Justice Department announces new rule to regulate pistol-stabilizing braces

Legal professional Common Merrick Garland and Steve Dettelbach, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), introduced new rules Friday that might topic pistol-stabilizing braces to further rules, together with larger taxes, longer ready intervals and registration.

Gun management proponents argue that stabilizing braces – which will be hooked up to pistols – successfully remodel a pistol right into a short-barreled rifle, that are closely regulated underneath the Nationwide Firearms Act (NFA). The rule will go into impact as quickly as it’s printed within the Federal Register.

The proposal was given new life in 2021 after shooters in Boulder, Colorado, and in Dayton, Ohio, used pistols with stabilizing braces. On the time, Garland unveiled a number of proposals aimed toward curbing gun violence, together with reupping the restriction on pistol braces.

“Virtually a century in the past, Congress decided that short-barreled rifles should be topic to stricter authorized necessities,” Garland mentioned Friday throughout a name with reporters to stipulate the brand new rule. “Coverage makers understood then what we all know remains to be true as we speak. Brief-barreled rifles current a lethal mixture: They’re simpler to hide than rifles, however they’re extra highly effective and deadly than pistols.”

The rule, he mentioned, “makes clear that firearm producers, sellers and people can not evade the necessary public security protections handed by Congress just by including equipment to pistols that remodel them into short-barreled rifles.”

The DOJ announcement sparked speedy backlash from some Republicans, together with West Virginia Legal professional Common Patrick Morrisey. Morrisey argued in a press release that the “egregious” rule makes it “tougher for senior residents and other people with disabilities to defend themselves,” including that his workplace was “evaluating our authorized choices.”

In response to the Justice Division, producers, sellers and particular person gun house owners have 120 days to register tax-free any current short-barreled rifles coated by the rule. They will additionally take away the stabilizing brace or give up coated short-barreled rifles to the ATF, the division mentioned.

“This rule enhances public security … and helps guarantee compliance with the firearms legal guidelines that Congress handed virtually a century in the past,” Dettelbach mentioned on the decision. The rule makes clear, Dettelbach mentioned, that “when pistols are accessorized with sure stabilizing braces, these pistols are transformed into rifles” and ought to be handled as short-barreled rifles underneath the legislation.

Restrictions on stabilizing braces have been hotly debated after they had been proposed by the ATF in 2020, when the bureau recommended a brand new rule that might regulate pistol braces underneath the NFA. The 2020 proposal sparked a significant backlash from the teams such because the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation.

Republican lawmakers additionally spoke out towards the proposal and despatched a letter to then-Legal professional Common William Barr saying that the proposed regulation was “alarming and jeopardizes legislation abiding gun house owners throughout the nation.” The ATF withdrew the proposed regulation after the letter was launched.

“These necessities are necessary public security measures as a result of they regulate the switch of those harmful weapons and assist guarantee they don’t find yourself in improper arms,” the Justice Division mentioned on the time. “The proposed rule would make clear when these hooked up equipment convert pistols into weapons coated by these heightened rules.”

This story has been up to date with further particulars.