The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has published its final rule on the stabilizing brace.  With an effective date of January 31, 2023 it will fundamentally outlaw the use of pistol stabilizing braces in their current form.  This rule was signed almost two weeks after the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Oklahoma ruled against the ATF prohibiting bump stocks in which the court stated that only Congress has the legislative authority to create or change laws and that the bump stock does not meet the federal definition of a machine gun.

This appears to be an instance again where the ATF has taken it upon itself to act as a law-changing element which is not legal under the constitution and cannot be enforced.  They have usurped power from the law-making branch of govenment just as they did with the bump stock issue which should not; and cannot accept this ruling as law. 

Federal regulators have classified these accessories since 2012 as being compliant with the NFA, and the Congressional Research Service estimates as many as 40 million braces  are in circulation. This figure is almost twice the number of AR-15’s believed to be in use throughout the US today.

Any weapons  with stabilizing braces or similar attachments that constitute rifles under the NFA must be registered no later than May 31, 2023. And the options available are less than acceptable. Those owning or posessing what has; until now, being classified as a pistol but which will be categorized as a short-barreled rifle have the options of handing the firearm over to the agency, destroying it, converting the pistol to a normal rifle with a barrel at least 16 inches long, permanently removing the brace so that it cannot be reattached or registering it as an SBR and paying a $200 tax.

Non-compliance could bring a hefty 10-year/$250,000 surprise from the government if caught, charged, and convicted. 

The modern brace conceived by SB Tactical came about after USMC and Army veteran Alex Bosco went shooting with a disabled combat vet who was having such a hard time shooting on the range that the RSO stopped him over safety concerns due to lack of control. Bosco then created the prototype for the brace in his garage and submitted the design to ATF for approval. 

The ATF then stated that: “The submitted brace, when attached to a firearm, does not convert that weapon to be fired from the shoulder and would not alter the classification of a pistol or other firearm. While a firearm so equipped would still be regulated by the Gun Control Act … such a firearm would not be subject to NFA controls.”

The new rule, which completely counters that, seems to only be popular with a minority of gun control advocates and the current incompetent administration.  There were over 237,000 comments logged by the ATF last year with over 217,000 opposing the change.