Is a pistol brace resolution incoming?

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) made headlines on Friday when he revealed that GOP leadership tried to tie a vote on a resolution undoing the ATF’s new pistol brace rule to Clyde’s support for the debt ceiling agreement, and on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co the congressman says that leadership is now feeling the heat from 2A groups and gun owners across the country.

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In fact, Clyde says he’s hoping to break some more news as early as Thursday this week by announcing that a vote on the resolution has been scheduled, but in the meantime he’s encouraging gun owners and Second Amendment advocates to keep up the pressure on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team to ensure that H.J. Res 44 gets a floor vote in short order.

Clyde’s resolution has close to 200 House co-sponsors already, and he tells Bearing Arms that since Friday he’s heard from several other lawmakers who are ready to vote in favor of the resolution nullifying the ATF rule. In fact, Clyde says he’s even heard from at least one Democrat who says they’re committed to voting for the resolution as well, so there’s a good possibility that a House vote will be a bipartisan vote of opposition to the administration’s attempt to usurp congressional authority and impose a brand new gun control law.

As Clyde notes, the federal rule not only subjects millions of gun owners to the possibility of federal prosecution if they don’t register their brace-equipped pistols as short barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act, but places gun owners in six states where short barreled rifles are prohibited by law in legal jeopardy as well. There’s no way for those gun owners to comply with the law, because as soon as they register their guns as an SBR with the federal government, they’ve just admitted to breaking state law. Their only recourse is to destroy or dispose of the stabilizing brace, at least if they’re not currently a member of the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, or Gun Owners of America, who all fall under the protection of a federal injunction halting enforcement against those organizations and its members for the time being.

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Clyde says millions of disabled Americans, including veterans, are being punished and having their rights violated thanks to the ATF’s new rule, and he believes its of fundamental importance for Congress to express its disapproval, knowing full well that Joe Biden would veto the resolution if it gets to his desk.

“He may actually veto this, but I think what’s more important is that the House and the Senate both pass it and it sends an incredibly strong message to the court system that Congress is not in favor of what the executive branch is doing. You know, the president is the head of the executive branch. He could shut the ATF down tomorrow if he wanted to, but he’s not going to do that. Congress is the one who legislates, not the executive branch, which again is why we need to pass this in the House and the Senate in that order, so that the courts get the message that this is the will of Congress.”

The pressure on Clyde to vote for the debt ceiling agreement may just be a particularly odious example of how the legislative sausage gets made in D.C., but now that the deal is done there’s no reason for House Republicans to delay a vote on H.J. Res 44 any longer. The Second Amendment rights and personal liberties of millions of gun owners are directly implicated and imperiled by the ATF’s new rule, and while I’m confident that the new rule isn’t going to withstand court scrutiny, formal congressional disapproval of the ATF’s actions would be of real benefit to the plaintiffs suing to invalidate the rule and its criminalization of brace-equipped pistols.

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Be sure to check out the entire conversation with Rep. Andrew Clyde in the video window below, and we’ll hopefully have some good news to report on H.J. Res 44 in the coming days.

 

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