In less than a month, millions of Americans could become felons overnight for simply owning a piece of plastic.

Earlier this year, the ATF announced a new rule that requires gun owners to register their firearms with the ATF as a short-barreled rifle (SBR) if they are using it with a pistol brace.

Pistol braces became a hot new trend just about a decade ago, created as an option for disabled veterans and gun owners in general to modify their firearm to allow for better stabilization of a firearm while shooting it with one hand.

When braces first came out, the ATF under the Obama Administration released a letter stating that it didn’t have the authority to regulate pistol braces under the National Firearms Act, a charge made by gun control activists who felt that pistol braces were being misused to build SBRs without requiring a federal tax stamp.

But now under the Biden Administration, and after tens of millions of these braces have been manufactured and sold, the ATF is requiring registration of firearms using pistol braces, severe alteration of the firearm, or essentially the destruction of the pistol brace.

If they fail to do any of the above and are caught, they could end up in a federal prison for up to ten years.

As Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie put it best, “This is what offends the sensitivities of Americans!”

Congressman Massie took ATF Director Steve Dettlebach to task during a recent U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing for his bureau’s capricious change of policy on pistol braces and the clear lack of authority it has to make such a rule.

ATF Director Steve Dettlebach is a pawn for the gun control lobby who seeks to disarm as many Americans as possible and to make it as difficult as possible for folks to practice their Second Amendment rights.

In the exchange, Dettlebach tried to frame the pistol brace rule “as easy to comply with,” yet time and again as Massie pressed him on it he couldn’t give a straight answer.

Dettlebach claimed during the hearing that gun owners who simply detach a pistol brace from their firearm would not be in violation of the new, yet that is contrary to the ATF’s long-standing position of what is known as “constructive possession.”

Simply speaking, constructive possession is owning all the pieces of a certain firearm, but not having it all put together.

The ATF’s website states that simply owning a pistol brace unattached to a firearm could still be considered an NFA item, which is in opposition to what Dettlebach claimed in the hearing.

The proposed rule is 52 pages long and is overly convoluted. Of course, it would be naïve to think that this wasn’t anything but intentional.

Dettlebach’s claim that someone can simply “detach” the pistol brace from a firearm to avoid the registration requirement does not match the reality of what is laid out in the rule.

The proposed rule is 52 pages long and is overly convoluted. Of course, it would be naïve to think that this wasn’t anything but intentional.

There will be many gun owners who will go through the rigmarole of registering their braced firearm just to avoid potential federal prosecution. And the ATF incentivizing compliance by waving the tax stamp for the 120-day grace period made it much more appealing for people who just don’t want to go to federal prison to go ahead and register their firearms.

It’s quite possible that Dettlebach, and by extension the Biden administration, realize there’s little chance of their rule surviving a court challenge, but by bribing gun owners to voluntarily register their firearms they are moving one step in their direction towards total government control over our right to keep and bear arms.

The fact is, gun control zealots will claim that this rule, and all of their other various anti-gun measures, are all just “common sense” proposals. But there isn’t a gun control measure out there that they wouldn’t support, and they are quite content with playing the long game.

ATF Director Steve Dettlebach is a pawn for the gun control lobby who seeks to disarm as many Americans as possible and to make it as difficult as possible for folks to practice their Second Amendment rights.

Kudos to Congressman Massie for not putting up with his nonsense and for making it clear to all those who watched these proceedings that the ATF clearly lacks the authority to regulate pistol braces.