ATF agents
(AP Photo/David Goldman)

By Lee Williams 

House Republicans tried to stop the massive overreach by unelected bureaucrats at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The ATF has turned more than 40 million law-abiding Americans into felons overnight. That’s because the normal operation of our constitutional republic has been perverted by a doddering old buffoon who would rather rule by imperial decree than submit to the normal checks, balances and separation of powers which have proven so effective for nearly two-and-a-half centuries. 

This week, the House passed H.J. Res. 44, which should have sent a strong warning to the Biden-Harris administration that Congress makes laws, not the ATF or the Executive Branch.

The joint resolution would overturn ATF’s final rule, “Factoring Criteria for Firearms With Attached ‘Stabilizing Braces,’” which was published in January. ATF’s rule requires anyone who owns a pistol brace to permanently install a longer barrel, remove and discard the brace, turn it in to ATF, destroy the brace, or register it under the National Firearms Act. Those who fail to comply risk a federal felony charge. 

Kudos to Congressmen Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) and Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) for sponsoring the joint resolution, but on Monday the White House announced that Biden would use his veto pen if it ever reached his desk, and a brief glimmer of hope for 40 million Americans disappeared. 

Biden confused lost
President Joe Biden (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

For more than a decade the ATF had no problem with pistol braces, and issued several official letters stating that braced pistols were not short-barrel rifles and didn’t need to be registered under the NFA. But after Biden was elected, the ATF changed its mind, of course. 

What we’re left with is an unconstitutional mechanism whereby ATF can now criminalize any firearm or accessory they want – even those in common usage – and Biden will block Congress from stopping the overreach. 

Therefore, if you want to know what ATF will criminalize next, the answer is simple: Any damn thing they want. Our only recourse is the courts, and that process can be both lengthy and extremely expensive, and it offers no guarantee of success. There may be some who will claim that an ATF rule is not a law, but anything that can land you in federal prison for a decade is law-like enough. 

To be clear, this is a full-blown constitutional crisis. Joe Biden usurped the law-making role of Congress, and his power grab was aided and abetted by the legacy media, who turned a blind eye to his unconstitutional decree, because guns. Same-same for other alleged constitutional watchdogs like the American Civil Liberties Union. If Joe’s overreach infringed on any Amendment other than the Second, the ACLU would be screaming like gut-shot blue banshees. 

Steven Dettelbach
ATF Director Steven Dettelbach (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Several courts have already issued preliminary injunctions barring the ATF from taking enforcement against members of the pro-gun groups that brought the lawsuits. In SAF, et.al. v. ATF, et. al., United States District Judge Jane J. Boyle specifically noted this plethora of litigation, writing in her preliminary injunction that “plaintiffs are not alone in their concerns regarding the Rule.”

“The Court is aware of at least two other cases in the Northern District of Texas alone where similar plaintiffs – handgun users, nonprofits, and/or firearm manufacturers – are challenging the Rule on identical or similar grounds,” Judge Boyle wrote. 

Pistol braces were originally designed to make shooting easier for disabled veterans. While veterans have never been a priority for the Biden-Harris administration, some of these men and women left chunks of their bodies on foreign battlefields, and they deserve to be respected for their sacrifices. Banning pistol braces robs them of their ability to enjoy shooting sports and defend themselves and their families. 

Today it’s pistol braces. Tomorrow, who knows? Biden and his ATF toadies can now criminalize whatever they want, whenever they want, and Congress is powerless to do anything about it. 

 

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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.

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78 COMMENTS

  1. Anyone with half a brain can see the House GOPs measure was just a show they knew full and well would go nowhere. Ever wonder why they try this when they know it won’t pass?

    • Just like the 70+ votes to repeal Obamacare back when that couldn’t go anywhere, that they stopped trying as soon as they had the majorities and president to actually pass it. Either they’re entrenched in the swamp or they’re so used to knuckling under that they don’t even know HOW to win. Either way they’re dangerously pathetic.

      • It’s pure spinelessness. When it’s not going to pass, they can show off to their supporters — “I voted for X, but the Senate/President blocked it” and the opposition doesn’t care because nothing changed. If it can pass, they’ll anger the opposition and be responsible for anything bad that comes from their reform.

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    • Well the House “procedure” with the previous Speakers was to sit on their thumbs doing NOTHING. What would you want them to do? (Don’t actually care you’re obvoiusly a naive idiot).

      Contact your demtard Senator and get THEM to get their crap together.

      Impeach corrupt Brandon and his idiot Attorney General.

      • So pointing out its a show you’re obviously falling for is accomplishing what exactly? I’ll tell you Jack and sh*t! There is absolutely no political solution to be had so calling my senator is less than pointless. I’m doing what I want regardless who is in power.

    • Agreed. I’ve been making this exact point for years. These fucking RINOs will do NOTHING when there’s a real chance of legislation being passed. To be clear, they’re not cowards. They are calculated traitors to the Constitution, to their campaign promises and by extension to their constituents, and to their oaths of office. True constitutional conservatives are all but non-existent in both the House and Senate.

    • This was more about having the representatives show their cards when it comes to the 2A. Flushing out the Rhinos so to speak.

  2. They can cut off appropriations for the funding of this particular enforcement easily… be fooled not!!

    • Potentially, if the demtards in the Senate go along with it. Fedgov has operated without an actual budget for more than a decade.

  4. They will pursue their political opposition any way they think they can, ethics and fairness be damned. Pay close attention to the Republicans who are saying, “just let the process play out” regarding the Trump charges. These are the same type of Republicans who assured us that Robert Mueller was a “good cop” so just let this Russia collusion investigation “play out.” Those people won’t think twice about hanging you out to dry. They don’t care. They’re in it for themselves. Democrats wouldn’t stand for that type of persecution for a second. At least you can say that for them.

    • Don’t expect a guy named Karen I mean Kevin and the low T mitch mcconnell to do anything but the same old thing…nothing. Those guys have suits to select and lunch dates with their colleagues to worry about.

    • How, do you think? Unlike the so-called “pistol braces” that were almost never really used for bracing a pistol, there’s no wiggle room or interpretation possible with the Shockwave type guns.

      (I don’t really disagree with you, just curious what the argument might be)

      • Use the NY model of elimination of Other as a class of firearm entirely and hamfist it into existing definitions and there you go short barrel shotgun.

        • Assuming the laws are followed as written yes……….yes they would. How confident are you that will remain the case given the current administration?

      • The AOW definition simply states “capable of being concealed on the person”, traditionally interpreted as the same 26″ as the SBS / SBR definitions, but interpreted means interpretable.

        • True! I really don’t know how far reaching a change like that would even be. Strictly in terms of numbers there probably aren’t enough Shockwave owners to be much of a factor, but what else would be affected?

        • Since they’ve been making it up as they go along, they could probably just hand-wave it – and as you noted, there aren’t that many owners to fight back. How many non-owners would choose to die on that hill? Not sure. Personally, I think they’re absurd, but that doesn’t mean I would find a ban anything but unconstitutional and disgusting.

        • “How many non-owners would choose to die on that hill?”

          I think the bump stock overreach has already showed us what that number is.

      • “it takes all kinds o’ critters to make farmer vincent’s fritters.”

        Man, I *loved* ‘Motel Hell’ as a cheezy horror movie. I liked the line by the dirty hippies “We’re gonna crash”!

        Another movie of that approximate vintage, ‘I’m Gonna Git You Sucka’.

        “The bitch better have my money. Not some, not half, but *all*.”

        The pimp with fish aquarium platform shoes :

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWNQTqMkezc

    • Williams thinks “[o]ur only recourse is the courts…”

      In his dissent to King v. Burwell, Scalia wrote, “The Court’s insistence on making a choice that should be made by Congress both aggrandizes judicial power and encourages congressional lassitude.” Congress controls the money that pays the bills, and the House could defund this AFT nonsense.

  7. Virtue signaling from the House. Did anyone really think Biden wouldn’t veto it? Or that the Senate would pass it with a veto-proof majority?

    • “Virtue signaling from the House…”

      So- should they have done nothing??? Anyone with any sense at all knows it won’t pass a 50-50 Senate and Biden would veto if they went along with the House. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t with the brilliant political strategists around here.

      As to “what’s next” on ATF/Biden’s list?

      I’d be putting money on suppressors. Unless SCOTUS acts quickly in defense of the Constitution.

    • LMAO. It reminds me of Stevie Ray Vaughn’s version of “The Tax Man”…when he says, “if you try to walk, I’ll tax your feet”. I suppose that is where we are headed, and I surmise I should not give them any ideas after herding the cattle (those who would comply) into those 15-minute, walkable cities.

      • Indeed, Sue. Did you see the nasty divorce taking place between Kevin Costner & his wife? Soon-to-be-ex? She refuses to abide by the prenuptial agreement they both signed. Our national divorce may prove to be far deadlier, especially when you add in 500,000 (from what I read) Chinese military age men into the equation that are in the country just waiting for the right time.

    • Not an option… The very next day the idiots on the left coast would be welcoming the Chinese and their belt and road BS. Then the poo would get deep and thick fast. There are no good options, we have to figure out the least worst.

  12. Joe is challenging SCOTUS.

    SCOTUS already ruled unconstitutional what the ATF did, they did it with the EPA case. that was basically a government agency can not create law or defacto law thus usurping the power of Congress whuch is a violation of separation of powers and the EPA got their butts handed to them over it. The ATF did the same thing, create law to bypass congress just like the EPA did. Both the EPA and ATF comitted an unconstitutional act, the ATF used the legal arm of Everytown as ‘consultants’ and basically Everytown wrote this unconstitutional abomination.

    Bidens actions are a direct challenge to SCOTUS.

    This will get to SCOTUS.

    • If so, how did they have the authority to declare braces which effectively serve as stocks as not creating SBRs?

        • And here they re-evaluated, after seeing endless examples of people (who should have kept quiet) gloating on the Internet about how they’d gotten a workaround to SBR registration.

        • No, here they were directed by Biden to do such things and Biden inserted the legal arm of Everytown in a ‘consultant’ role and Everytown basically wrote this rule.

          Their past evaluation specifically took into account the use as a shoulder stock, they knew it was happening then, and twice they said ‘no problem, its not an SBR’.

          You notice they had to mess around with the actual law, re-interpreting the meaning of ‘firearm’ by actual wording changes to the law placed in their rule.

          They had to actually create, essentially, new ‘law’ in their rule to do this and that’s because Biden essentially told them to find some way, any way, to start trying to ban things, to bypass Congress, to give him a leverage to set a precedent so at the stroke of a pen he could direct the ATF to simply redefine and Biden sent in Everytown as ‘consultants’ to do it.

          They did not ‘re-evaluate’ here, they actually created ‘new’ defacto law with a specific intent of bypassing Congress. Biden used the same scheme with the EPA, create ‘new’ defacto law with a specific intent of bypassing Congress and SCOTUS didn’t like that one little bit and ruled it unconstitutional because it is unconstitutional.

          We can not let a president be able to create law by executive order.

    • “This will get to SCOTUS.”

      The SCotUS don’t have to waste the time and grant Cert. on it to deal with it.

      All the court has to do is stamp “GVR” on it, and send it back from the district where it came from, ordering them to use the ‘Bruen’ standard.

  13. What else is on the hit list? Everything except alcohol and tobacco. Never lost a friend, or relative to a firearm. Lost a few to the other two. Firearms are the only thing left that ATF can use to justify their appropriations.

    • Firearms have saved Nations.
      Alcohol and tobacco have killed billions. If not billions then many millions.

  14. The ATF will chip away at the Second Amendment until there is nothing left. Gruesome Newsome will not have to introduce a 28th Amendment when he has the ATF and other government alphabet soup agencies to destroy the 2nd for him.

  17. “But after Biden was elected, the ATF changed its mind, of course.” – And they were sneaky enough to make it retroactive, publishing their first version 18 Decemder 2020 to try to pin the blame on Trump. /s

  18. It far past time for the SCOTUS and our Military to arrest Biden and all as Traitors and prosecute them into extiction. Better still Civil War Two to completely wipe out the existence of anyone who won’t abide by the Conststution

  19. Calling Biden “doddering old buffoon” is a real unfair insult!…..To doddering old buffoons.
    He was an utterly corrupt POS well before he started losing his faculties. I hope it hurts.

    • Don’t be such a horse’s ass. Look fat, look, here’s the deal. We’re doing great things. We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.

  21. Smooth bore firearms is a good guess since they can redefine them as NFA items. If they are ambitious, they could argue that a standard stock AR-15 could be bump fired, bump firing is a machine gun (outside of 5th Circuit), ergo AR-15s are machine guns. Since post-86 machine guns are unable to be registered (Hughes Amendment), they must all be destroyed, like bump stocks. They’d get sub fractions of a percent compliance, and it would eventually be overturned.

  22. How come the GOP didn’t put up a similar resolution when trump instructed the ATF to redefine machine guns without congress? It’s like the were fine with it when their buddy did it.

  23. Man…I wonder if the atf got the idea they could do whatever when Trump told them to reclassify bumpstocks and they got away with it… 🤔

    • The “gun community” has never supported the ownership of machine guns in the general public. They b!tch and moan about a “militarized police force”.
      But they are as quiet as a church mouse, when Obama sent free machine guns to thousands police departments all across the country.

      They fear the cops because they wear “military uniforms”. I don’t care how the cops look. I care about what they’re armed with.

      When ANTIFA takes over your local police department, do you think those Obama machine guns will stay in the police gun safe???

  24. The answer is to repeal the Administrative Powers Act!

    Can we all get behind that please? Honestly that’s what I would like the Convention of States to focus on, not term limits or balanced budgets, make congress do their job.

    A presidential candidate could run on that too George Washington style…I want to reduce my power!

    And the departments are already redundant in all the states anyway, and that makes at least some sense.

  27. For several years I’ve been predicting an attempt to ban “sniper rifles.”

    Because, “Nobody needs a sniper rifle!”

    The accoutrements (“features”) of “sniper rifles” to include (but not limited to, of course):
    – “high power” scopes
    – lasers and red dots
    – pistol grips (naturally)
    – “match grade” or “precision” barrels
    – bipods
    – adjustable stock
    – “barrel shroud”

    Mark my word… it’s coming.

  28. Next will be the pistol grip shotguns AKA “Shockwave”. Followed by Sniper Rifles. Which means any decent hunting rifle with a scope. Followed by any handgun that carries a high capacity magazine with more than 6 to 8 rounds. Then any auto loading or self reloading firearms. Then repeating firearms.
    The ultimate goal is to remove the right to keep and bear and complete disarmament of civilian/nongovernmental agents.

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