Current Events > ATF does another dumb thing.

(+) Yeah! (+)

ATF just released their new guidelines for arm braces. For those who don't know, arm braces are a device that (usually) replaces a stock on the back of a firearm which can be used to strap the gun on to the forearm instead of bracing against the shoulder. They were invented so you could use something like a pistol carbine with one hand, which can be especially useful for someone with a physical disability. However, an arm brace can ALSO be used like a stock, but it was NOT CLASSIFIED as a stock, so it didn't cause legal issues for firearms where a stock would turn them into an SBR or assault weapon.

Now, these first started rolling out, like, 2 years ago and people immediately pointed out that these were a loophole in the regulation. What was the ATF's response?

"Yeah, they're fine".

Well, with the green light, companies started pumping these suckers out and, from what I've heard, there's easily more than a million of these braces on the market.

Flash forward to now, and the ATF has finally decided that these "arm brace" things actually need to be regulate for all the reasons people were already well aware of. They've released an extremely arbitrary point system checklist for determinig whether an arm brace is illegal or not. This point system effectively bans nearly all of the arm braces on the market, immediately turning probably over a million of gun owners into "felons" overnight.

tl;dr ATF bungled regulation on a firearm loophole and now millions of illegal firearms exist. Why should you care? Well, you should:

1. Be pro-gun and realize this arbitrary behavior is a gross mistreatment of gun owners via either over-reach or utterly inept communication and organization.

2. Be anti-arm brace, and realize that the ATF's inaction has led to an uncontrollable number of these products existing on the market.

3. Be pro-regulation, and realize that this kind of agency malpractice is precisely the kind of thing that creates distrust in regulation and drives more moderates into the camp of anti-regulation.

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Ban guns.

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The obvious fix here is to reclassify assault weapons such that if I stick an arm brace on the back of a semi auto pistol it's not suddenly an assault weapon. That doesn't make sense from a pure logical standpoint.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

The obvious fix here is to reclassify assault weapons such that if I stick an arm brace on the back of a semi auto pistol it's not suddenly an assault weapon. That doesn't make sense from a pure logical standpoint.

For certain the entire basis for Assault Weapons is pretty screwed up. What useful stuff there is in there is off-set by the sheer absurdity of trivial and fear-based legislation.

I need to verify the exact wording, but I believe the arm brace regulation also redefines an SBR (Short-barreled rifle) with an arm brace as either being too short (like, under 12 inches) OR too long (over 26 inches). The argument for banning SBRs is that they were too concealable, and now there are SBR's that exist because they're... too long. It's bizarre. You can't just hammer through non-sensical regulation and expect the counter-movement to not get completely fanatical in their defense against it. It's poor governing.

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Just label guns as a class one narcotic like weed boom problem solved

This is why allowing bureaucratically-decreed punitive regulations to even happen is always a disaster.

I 100% agree with you that this decision was handled poorly. However, pistol braces should have always been illegal or more carefully defined by a letter. It also doesn't make anyone a felon because all you have to do is take off the brace.

ATFE should probably buy back all the braces out there that can't be used anymore though.

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I feel like it would just make more sense to regulate shit based on actual math related to the stopping power of a gun and not the dimensions.

Like, if you've got a 45, a mag/barrel can have no more than this much ammo and it can't fire faster than x times per second and can have only so much accuracy out to y range or something like that.

People get too fixated on the fucking shape of the gun and not the bullets that are the ones killing things.

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Buzz Killjoy posted...

I 100% agree with you that this decision was handled poorly. However, pistol braces should have always been illegal or more carefully defined by a letter. It also doesn't make anyone a felon because all you have to do is take off the brace.

ATFE should probably buy back all the braces out there that can't be used anymore though.

That's pretty much where most of the reasonable gun influencers I know of stood. I saw a lot of recommendations not to buy an arm brace (Or even film it for your social media/youtube) because it was probably going to get banned. It was obviously circumventing regulations but the ATF just came out and said "Yeah we don't care have fun". They could have put a moratorium on their sale while forming a comprehensive regulation for them but nah.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

I feel like it would just make more sense to regulate shit based on actual math related to the stopping power of a gun and not the dimensions.

Like, if you've got a 45, a mag/barrel can have no more than this much ammo and it can't fire faster than x times per second and can have only so much accuracy out to y range or something like that.

People get too fixated on the fucking shape of the gun and not the bullets that are the ones killing things.

I think regulation should be evidence based with the goal to prevent gun crime (And gun suicide, as a secondary focus). For actual gun features, that means identifying the features of guns that are used for crime, confirming these features are related to their criminal usage, are targeting them with regulation.

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Pogo_Marimo posted...

For certain the entire basis for Assault Weapons is pretty screwed up. What useful stuff there is in there is off-set by the sheer absurdity of trivial and fear-based legislation.

I need to verify the exact wording, but I believe the arm brace regulation also redefines an SBR (Short-barreled rifle) with an arm brace as either being too short (like, under 12 inches) OR too long (over 26 inches). The argument for banning SBRs is that they were too concealable, and now there are SBR's that exist because they're... too long. It's bizarre. You can't just hammer through non-sensical regulation and expect the counter-movement to not get completely fanatical in their defense against it. It's poor governing.

Which reminds me of my usual assertion that there are no such things as common sense gun laws and regulations: because the ones deciding stupid shit like this have absolutely no common sense regarding firearms whatsoever.

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Pogo_Marimo posted...

I think regulation should be evidence based with the goal to prevent gun crime (And gun suicide, as a secondary focus). For actual gun features, that means identifying the features of guns that are used for crime, confirming these features are related to their criminal usage, are targeting them with regulation.

The most common guns used in suicides and homicides are also the ones most often used in self defense. Legislating away those things ultimately has an end result like most other countries where you're just not allowed to have any guns except long guns for hunting.

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CADE FOSTER posted...

Just label guns as a class one narcotic like weed boom problem solved

I went to a gun show a couple months ago. Guy was selling grenade launchers, both the M79 and the multi round type that look like a giant revolver. I was tempted, he wanted to trade it for the silver I brought, but 2 things:

1. Where the fuck am I ever going to be able to fire this thing? And just...why?

2. My fiancee would've been pissed. We stay out of each other's finances, but I feel she'd be justified in her fury and honestly I had no good pro-grenade launcher argument lmao.

Anyway, point is I could've bought literal grenade launchers no problem, but I can't buy a plant that makes me giggle and really enjoy video games.

What a world

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Yeah most people here wanna outright ban guns so you're not gonna hear much bitching about this.

What is funny though is the fact that literally nobody gets killed by braced AR/AK pistols. I would bet all my guns that less than 10 gun murders last year were braced pistols.

The dumbass gangsters running around killing each other dont put them on their "dracos". In fact they will take shoulder stocks off of legal rifles to make them shorter.

Just another example of DC not giving a fuck about actual violence but getting mad that law abiding citizens found away around their stupid ass $200 tax.


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Buzz Killjoy posted...

However, pistol braces should have always been illegal or more carefully defined by a letter.

Lol elmer fudd over here bootlicking the atf

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yemmy posted...

Yeah most people here wanna outright ban guns so you're not gonna hear much bitching about this.

What is funny though is the fact that literally nobody gets killed by braced AR/AK pistols. I would bet all my guns that less than 10 gun murders last year were braced pistols.

The dumbass gangsters running around killing each other dont put them on their "dracos". In fact they will take shoulder stocks off of legal rifles to make them shorter.

Just another example of DC not giving a fuck about actual violence but getting mad that law abiding citizens found away around their stupid ass $200 tax.

Exactly this. Shooters with ill intent who actually know guns and are proficient and dangerous with them don't use gimmicky shit like this. The Vegas shooter used bump stocks but as I'm sure you know putting one on will get you removed or laughed out of most ranges. Beyond that most mass shooters (and shootings
in general) don't use/involve gimmicky add-ons that congress thinks is the real problem here.

That said...I will fuck with some things considered gimmicky, but I also am 100% certain I'm never going to murder anyone either.

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PoundGarden posted...

Shooters with ill intent who actually know guns and are proficient and dangerous with them don't use gimmicky shit like this.

Well the sba3 brace or the magpul brace are pretty effective, but if you're gonna do something illegal you're probably just gonna throw a regular stock on it. I doubt your average crip or mass shooter cares that their gun is illegal.

Im not for banning any of this shit but you'd think they'd go after 9/40/38/380/45 handguns because that is what most people are getting murdered with but they will be literally the last things they try to ban.

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yemmy posted...

Yeah most people here wanna outright ban guns so you're not gonna hear much bitching about this.

What is funny though is the fact that literally nobody gets killed by braced AR/AK pistols. I would bet all my guns that less than 10 gun murders last year were braced pistols.

The dumbass gangsters running around killing each other dont put them on their "dracos". In fact they will take shoulder stocks off of legal rifles to make them shorter.

Just another example of DC not giving a fuck about actual violence but getting mad that law abiding citizens found away around their stupid ass $200 tax.

Didn't the Boulder supermarket killer use a braced pistol? That was only like a few months ago.

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justaguy3492 posted...

Didn't the Boulder supermarket killer use a braced pistol? That was only like a few months ago.

Yeah I think he did.

The ATF was already doing this by that time, and even if they weren't, it wouldn't really make my point any less valid.

I seriously doubt his body count would have been less if he used a real rifle with like 6 more inches of OAL. He never attempted to conceal it or used it in a tight space.

This is taxation of law abiding citizens just because they can. They don't care about people dying lol they just want $200.

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yemmy posted...

Well the sba3 brace or the magpul brace are pretty effective, but if you're gonna do something illegal you're probably just gonna throw a regular stock on it. I doubt your average crip or mass shooter cares that their gun is illegal.

For sure. What I'm saying is (and this is obviously hypothetical for the sake of discussion) if i was going to do a mass shooting, it doesn't make sense to use these. I'm going to have a rifle/shotgun as a primary, with pistols as backup if the long gun jams or runs out of ammo. So I'm not going to have bracers on the pistols, they'd be in a holster. And where im at is if someone has a nice Magpul etc brace for their pistol, it stands to reason they probably have a long gun and would use that for the primary.
Which brings us right back to most shootings are done with a normal, vanilla gun.

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yemmy posted...

Lol elmer fudd over here bootlicking the atf

Whatever dude. It fucking sucks but I register all my SBRs because I didn't want this to happen to me and I knew it was gonna happen some day. Pretty much nothing NFA-related is reasonably decided or implemented by our government.

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