Pistol Brace Executive Order

[JaySmith]

Got you covered.

[ExFlyinguy]

With respect to:

A) Give the ATF your name, Social Security number, address, phone number, email, payment information, FINGERPRINTS, as well as the make, model, and serial number of your firearm * and provide photographic evidence of your compliance

What if I already did that, fourteen (14) times from 1979 through 2008, to purchase seven transferable machine guns and submachine guns, two suppressors, and to build five SBRs and SBSs? ATF has fourteen such sets of documents from me. It's not the end of the world as Mr. Johnson from GOA makes it out to be. In fact, owners of NFA weapons are noteworthy for being extremely law-abiding, and the number of owners who used their NFA weapons in the commission of a crime was two (2) the last I looked. Since 1934.


According to the ATF itself, completing a Form 1 takes approximately four hours.

Might take an ATF govt worker 4h to complete a Form 1 or Form 4, but it takes me 15-20 mins each. Takes extra time to get CLEO sigs and have print cards generated, but that's not form completion time.


Moreover, gun owners may be required to pay a $200 tax per firearm just for complying with this new regulation * totaling up to $8,000,000,000 for the federal government.

Now we're getting to the crux of the matter - revenue. I have stated for years that the NFA Act of 1934 will NEVER be overturned because it is too much of a moneymaker for .gov. The GOA blurb above states: "The ATF reportedly processed 512,315 National Firearms Act forms in 2020." Let's assume that all of them required a $200 tax, and weren't an AOW that only required a $5 tax. That's $102,463,000 in tax revenue.

Now let's look at hundreds of thousands if not millions of stabilizing braces were purchased and installed on AR pistols by manufacturers and owner/buyers over a 8-10 yr period, with the ATF's tacit and in some specific cases, explicit approval in the form of letters from the ATF's Firearms Technical Branch in Martinsburg, WV. To keep the maths simple, let's assume it translates to 512,315 brace-stabilized AR pistols in owners' hands. Why wouldn't the ATF reverse their position on stabilizing braces when another potential $100,000,000 in NFA transfer tax revenue was at stake and up for grabs? Sure, some people won't comply, many people will remove the brace, and still others may "build" a rifle with a 16" barrel and switch to a collapsing or folding stock to avoid going the SBR route, but many may just pay the $200 and get on with life. I have a 10" LWRC piston-driven AR pistol with a SBA3 brace that I'm seriously considering just making another SBR AR. That will give me a pair.

Makes one wonder if that was the plan all along when the braces were originally approved. Many of us couldn't believe it, especially when there was one or two letters or "positional statements" that shouldering a brace-equipped pistol wasn't to be construed as an illegal act. Fast forward to 2022 and an amnesty registration period is seemingly an apparent option being considered by ATF for the affected owners of these pistols. "Got a braced pistol? We'll help you out by giving you a few months to apply for it to be registered as an NFA SBR, make the check or MO payable to "BATFE."

.Gov isn't stupid enough to confiscate NFA weapons from the public; that would kill a cash cow and the second thing most coveted by politicians and bureaucrats next to power is $$$$. Follow the $$$$.

JMO,

Noah

Unless something has changed, I was under the impression that the amnesty was going to be "Tax Free". That doesn't support the "follow the money" position

[JaySmith]

[JoshIronshaft]

I would expect them to conjure up some search warrants and raid some highly suspected households and use them to set an example for others. Don't forget where we are in this world today.

Ya, how many times have we seen some extremely unlucky person made an example of, usually just due to a lack of knowledge and an unfortunate series of events.

There are already millions of sbr's, they are already common use. Common use also applies for suppressors. Our legislative process has failed us. What is "down the road"? 10 years? 20? What do we do in the mean while? What atrocities will be committed by the atf while we wait?

Yes, it may take years for the courts to make this right, but that is the course we follow as law abiding citizens. I'm not going to jail over a stupid pistol brace. I advocate, donate to all the orgs fighting for us, write to my reps, and vote, all while playing by the rules because I can't afford not to.

I'm also speaking from a place of having both a C&R FFL and numerous NFA items. The ATF has my number. I like to imagine they think of me as the last person they want to visit on confiscation day. I get it, if you don't want to register your first NFA item by government decree and not by choice. That sucks.

[JaySmith]

Yes, it may take years for the courts to make this right, but that is the course we follow as law abiding citizens. I'm not going to jail over a stupid pistol brace. I advocate, donate to all the orgs fighting for us, write to my reps, and vote, all while playing by the rules because I can't afford not to.

I'm also speaking from a place of having both a C&R FFL and numerous NFA items. The ATF has my number. I like to imagine they think of me as the last person they want to visit on confiscation day. I get it, if you don't want to register your first NFA item by government decree and not by choice. That sucks.

Oh I get it. I play by the rules, to avoid having my life ruined or ended by a rogue agency. I also advocate, donate, write, and vote for all the things that promote our human rights. But the problem is, it's not getting us anywhere, at least not in a timely manner. Something needs to change, because what we have is currently unacceptable.

[EFK]

Unless something has changed, I was under the impression that the amnesty was going to be "Tax Free". That doesn't support the "follow the money" position

Once you've registered with the gestapo, they own you. Now they know what you have. Next, they'll come up with a new "rule" (punishable as a felony offense of course) that will revolve around a new retroactive tax. So they sucker you into getting put on a list, next they decide it's not tax-free after all and now you're totally fucked.

Stage two is taxing boat accidents with a retroactive tax dating back to the documentable date of the boat rollover.

This would have been crackpot hypothesizing just 10-15 years ago. Now THAT is some scary shit.

[JaySmith]

Or they decide sbr's are flat out illegal and you must turn them in. And they have your name and address now. I would wager that *most* gun owners do not have nfa items. Even AR15 owners. It's a hassle. But then braces come along and a lot of them see it as a way to get around nfa, so they buy the pistol with the brace, and they're still not nfa registered. I think this is a goal to get as many people into the nfa db as possible, because the regular firearms database is not supposed to be searchable, where the nfa database is.

[Noah_Zark]

Unless something has changed, I was under the impression that the amnesty was going to be "Tax Free". That doesn't support the "follow the money" position

You're asking the wrong guy, because I personally don't have the time to watch dozens of YT vids from anyone with a video camera who has an axe to grind one way or the other when it comes to 2A.

I have two friends, not acquaintances, actual friends who are BATFE bureaucrats at the Firearms Technology Branch in Martinsburg, WV and they are supposed to be sending me the specifics, but apparently even they can't get the straight scoop.

In the meantime, I can't see .gov turning down $$$.

Noah

[JoshIronshaft]

If you guys want to put on your conspiracy hats then just start imagining every 4473 you ever completed has some how been secretly entered into a searchable database and you're all on a list! AHHHHHH

NFA owners are definitely a tiny minority of gun owners and a ridiculously small percentage of the US population. So legislation that caters to positively impacting NFA owners is a long shot. I think a court decision that benefits us is more likely.

By the numbers...

https://americansuppressorassociatio...essor-figures/

The total number of suppressors registered in the NFRTR is 2,664,775 as of May 2021

This represents a 30% increase (622,056) since April 2020

A 35% increase in SOT dealers in 2020 (10,537, up from 7,806 in 2019)

In the past ten years, the average annual growth was 17%

A 10% increase in SOT manufacturers in 2020 (6,310, up from 5,716 in 2019)

In the past ten years, the average annual growth was 14%

If you click the link to the ATF report, they give the following totals for registered NFA items, and I think this has to include items owned by individuals and trusts as well as FFLs/SOTs and LLCs.

AOWs - 67,744
DDs - 3,343,519
MGs - 741,146
Suppressors - 2,664,774
SBRs - 532,725
SBSs - 162,267
Total - 7,512,175

You can see the total of each by state, but I'll just share PA has 348,167 total registered NFA items, which looks to put us in 5th place overall. WEAK.

Why so many DDs? My guess is corporations making things for the government to buy. Recreational DD ownership is super rare. Looking at it by state, DDs are concentrated heavily in a few states, which I think supports my theory.

It's assumed there are around 186,000 transferable machineguns on the registry, making the rest non-transferable samples owned by SOTs, etc.

So, are SBRs currently in common use? I don't know. That's a pretty small number. Considering that it isn't uncommon for an SBR owner to have more than one, then that further shrinks the number of SBR owners.

Seeing that the total Form 1s processed in 2019 was 28k and the total number processed in 2020 was 40k, they have no chance of being able to process a million pistol brace registrations. But if you look at the increase in Form 1s and Form 4s by year, the volume increase since 2013 is a big flag that something changed. That was about the time I dipped into the game. I wonder why so many other's did at that time as well?

Anyways, there's the numbers. I kind of wish there were more NFA owners. We could probably get some more attention.

[Emptymag]

Yeah. I forgot about that aspect.
This "amnesty" period includes a free tax stamp.

That's why some morons were all giddy, thinking they could build pistols to get a free SBR.