biodsl Wrote:Wrong. ATF said braces were legal. What was up in the air was the legality of how they were used. Now they want a second bite at the apple on design. That ship sailed. People bought legal braces. Now ATF wants to call them illegal.
The ATF never said all pistol braces were legal. Anyone who says that has not read the actual documents carefully. It is important to closely read any response from a government agency.* If you read the March 2017 letter from the BATF to SB Tactical, you will see what I mean. They made a point of stating that the approved brace did not work well as a shoulder stock.
It is possible to have a perfectly functional AR-based pistol with a brace that works well when shot one-handed like a pistol. The braces they previously approved are still OK. The important point is that it must do an acceptable job as a forearm brace but not work well as a shoulder stock. This was pointed out in the March 2017 letter from the BATF to SB Tactical that approved ONE PARTICULAR brace. They explained why they decided that that particular brace did not "make" a pistol into a SBR. The particular brace that SB Tactical submitted for evaluation had floppy foam for the forearm brace and was pretty terrible as a shoulder stock.
Here is the important part of the letter:
"With respect to stabilizing braces, ATF has concluded that attaching the brace to a handgun as a forearm brace does not "make" a short-barreled rifle because in the configuration as submitted to and approved by the FATD, it is not intended to be and cannot comfortably be fired from the shoulder."
As near as I can tell, ATF never gave a BLANKET approval to pistol braces despite what the companies who sell them claim. SB Tactical will email you a copy of this letter from BATF, but it requires registering at SB's site. https://www.sb-tactical.com/resources/ba...inion-use/
The ATF even noted (in that same letter) that is was not enough that a brace be : "designed, intended and marketed for use only to shoot from the arm."
* I learned this from years of dealing with the EPA from being in charge of handling many tons of hazardous waste generated by a former employer.