Dear Speaker McCarthy, Majority Leader Scalise, Whip Emmer, Minority Leader Jeffries, and Whip Clark,
We, the undersigned members of the Second Amendment Industry’s No Compromise Alliance, urge that Congress reject the arbitrary and capricious ban on up to 40 million lawfully owned pistols by the Biden Administration. Congress must not sit idly by while the power of the legislative branch is usurped by President Biden and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Pursuant to the Congressional Review Act, H. J. Res. 44 and S. J. Res. 20 must immediately receive a vote to overturn the illegal ban entitled Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached “Stabilizing Braces” and the Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today (SHORT) Act must immediately be passed to stop the unconstitutional registration of certain short-barreled firearms.
President Biden’s grossly unconstitutional executive action will have devastating effects on both our industry and millions of our customers when it goes into full effect on June 1st, 2023. Stabilizing arm braces have been legal and approved by the ATF for nearly a decade now. The decision to criminalize these commonly owned firearms is not based in facts but is intended to justify a ban on as many guns as possible.
According to a Congressional Research Service Report, there are as many as 40 million pistol braces in circulation. This number has undoubtedly grown since the report was published. Should the owners of 40 million pistol braces comply with President Biden’s gun control and register their firearms with the federal government, it would take an estimated 78 years for ATF to complete the paperwork. It will also cost our customers $16 trillion dollars in taxes to register and keep the firearms they already legally purchased.
Despite there being tens of millions of such pistols in common use around the country, there has been no statistically significant rise in violent crimes committed with these accessories. They do not inherently make a firearm more dangerous. In fact, they were designed to help disabled Americans shoot firearms that they would otherwise be unable to hold, stabilize, or aim.
Because these stabilizing braces make firearms like AR-15s handicap accessible, it was shocking to witness House Democrats engage in a bogus smear campaign against them. At a committee hearing, Democrats concocted and disseminated disinformation about pistol brace firearms, alleging that these devices transform semiautomatic firearms into fully automatic machine guns—a complete lie. But, the federal government has no authority to ban guns based on their “scary” features or “military” looks, whether it’s an arm brace or otherwise.
For a law related to firearms to be constitutional, it must comport with the text and history of the Second Amendment. As any historian will tell you, there were no laws banning firearms based on their barrel length at the founding of our nation. Our Founding Fathers were clear: the right to keep and bear short-barreled firearms—including braced pistols—SHALL. NOT. BE. INFRINGED.
Congress must, therefore, take twofold action to protect the American people against President Biden’s unconstitutional gun ban. Before the rule goes into effect on June 1st, 2023, H. J. Res. 44 and S. J. Res. 20 must be taken up in both the House and Senate and the ATF rule must be overturned using the Congressional Review Act. Second, the SHORT Act must be signed into law, preventing any future administration from weaponizing the draconian National Firearms Act of 1934 against the American people, eliminating cosmetic regulations on barrel length, and destroying the federal government’s gun registry of short-barreled firearms.
In Liberty,
