I can't prove what the Biden regime's thinking is, but I believe the following:
The bumpstock ban caused the left to believe that they can therefore ban anything at any time without legislation. The ongoing challenge to the bumpstock ban - if it makes it to The Supremes? I expect it will be upheld. Too many RINO's among The Supremes.
It was my own personal observation in the run-up to the bumpstock ban that way, way, too many conservatives and gun owners in arfcom were saying: "It's just a piece of plastic. I don't own one. Doesn't affect me." Meanwhile I'll bet next week's groceries that the left noticed the fecklessness of MANY on the right. I'll bet they were absolutely salivating and goading Trump to go forward with it - or face severe political consequences.
The pistol braces don't really matter to the left other than: They want a relatively minor test case in case it goes before The Supremes. This way, if they lose (I don't trust The Supremes on this), they believe it won't weaken their position on eventually manufacturing a way to make all AR15s NFA and use the background checks for NFA to infringe the 2A as much as possible. (aside: I believe the left plans to make their first major confiscation effort aimed at all NFA guns. I can see a few things that might happen that may make that too easy. All it takes is one bad decision from The Supremes. And we saw some whoppers from them not long ago.)
Back to topic: The pistol brace thing is entirely to use bumpstock precedent to expand further and make it into a mechanism for de-facto confiscation and get it rubber stamped.
That is, I believe the end game. If they can get away with doing whatever they want with pistol braces, the same engineered method will be used next to NFA (with engineered abuses and many, many denials and "related" red flags) all AR15s.
During that fight, I believe anything that increases rate of fire will be used to say: "They were all, already, potentially machine guns. Look at these videos. It proves it. Some of these are 'better' than bumpstocks! The horror, the horror!"
And if anyone says: "But you approved all those triggers as NOT MG's." They'll simply say: "Well, we re-classified pistol braces that we had approved and did so after the fact. That clearly shows that we can do that with anything. Even AR15s with regular semi triggers."
So if any significant level court up to and including the Supremes rules that their duplicity with pistol braces is ok, look out. They then have the mechanism to ban entire classes of (millions of) guns at any time they please. And once an appellate court rules in their favor, I do not think they will wait - even if further appeals are pending. I believe they will do as much damage as they can in the 2 to 5 years it takes to get to The Supremes. Just in case.
I believe a lot of the danger is: It's not just many or most gun owners who think pistol braces are insignificant. Courts can easily be tricked into believing the same. They can also be tricked into believing that it can't or won't be used as an engineered mechanism to adversely affect all gun ownership. If they play this right, it can be a big step for them towards nullifying the entire 2A without having to actually strike it down.
It can and will affect it all, one way or the other.
But that's all just my opinion.
I apologize for too many edits, but: Yes, I do submit my own comments (not copy/paste) for every unconstitutional over-reach attempted by the BATFE. So I've already done that - both for the Trump BATFE attempt against braces and Biden's BATFE attempt. I do use the "anonymous" button since I don't care to be on any more watchlists.
The bumpstock ban caused the left to believe that they can therefore ban anything at any time without legislation. The ongoing challenge to the bumpstock ban - if it makes it to The Supremes? I expect it will be upheld. Too many RINO's among The Supremes.
It was my own personal observation in the run-up to the bumpstock ban that way, way, too many conservatives and gun owners in arfcom were saying: "It's just a piece of plastic. I don't own one. Doesn't affect me." Meanwhile I'll bet next week's groceries that the left noticed the fecklessness of MANY on the right. I'll bet they were absolutely salivating and goading Trump to go forward with it - or face severe political consequences.
The pistol braces don't really matter to the left other than: They want a relatively minor test case in case it goes before The Supremes. This way, if they lose (I don't trust The Supremes on this), they believe it won't weaken their position on eventually manufacturing a way to make all AR15s NFA and use the background checks for NFA to infringe the 2A as much as possible. (aside: I believe the left plans to make their first major confiscation effort aimed at all NFA guns. I can see a few things that might happen that may make that too easy. All it takes is one bad decision from The Supremes. And we saw some whoppers from them not long ago.)
Back to topic: The pistol brace thing is entirely to use bumpstock precedent to expand further and make it into a mechanism for de-facto confiscation and get it rubber stamped.
That is, I believe the end game. If they can get away with doing whatever they want with pistol braces, the same engineered method will be used next to NFA (with engineered abuses and many, many denials and "related" red flags) all AR15s.
During that fight, I believe anything that increases rate of fire will be used to say: "They were all, already, potentially machine guns. Look at these videos. It proves it. Some of these are 'better' than bumpstocks! The horror, the horror!"
And if anyone says: "But you approved all those triggers as NOT MG's." They'll simply say: "Well, we re-classified pistol braces that we had approved and did so after the fact. That clearly shows that we can do that with anything. Even AR15s with regular semi triggers."
So if any significant level court up to and including the Supremes rules that their duplicity with pistol braces is ok, look out. They then have the mechanism to ban entire classes of (millions of) guns at any time they please. And once an appellate court rules in their favor, I do not think they will wait - even if further appeals are pending. I believe they will do as much damage as they can in the 2 to 5 years it takes to get to The Supremes. Just in case.
I believe a lot of the danger is: It's not just many or most gun owners who think pistol braces are insignificant. Courts can easily be tricked into believing the same. They can also be tricked into believing that it can't or won't be used as an engineered mechanism to adversely affect all gun ownership. If they play this right, it can be a big step for them towards nullifying the entire 2A without having to actually strike it down.
It can and will affect it all, one way or the other.
But that's all just my opinion.
I apologize for too many edits, but: Yes, I do submit my own comments (not copy/paste) for every unconstitutional over-reach attempted by the BATFE. So I've already done that - both for the Trump BATFE attempt against braces and Biden's BATFE attempt. I do use the "anonymous" button since I don't care to be on any more watchlists.