-the-atf/

And then there is always this:

iu


FWIW, I have written comments (not that I think that's going to stop anything) and have also written my elected reps. That may do more to stop it than participating in their comment section, of which they have only published a couple hundred of the 60,000+ comments they have received so they are indeed censoring the ever-loving crap out of the comments too.
 
So Much for Moderation: Biden’s Gun Grab Is Officially Underway
by Jason Ouimet, Executive Director, NRA-ILA - Sunday, June 20, 2021

grab.jpg

Biden’s nomination of former ATF agent and anti-gun activist David Chipman to head, the ATF sends a clear message.

Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2021. Seventy-seven days later, on April 7, he announced a series of executive actions that would criminalize formerly lawful behavior and invest a rank gun-control advocate with the power to target gun owners as criminals.

Biden likes to portray himself as America’s best hope for unity, moderation and normalcy. With these actions, however, he has made it unmistakably clear that millions of law-abiding gun owners do not deserve the consideration and respect of other Americans.

Instead, we are his scapegoats for social ills we didn’t cause and for criminal acts we didn’t commit. Worse, the price we are expected to pay will not even meaningfully improve public safety. Joe Biden has, for all practical purposes, removed gun owners from the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizenship and from the benefits of the rule of law.

The NRA has long warned this day was coming. But, as the White House emphasized in its official announcement, these orders are merely “initial actions” that are sure to continue and to escalate as long as Biden and the extremists who surround him remain in power.

Biden’s determination to push activism over professionalism and unity was most exemplified by his choice to nominate David Chipman as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Biden emphasized Chipman’s time as an ATF agent, as if he were merely a dedicated police professional who would put politics aside to protect the American people.

In fact, Chipman’s post-ATF career has been one of overt gun control and political advocacy, including for Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety and for the Giffords gun-control group.

Chipman was a “policy advisor” for both organizations, meaning that he counseled them on which gun-control schemes to pursue. His government experience was supposed to provide the technical and subject matter expertise and credibility to back up the organizations’ public bluster.

One would think a career law-enforcement agent would want to focus on violent crime and criminals in formulating policy supposedly to make America safer. Yet, Chipman has emphasized expanding the reach of the law to envelop people who unwittingly violate arbitrary bureaucratic line-drawing, rather than using criminal statutes to crack down on violent and unrepentant predators. His instincts are those of the opportunistic D.C. swamp creature rather than the traditional American lawman.

This is evident in the policies pushed by Chipman’s gun-control paymasters. Everytown, for example, has long preached that so-called “universal background checks” are key to its “plan to end gun violence.”

Yet, Chipman knows as well as anyone that serious criminals who are prohibited from firearm possession—the people who pose the biggest public safety threats with guns—don’t submit to background checks. They obtain their guns through criminal networks, theft, straw purchases and other channels who purposely and systematically defy the law. The full weight of this policy will instead fall on the people who seek to obey the law, placing more fees, more bureaucracy and more government intrusion between them and the exercise of their constitutional rights.

The real value of this policy for gun-banners is the creation of a government-accessible and taxpayer-funded paper (or digital) trail to every lawfully transferred firearm. Those records form the framework for a national gun registry, which would facilitate any future attempt to seize lawfully held guns.

Even if this happens in incremental steps, the final outcome is preordained. Two of Biden’s other executive actions, as I’ll explain, would upset what was considered settled law. But, the law is never truly settled for gun-banners as long as law-abiding Americans still have guns.

Giffords’ gun-control agenda is more expansive, encompassing virtually every scheme that has been proposed in the last 50 years to make lawful firearm ownership more difficult, expensive, legally perilous and impractical. Giffords filed a brief in the landmark Second Amendment case, District of Columbia v. Heller. The brief argued that, “The Second Amendment does not limit the options available to cities to address the problem of gun violence.” Notably, Giffords argued that the District’s complete ban on the possession of handguns by law-abiding Americans was constitutional. Such an interpretation would have completely eviscerated the Second Amendment.

This extremist view put Giffords sharply out of touch with the American people. For those who might think that Giffords has moved on from such extreme views, their law center’s website still proudly notes that they filed the brief arguing “that the right to possess a firearm is not based on an individual right of self-defense, but rather related to service in a militia based on the prefatory language in the Amendment.” To the degree it reflects Chipman’s view of the Second Amendment, it indicates he is more activist than lawman and would enthusiastically embrace the most-far-reaching gun control, including expansive gun bans.

Biden also ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to promulgate a new rule that would turn unfinished metal and plastic templates favored by hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers into regulated firearm receivers and stabilizing brace-equipped pistols into “short-barreled rifles” subject to special taxation and registration.

Since the founding of the Republic, Americans have always been able to make their own firearms for lawful personal uses. Traditionally, that has been considered none of the government’s business until the firearms entered the stream of commerce.
 
Current ATF policy does not consider what are known as 80% receivers as subject to the same types of regulations as finished receivers that are ready to be built into functional firearms. These 80% receivers, typically made of metal or polymers, are shaped to facilitate their transition into firearm frames or receivers, but still require relatively precise drilling and machining to be usable for that purpose.


But, the law is never truly settled for gun- banners as long as law-abiding Americans still have guns.


The 80% threshold is partly a matter of practicality. If everything that could, with sufficient effort and know-how, be fashioned into a firearm was itself a firearm, then ATF would be overseeing the extraction of iron or bauxite ore from the ground. Lines have to be drawn.


Biden obviously wants to move those lines back to a more primitive stage of manufacture. If history is any guide, the ATF will want to set an arbitrary standard that will be changed again in the future when it suits their preference.And how detached will the policy eventually become from the legal standards actually present in the statutes enacted by Congress?


This proposal will therefore cause logistical headaches and legal jeopardy for legitimate firearm manufacturers and private makers, but it cannot stop those determined to evade the law to make and sell guns for nefarious ends. If people are willing to possess and use a gun in violation of the law, why would they have any qualms about violating the law to make it?


Biden also ordered the DOJ to promulgate a rule to “make clear when a device marketed as a stabilizing brace effectively turns a pistol into a short-barreled rifle subject to the requirements of the National Firearms Act.” You may remember that ATF already tried to do this last December, sparking so much opposition and outrage that it withdrew the proposal before the end of its comment period.


This effort has always been a solution in search of a problem. Braced pistols are used extremely rarely in crime, and are also more expensive than typical handguns. Braced pistols obviously do not feature the concealment, portability, and relative affordability as standard handguns.


As with unfinished receivers, they are being singled out merely as a target of opportunity, not because doing so actually solves any pressing problem.


Biden’s executive actions also order the DOJ to publish “model ‘red-flag’ legislation” for states that wish to empower courts to issue surrender or seizure orders for firearms whose lawful owners are determined to be a danger to self or others. While largely symbolic and duplicative of the various such laws and proposals already in existence, this move demonstrates that the administration is happy to use any pretext to encourage seizure of lawfully possessed guns.


It takes a gun-control advocate to argue a person is just dangerous enough to be ineligible to possess guns, but not for any other kind of intervention to address the true underlying cause of dangerousness. Seizing a person’s lawful property could indeed make a volatile situation even worse; at least one gun owner has already been killed from an attempt to execute an order of this type.


Thanks to your support, NRA has already started more than two-million-dollar campaign to counter this gun-control push. We’ve invested in television and digital ads, mailed postcards, sent thousands of text messages and engaged in town halls in targeted states to ensure that the United States Senate rejects Biden’s gun-control agenda.


Official proposed language for the rules and model legislation was unavailable as this article went to press. Exact numbers are difficult to quantify, but clearly millions of Americans already lawfully own personally made firearms and braced pistols. Will they retroactively be declared criminals if they do not surrender, modify, destroy, register or pay new taxes on them? Time will tell.


But the time has passed when Joe Biden can claim to be a unifying moderate. His gun grab has officially begun


https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2021/6/20/so-much-for-moderation-biden-s-gun-grab-is-officially-underway
 
Well, looks like I sold my CZ Scorpion EVO S3 with a KAK tube and Shockwave brace just in time (last week?). It would have definitely put me in SBR territory.

I THINK I would have had 15 points on it. The threshold is what, FOUR?

Bastards.

Not sure exactly nitesite, I'm from Canada and we don't have a points system like that. But we do have atrocious FA laws and restrictions, in which I fear are trying to be implemented on the USA. Registration/Mag Limits/Red Flag laws/ Banning certain Firearms under the guise of "Public Safety".

Your amazing FZS EVO is already banned here in Canada "safe queen" just not confiscated. The "Amnesty" ends May 1 2022. Unless the Litigations before the Court/Judge changes that. It will be a "SS!" I mean how does one "confiscate" a firearm when it's not "registered".
 
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Yes nitesite.

Yes they are.

They have stopped enforcing existing regulations and started making up their own.

So, yes, they are bastards.

A few congresspersons have written a harshly worded letter though.

https://hudson.house.gov/press-rele...on-atf-to-withdraw-stabilizing-brace-guidance

And while I don't believe this would ever pass, I applaud her for submitting it.

https://thepoliticalinsider.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-introduces-bill-to-abolish-the-atf/

And then there is always this:

iu


FWIW, I have written comments (not that I think that's going to stop anything) and have also written my elected reps. That may do more to stop it than participating in their comment section, of which they have only published a couple hundred of the 60,000+ comments they have received so they are indeed censoring the ever-loving crap out of the comments too.




Good on you John A, keep writing, emailing, calling, let them know that fewer firearms does not mean less violence. Let them know instead of wasting tax payers dollars with feeble "steal back" programs and confiscating private property, that those "multiple billions" would be better spent on "Social programs, Housing, Education, Daycare, LE". Let them know the "Economic" impact it would have on Businesses, Family, Friends, You, and also mention the "physical" and "mental" stress you are going through and that they need to consider putting the blame where it belongs.



Stay Proud and Classy America.
 
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I do not pretend to believe that the politicians are making gun laws to make it harder on criminals and it's never been about crime because it's not about crime prevention as they have said ad nauseum over the decades.

It's about control and making their big dollar donors like soros happy (who happened to be one of the folks going around confiscating imprisoned jews property) in order to make the reich wealthier. So, he knows a thing or three about what worked to change Germany into the monster that it became and he's spent a lot of money to make America pay for what it's done.

Please don't get me wrong. It's not just Soros that's the problem. He's just a part of it. The even bigger problem is the politicians that are paid off so easily that needs to be addressed.

America is nearing a great divide that will not be pleasant to watch when it finally boils over. Many people see it for what it is. And there are many that are still oblivious.
 
I do not pretend to believe that the politicians are making gun laws to make it harder on criminals and it's never been about crime because it's not about crime prevention as they have said ad nauseum over the decades.

It's about control and making their big dollar donors like soros happy (who happened to be one of the folks going around confiscating imprisoned jews property) in order to make the reich wealthier. So, he knows a thing or three about what worked to change Germany into the monster that it became and he's spent a lot of money to make America pay for what it's done.

Please don't get me wrong. It's not just Soros that's the problem. He's just a part of it. The even bigger problem is the politicians that are paid off so easily that needs to be addressed.

America is nearing a great divide that will not be pleasant to watch when it finally boils over. Many people see it for what it is. And there are many that are still oblivious.


Agreed on many points you bring to light, its unfortunate the ones who are blind end up restricting those who see.
 
To update the topic, there are now more than 101,000 comments that have been submitted according to regulations counter.

However, atf are only listing a very small fraction of those. I have submitted two different comments and even have the email confirmation numbers and neither of them will even pull up in the search.

No results found.

What does that mean?

They are censoring the ever loving crap out of the comments.
 
So...... If someone owns a federally legal and taxed SBR can that SBR be legally transported across state lines and be in full compliance?
 
It can.

ATF has a paper for that though. Most people just fill them out (start and stop date) of Jan 1 to Dec 31 of any given year.

Yes, like anything else the government does, it's stupid.

https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/f...rily-export-certain-nfa-firearms-atf/download

Or, you can either transport it in 16" or longer rifle form without the paperwork according to the nfa guidebook that is on their website. Or, keep it short and use it as a pistol.
 
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