The ATF, along with their cousins, the multitude of other three letter agencies, have not been making friends lately. Under the Biden-Harris regime, the ATF has embraced the rogue moniker they’ve received, and are a stunning example of the complete breakdown of our checks and balances. The ATF fancies themselves lawmakers in addition to being stormtroopers. Our friends over at AmmoLand News uncovered some interesting stuff last week. My colleague John Crump reported on what the ATF might be planning based on the verbiage in a budget justification.

AmmoLand News has uncovered information showing that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is planning to force gun owners to register firearms with pistol braces as a National Firearms Act (NFA) ATF Form 1 item.

The document (embedded below) was uncovered in a budget justification from the ATF to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This form confirms the leaked information AmmoLand News has heard for months from our inside sources at the ATF.

Digging through the document, Crump got to a portion that stuck out to him.

Due to the upcoming Amnesty Registration of Pistol Brace weapons, photos of the weapon being registered will be required to prove the weapon does utilize a pistol brace in its configuration and would qualify for an amnesty registration.

Not only does the document point to what the planned final rule is going to be on pistol braces, it also outlines the cost of this pointless measure.

The total estimated cost associated with this IC is: $ 1,472,498, which is calculated as follows: $57.26 (average cost per respondent to prepare and mail packet with responses) * 25,716 (# total respondents).

The estimated annual cost of $1,129,820.85 to the Federal Government

The topic of the rule change on pistol braces has been hotly debated with strong support of not changing the rule to make the items further regulated, or rather siding with what we’ll call liberty/freedom. The ATF, either knowing or unknowingly, is creating a burden on handicapped persons, or the differently abled, whom the pistol brace apparatus was first designed for.

At the end of the day, any and all arguments over this, the pistol brace adds to the accuracy in which an individual can fire a firearm, and it seems the ATF is complicit in making it more burdensome for people to be accurate in their marksmanship. Rather counterintuitive, right? A number of cases that concern AR variant firearms and semi-automatic rifles point out in their filing documents the hypocrisy on banning features that actually make firearms more accurate, therefore more effective, and thus safer.

It seems to me the ATF and opponents of pistol braced firearms (as well as accessories on semi-automatic rifles) want us to be less safe.

Crump brought up the rumors that had been swirling around from his sources, and he noted:

Our ATF inside sources have told AmmoLand News that the ATF was planning for an amnesty period where gun owners would be able to register their braced pistols as short-barreled rifles (SBR) and that it is expected they will receive a free tax stamp. The ATF charges $200 per SBR. Currently, there are at least four million braced pistols in the United States.

The ATF posted the proposed pistol brace rules to the Federal Register late last year for public comment. Over 250,000 comments were submitted, with most comments being against any new regulations. The gun community let their voices be heard, and the ATF ignored them.

The subject of the arm braces has been kicked around for quite awhile. In documents that AmmoLand received in 2020 (OPRA W160618), I touched on Moms Demand Action’s concern over the Troy-A4, an “other” firearm in a piece over there. This obsession with arm braces seems to have possibly come from these anti-freedom groups.

A March 13, 2020 email from “Moms Demand Action New Jersey”, signed by Theresa Turner and Shani Nuckols, chapter leaders at the time of sending, touched on the Troy-A4. The email was addressed to Matthew Platkin, who at the time was Chief Counsel to Governor Murphy, and is the current Acting Attorney General. That email read in part:

Dear Matt –

Shani and I want to thank you for taking the time out of your day yesterday to meet with us – you were obviously juggling a lot amidst this coronavirus crisis, so we really appreciate you switching gears to have a conversation about gun violence prevention and ways we can work together going forward.

I know we touched upon a lot of different things, so I just wanted to jot them down here so we can follow up as needed.

[…]

The Troy A4 “Other Firearm” – We’re concerned about this firearm that is being promoted by the NJ 2A Society. Is this legal in NJ?

There clearly was a buzz over these types of firearms within the anti-freedom caucus dating back to early 2020, and coming from the astroturf gaggle of goose stepping commie mommies we shouldn’t be surprised. What beef does Nanny Bloomberg have with the handicapped? He already lords over these women at MDA telling them what to do and say, now he wants to push around the disabled?

John Crump and the rest of our colleagues over at AmmoLand News did some serious heavy lifting on uncovering this information. So now we know what the final rule is likely to look like considering this information. The document can be found directly at the Office of Management and Budget files (OMB) site or on AmmoLand’s server.

Crump notes this all comes at the heels of eForms systems for some Form 1 NFA items being utilized. People who are caused to register their arm braced firearms as SBRs are likely to end up in an electronic database in my opinion. Through conjecture we can imagine it’s this electronic registry, and the torture testing of it, that also has a hand in this measure…the system could be a precursor to a registry of all arms (not that it’ll take the ATF a lot of work to slip those 4473s that are illegally stored electronically into a new database).

Let’s see what December brings when the final rule is adopted. Now would be a good time for the ATF to double back and make liars out of all of us. I’d be okay with that.