As usual, Democratic President Joe Biden and his administration are making up new rules as they go along, anything to push their agenda forward. But as two new lawsuits explain, one of the most recent gun rules is the last straw and definitely a step too far.
The new rule, if you haven’t heard, is that the ATF, with the Department of Defense and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s participation, have said they will begin cracking down on stabilizing braces for pistols. According to Garland, adding such a brace makes the firearm into something more like a rifle than a pistol. And as such, he says they should be regulated under the National Firearms Act.
They call it “The Final Rule, although it likely won’t be the last of its kind. Simply put, they will be illegal, and ATF supposedly has the right to confiscate the braces and the pistol they are attached to.
Thankfully, a number of veterans and those familiar with firearms of this nature are fighting back on the issue.
The main reason is that, like a great many of Biden’s other decisions, it is an example of federal overreach at its finest.
One lawsuit is suing the ATF, its director, the Department of Justice, and AG Garland. According to the Firearms Policy Coalition and William Mock and Christopher Lewis of Texas, “federal agencies do not have the power” to create such new laws.
Congress alone has that power; and as usual, Biden and his ilk have gone around them to do whatever they want.
According to the suit, ATF and Biden’s admin have violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedures Act in creating The Final Rule.
Another major problem with the new “rule” is that it would essentially make criminals and felons out of law-abiding citizens overnight for doing nothing more than owning a firearm accessory that has been lawful for decades.
As the suit explains, our founding fathers allowed men and women to “customize” their pistols and firearms to make shooting easier and more accurate, particularly when shooting one-handed, as many pistols are.
The second lawsuit filed against this rule describes this even further.
As Marine veteran Darren Britto says, using stabilizing braces is one of the only ways in which he can still use firearms and exercise his Second Amendment rights. Unfortunately, like a great many individuals, he suffers from an injury to his rotator cuff.
This makes shooting a traditional rifle or shotgun with a stock nearly impossible, as the stock must be tucked tightly in your shoulder. As he says, “By having the brace, I can affix it to my forearm and be able to have better control of the firearm.”
But according to this new rule, Britto’s only method of shooting is about to become illegal, or at least heavily regulated.
If you know much about the classification of rifles and their regulations, you will understand that having such firearms requires your name to go onto a registry, which the government keeps for their records. If you don’t have your rifles registered, you can be considered a felon and face criminal penalties.
The new rule would require all stabilizing braces and their attached pistols to also go on the list. And why? Because the ATF just gave a rather vague law saying it supposedly makes it too much like a rifle.
And as Britto’s lawsuit points out, if the feds have a list of American-owned firearms, it means at some point they could very well decide to “go out and confiscate them,” as Deputy Counsel Dan Lennington at the Wisconsin Institute for Liberty & Law says.
Joining Britto in the lawsuit are two other Marine veterans, Gabriel Tauscher and Shawn Kroll of Wisconsin.
Their suit also alleges that the rule is unlawful, as neither ATF nor Biden’s lackeys have the authority to implement them. They have “usurped” Congress again. And America shouldn’t stand for it.
