Biden's Pistol Brace Rule Would Put Pressure on an Already Strained ATF Division

[Dial H For Hero]

https://www.thetrace.org/2021/07/atf-national-firearms-act-pistol-brace-application-delay/?utm_source=The+Trace+mailing+list&utm_campaign=6512dd0f8f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_24_04_06_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f76c3ff31c-6512dd0f8f-112434573

President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is moving forward with a pledge to clamp down on pistol-stabilizing braces after the popular gun accessory was used in the March mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado.

But the plan put forward by the administration this summer will hinge on the efficiency of an obscure division at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that routinely misses its own performance benchmarks. And now, with millions of stabilizing braces estimated to be in circulation, some outside observers are warning the efforts to restrict them could flounder if federal regulators are unable to handle the workload.

The rules, which were proposed in June, would bring stabilizing braces under the purview of the National Firearms Act, an 87-year-old law that imposes tight restrictions on machine guns, silencers, rifles with short barrels, and other weapons deemed by Congress to pose an acute threat to public safety. If the rules come into force, gun owners seeking to attach a stabilizing brace to their pistol would have to obtain approval from the ATF’s NFA Division. That process can stretch more than a year and entails filing an application, undergoing extensive vetting, paying a $200 tax, and registering the weapon with the federal government. Violations can result in a 10-year prison term.

Mark Jones, a former ATF special agent who held various supervisory positions before retiring in 2011, said the rule change could trigger an avalanche of NFA applications for a division that is underprepared. “ATF’s been so poorly funded and resourced over the decades that it doesn’t have the people it needs,” Jones said. “If they just snapped their fingers and said, ‘Tomorrow all of you have to register these weapons or you’re felons,’ it would fail in a huge way.”

(Except)

As pointed out further in the article, there may be as many as 40 million pistol braces in the United States. An agency that already struggles to deal with registering a mere half million NFA items would be completely overwhelmed trying to deal with such numbers.

[Effete Snob]

1. "trying to deal with such numbers"

This is a common thought-process block which, once you get past it, looks really silly afterwards.

The fallacy goes like this: "You can't make X illegal, because there are so many of them out there that you can't go confiscate them all."

As pointed out in many contexts, the fallacy assumes that there is any need to go out and confiscate whatever it is. That's not really necessary, and it demonstrates that a lot of people just don't understand how this sort of thing works.

The way it works is simple, and it applies to more than just this, so we can generalize it to "thing X".

Thing X is a legal thing which is used in the commission of certain crimes. Society makes a decision, through its elected representatives and officials, to outlaw thing X.

Nobody - not a single soul - has to go out and hunt down who owns thing X.

What we are concerned about is criminals using thing X to commit crimes. And, yeah, as the saying goes "if thing X is outlawed, only outlaws will have thing X."

That's true, and it is very helpful.

Because, here's the thing.

1. Some guy gets pulled over for running a stop light. While asking for his license and registration, the police officer sees a thing X in the back seat of the car.

2. A neighbor reports a violent domestic disturbance next door. Officer responding to the domestic disturbance see a thing X sitting in the living room in plain view.

What these kinds of regulations do is to remove the element of "oh, we'll just have to wait until he tries to do something illegal with it" from ordinary situations and encounters where the thing X might be found on a person during an encounter with law enforcement.

If the accessory, whether commercially acquired or made at home, is itself an illegal device, you don't have people showing up at the range to practice with it, you don't have people openly transporting it, and so on. It becomes something of a nuisance to own or possess, which impacts the extent of its distribution generally.

It's astounding how many otherwise intelligent people think that any "law against X" requires a swarm of law enforcement agents to scour the countryside in pursuit of X. That's not how it works with literally anything else.

I'm off to buy my lawn darts. Ciao.

[Dial H For Hero]

2. I wasn't asserting that anyone would be going door to door looking for braces.

I merely pointed out (as was the focus of much of the article) that the ATF would be overwhelmed should tens of millions of brace owners start filling out the proposed paperwork.

[thucythucy]

3. Sounds like a good argument to stop underfunding the ATF.

Just as Republicans have starved the IRS sections that go after millionaire and billionaire tax cheats, it has for years underfunded the ATF as a sop to the gun lobby.

Right now the GOP continues to fight more funds to the IRS. It's not too difficult to see why: better enforcement of tax laws will impact many of their most wealthy donors.

More funding for the ATF sounds like a no brainer to me, and this article provides one more solid argument for that to happen.

[Dial H For Hero]

4. It would certainly let them process applicaations for popular NFA items such as silencers more

quickly.

[The Mouth]

5. I am always amazed at

the ignorant people who are against silencers.

It's not like anyone is going to fire a gun unnoticed, they just prevent ear damage when people practice.

[Dial H For Hero]

6. It doesn't surprise me at all, given that 99% of films and television programs portray silencers

reducing the noise of the gun an almost silent "phffft" sound. It also doesn't help that they're almost always shown being used by either assassins or secret agents / action heroes, when in point of fact the vast majority of silencers are in the hands of recreational shooters.

[The Mouth]

7. Required in France, IIRC

And I'd like to see them required at all indoor ranges.

Nothing like a 2" barrel .44 going off a few feet away to wreck a group.