By: Teresa Mull
SB Tactical, one of, if not the original company to produce popular pistol-stabilizing braces, has been working directly with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) for years to develop clarity about what constitutes a brace and what doesn’t, so the industry would have some criteria to follow and comply with the ATF.
Over the past couple years, though, something within the ATF changed. The bureau, comprised of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, whose only job it is to enforce laws pertaining to alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, started harassing SB Tactical about its marketing practices, as the company waited and waited for classification of its products.
The ATF, according to the company, has continued to “perpetrate a false narrative” regarding SB Tactical’s business practices, going so far as to un-approve a list of braces that were approved by the bureau a single year prior, thus making hundreds of thousands of products illegal, while simultaneously failing to pursue any “criminals” who own these items.
GPM reported earlier this week that the ATF released some “guidance” on pistol braces, titled “Objective Factors for Classifying Weapons with “Stabilizing Braces,” for the public to view and comment on during their Christmas – New Year break (ha!). The “guidance,” as NRA-ILA notes, “fails to articulate a single objective metric,” though it does “appear that ATF intends to apply the guidance in future determinations.”
Should the ATF succeed in turning its confusing, contradictory “guidelines” into an enforceable rule, some four- million law-abiding Americans would be forced to register (at $200 a pop), surrender, or destroy the items they bought legally with their hard-earned dollars, or else be turned into felons overnight.
The ATF’s alarming actions have prompted a “Defund the ATF” movement, headed by Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (see Tweet below).
10 years ago today, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in cold blood with a gun provided to Mexican drug cartels through Barack Obama and Eric Holder's ATF "Fast & Furious" program.
The ATF is an oppressive government agency that should be DEFUNDED and ELIMINATED!
— Marjorie Taylor Greene ???????? (@mtgreenee) December 14, 2020
Other elected officials, namely Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and grassroots organizations, including the National Association for Gun Rights and Gun Owners of America, are pushing back and urging their supporters to stop the bureau’s assault on the Second Amendment while we still have the power to do so.
Follow this link to submit a formal comment and tell the ATF to STOP its unconstitutional and nonsensical attacks on our freedoms.
Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.
Photo source: https://www.sb-tactical.com/product/sbm47/