Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) has issued the following statement regarding ATF’s action against Q, LLC’s (Q) Honey Badger Pistol and its status as a purported short barrel rifle:
ATF has once again unlawfully and unconstitutionally exceeded its authority and changed the law by issuing a new determination that is devoid of logic and reason, contains no explanation as to the manner in which it arrived at its conclusion, conflicts with its prior determinations, and embodies the very essence of “arbitrary and capricious”.
After examining a sample Q Honey Badger Pistol, the ATF’s Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division (FATD) concluded that “the objective features of the Honey Badger firearm, configured with the subject stabilizing brace, indicate the firearm is designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder.” FATD further concluded that it is a SBR as defined by the National Firearms Act (NFA) and Gun Control Act (GCA). Yet, ATF does not explain how it arrived at this conclusion other than vague generalizations that the firearm was “designed” to be fired from the shoulder and by virtue of its barrel length meeting the definition of a SBR.
Earlier this summer, regarding the possible action regarding pistol braces, we said that our “Constitution requires an accountable legislature to enact just laws within specific, limited, and enumerated powers, not decreed by nameless bureaucrats with a political agenda, or even a president.” And when the ATF previously reversed a long-standing and well understood position that bump stock-type devices were not machine guns, FPC and Firearms Policy Foundation led the charge with the first lawsuit in the nation against ATF’s unlawful and unconstitutional act.
There can be no question that our Constitution requires accountability to coincide with the enactment of laws, and that those laws must be within specific, limited, and enumerated powers, not left to bureaucrats who escape all aspects of responsibility. Once more, we remind ATF and the executive branch that their authority has limits and that, if need be, they will once again be reminded of those limits through legal action.
FPC believes that the ATF, NFA, GCA, and every other law that threatens the People with disarmament and prison for exercising human rights should be abolished. Our legal team will continue to closely monitor this issue and take whatever action is necessary, possible, and prudent to protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and our members against abusive government agencies and policies.
Firearms Policy Coalition (www.firearmspolicy.org) is a 501(c)4 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPC’s mission is to protect and defend constitutional rights—especially the right to keep and bear arms—advance individual liberty, and restore freedom.
This is the end run that the ATF wants to accomplish in order to make all braced pistols as SBRs!! They were put off when they were caught trying to do so by stealth and now they are doing it incrementally!! Unelected Beaurocrats trying to take away our Constitutional rights to effect a One World Order. They can’t do that with an armed America!!
If I were a conspiracy theorist I might believe a bunch of suits at ATF got together one evening and, over bourbon and cigars, decided to call stocks braces and allow the firearms to be sold as pistols. They further decided that after thousands of pistols had been sold they would reverse themselves ruling they were no longer pistols, but SBR’S. This would leave the owners three choices: Regester the weapon, dispose of the weapon or become a felon. However, I don’t believe in government conspiracies.
Or, just pull the brace off the buffer tube.
It is my understanding that once it is a rifle, it legally always is a rifle. That means removing a brace from a pistol that the atf has now deemed to be a rifle would not turn it back into a pistol.
If it was sold with the brace, that’s a good point. If it was originally built as a pistol, then one can convert it back and forth between being a rifle or being a pistol (IIRC, court decision on the TC Encore that the ATF went after). So if it was originally built as a pistol, adding the brace would convert it into a rifle, and removing it would convert it back to a pistol, which is allowed. Only the SBR intermediate stage would be illegal, but hard for them to prove in court (esp. if one has an AR rifle that the brace could be used with).
Ah thanks for the clarification, I couldn’t remember the specifics of the TC Encore case/ruling/letter
Defund ATF
& Dismantle the ATF thus Nullifying the NFA
Or, you know, have our courts actually look at all the precedent that exists to simply say, “yep, this law is no good,” and throw it out:
“A law repugnant to the Constitution is void. An act of Congress repugnant to the Constitution cannot become a law. The Constitution supersedes all other laws and the individual’s rights shall be liberally enforced in favor of him, the clearly intended and expressly designated beneficiary.” –Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)
“An unconstitutional law is void and is as no law. An offense created by it is not crime. A conviction under it is not merely erroneous but isillegal and void and cannot be used as a legal cause of imprisonment.” – Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371 (1879)
“An unconstitutional act is not law. It confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office. It is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.” – Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425 (1886)
“Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule-making or legislation which would abrogate them.” –Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)
How *anyone* who swore an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution can consciously act against it (whether it be a judge or nebulously-law-“interpreting” federal agent seemingly flying in the face of the non-delegation of powers clause: see A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935)), blows my mind. But people can convince themselves they’re right and just in the most inane and anachronistic ways. Even if they are just plain wrong.
They only support the parts with which they agree. Those unpalatable sections “are more of a suggestion, really.”
– Capt Barbosa, paraphrased
Gun Control is rooted in racism and genocide. Therefore Gun Control is a racist and nazi based agenda that needs to be sent back to the sewer from which it came.
You should copy that to paste into the comment thread on every TTAG article on gun control.
And in other **BREAKING NEWS** :
“St. Louis couple indicted for waving guns at protesters”
“ST. LOUIS (AP) — A grand jury on Tuesday indicted the St. Louis couple who displayed guns while hundreds of racial injustice protesters marched on their private street.
Al Watkins, an attorney for the couple, confirmed to The Associated Press the indictments against Mark McCloskey, 63, and Patricia McCloskey, 61.”
https://apnews.com/article/st-louis-indictments-racial-injustice-3bbed2ea6c982581e51b16123a785cfc
There was already an article about that brotha
Goof was too busy coming up with yet another ‘joke’ about sexual violence against elderly nuns to notice that article 🤣🤡.
What is the difference between the honey badger AR pistol and other AR pistols? This brace on the honey badger pistol, is actually manufactured by SB Tactical, and looks very similar to the SB Tactical SBA3, which has been used extensively in the past. So what is the ATF’s stink with this pistol?
The cease and desist letter states:
Did the ATF get some new interns? New hires? “Since this firearm also contains a rifled barrel, it meets the definition of a rifle?” Basically every pistol has a rifled barrel. They are not rifles. Disappointed in the level of competence. Looks like the ATF is changing into the US Mail / post office. A great many firearms with braces are classified as pistols and in all respects, looks exactly like the Honey Badger pistol.
https://mcusercontent.com/557cc802f23161a8ffe100a66/files/dd6aa903-36c2-4d14-9de5-91aa62215cd2/Q_LLC_6_02_02814_Cease_Desist_Letter.pdf
Maybe Q can send the ATF this picture so they can understand how the brace works? (LOL)
https://www.thril.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/pistol-stabilizing-tactical-braces-sb-tactical_feature-1030×827.jpg
It’s a pistol, not a rifle.
Maybe something like this:
Dear ATF:
“…. is designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder.”
Negative, it is designed not to be fired from the shoulder. Please see photograph:
https://www.thril.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/pistol-stabilizing-tactical-braces-sb-tactical_feature-1030×827.jpg
Please also host a lunch and learn at taxpayer’s expense to train the new interns on how braces work. Give them a tour through the firearm gallery, speak slowly and emphatically, maybe also mention they have to follow the text of the law, and politely ask them not to take a huge whopping s**t on the freedoms of Americans when they are feeling moody after a soy latte and an avocado toast while dreaming of being a communist dictator.
– Q
Maybe the manufacturer should not have posted videos of company personnel firing the weapon from their shoulder.
“Pride goth before a fall”
If it was designed exclusively to be fired from the shoulder – it wouldn’t have a brace installed on it.
Furthermore, the law in general, particularly “gun laws” here the US are beyond idiotic. NFA particularly. Cutting an inch off your barrel to improve it’s accuracy shouldn’t award you with 10 years prison. Holding a pistol to your shoulder shouldn’t award you with 10 years prison. Those are the hopes and dreams of psychotic tyrant sadistic political leftist bigots, looking to legally genocide entire cultures by putting them in a prison because they offended them while hurting no one.
But that’s how leftists are. They wield power like an arrogant know it all, self righteous, self justifying, bigot child looking to usher in their “utopia” with overwhelming government force, ironically.
It probably has to do with the adjustable part of the brace.
The ATF needs to go. Just like all gun control! There is no reason to subject any firearm to this kind of regulation.
All tyrannical fu(k3f$ ATF
What do you expect from an illegal entity of the government. The feds wont follow the constitution so why would the cops.
Mass noncompliance is the only way we are going to get the NFA abolished. It worked for Prohibition, it is working for weed, it will work here. And I’m not going to listen to “policy” from an organization that shoots and gasses children to death.
Bingo
The executive branch and alphabet agencies have a ridiculous amount of power because the legislature doesn’t want it.
It’s a lot easier to raise money for voting by making people mad over things the ‘government’ has done than actually vote to define things properly so that the government can’t.
Although really, this won’t be fixed until the whole SBR BS is gone. Could have done that in 2016 or 2017. Didn’t happen. So here we are.
Fake news. Trump is a gun guy, the ATF is answerable to Trump personally, he’d never allow this. Must be a prank.
I very much doubt Trump is following every decision the atf rules on, especially during an election season. But Biden is your guy so who cares?
And Biden will confiscate everything on the AR or AK platform. He promised.
ive never supported the atf on anything and i wish somebody would do to it what was rumoured that jfk wanted to do to the cia…splinter it into a thousand pieces and cast it to the winds…
having said that:
an adjustable pistol brace to me just always seemed *a bit too good to be true*
thats why i never bought one
instead i have a shockwave a strike industries and most recently an mft brace
the distance between the palm of the hand and the general area on the forearm where the brace contacts it is essentially the same for just about everybody and therefore making it adjustable makes it almost exactly like a stock
and then they went and really hurt themselves by showing videos of the weapon being shouldered…
it is what it is:
they flew too close to the sun on wax wings
and it bit them
It is not a politically probable result, but it would be nice to just rescind the ban on short barrel rifles, “sawed off” shotguns, silencers and full auto firearms. The restriction on large caliber is also arbitrary. I would love to have a 120mm loaded with beehive rounds for hunting wascilly wabbits.
. These frickin gunm barrel laws are stupid. I mean really, you can’t put a stock on a handgunm, Why? Because you might shoot straighter?
Just wait til you get to the part that a pistol, per law, is a firearm designed and intended to be fired with one hand. Every website and video of someone shooting a modern pistol is using the firearm with TWO hands. In fact, the support hand offers 70% of the grip. This part of the law is why you can’t (per ATF) put a vertical fore-grip on an AR pistol (because the vertical grip implies a second hand, but an angled fore-grip does not imply a second hand).
Revolvers are (historically) one handed pistols. Semi-autos, not so much.
Yes, that one makes no sense. Vertical grip on a pistol magically converts it to an AOW, but a hook on a pistol trigger guard that has no purpose but to facilitate a 2-handed grip somehow doesn’t (or at least doesn’t yet; perhaps that change of mind is lined up for some future date).
It’s no coincidence this came out so close to the election. Its some ATF deep state person trying to cost Trump votes.
They are setting the groundwork for the possibility of a democrat win. This is just step one.
Too much of a backlog on Badgers Q will not even take orders. If you can find a good AR pistol and obtain it do so. Yes they are at a premium and overpriced but if not in a few months then perhaps in a few years a close quarters weapon may stop more than a garbage can marauding bear. Collector items are only worth what the market will bear
That brace is clearly made to be fired either from the shoulder or as a braced pistol. I dislike the ATF as much as anyone but, seriously, don’t you think they get a little pissed when the design is clearly meant to circumvent the law and then the manufacturer shows shoulder firing videos as if in a deliberate attempt to make them look foolish? What the manufacturer attempted to rub in their face was “we built this and there’s nothing you can do about it because the law says you can’t”. Well, they were wrong and if FPC pushes it, I might drop my membership. The manufacturer should redesign the brace to make it difficult or impossible to shoot from the shoulder and resubmit.
To the manufacturer I say don’t do stuff to piss them off. Nobody who’s trying to do a job likes to be played for a fool.
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