In a recent hearing, House Republicans said that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & explosives (ATF) has overstepped its authority and is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens by abusing its rule-making powers.
The House Oversight Committee’s hearing — entitled “ATF’s Assault on the Second Amendment: When is Enough Enough?” — featured testimony from a number of witnesses, including Alex Bosco, the inventor of the pistol stabilizing brace the ATF banned last year.
As of Jan 31, the new ATF rule will regulate firearms with stabilizing braces the way the agency regulates short-barreled rifles, which require a federal tax stamp to legally possess.
Bosco, however, told the congressional committee that pistol braces don’t make firearms more dangerous.
“The idea that by adding a brace to a pistol makes the firearm more concealable and therefore more dangerous is laughable,” Bosco said. “It’s a piece of plastic, it weighs a certain amount, it makes the firearm longer. It’s not making the firearm more concealable, it’s making it less concealable.”
The updated ATF rule emerged in concert with the Biden administration’s anti-gun policymaking agenda, which seeks to curtail second amendment rights for U.S. citizens and even reinstate a federal ban on rifles falsely labeled “assault weapons.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz took aim at the ATF, pledging to offer new amendments to reduce the pay of the department’s personnel.
“The ATF is a corrupt bureaucracy that is violating the law, exceeding its authority, and collecting records that they have no business collecting,” Gaetz wrote in a post on Twitter. “I intend to utilize the new rules secured in the House of Representatives to offer amendments to the Appropriations Act to zero out the salaries of ATF bureaucrats for breaking the law and abusing the liberties of our fellow Americans.”
The ATF is a corrupt bureaucracy that is violating the law, exceeding its authority, and collecting records that they have no business collecting.
I intend to utilize the new rules secured in the House of Representatives to offer amendments to the Appropriations Act to zero out… pic.twitter.com/3CRB0KXdET
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) March 23, 2023
Since the pistol brace rule took effect, seven legal challenges have been brought in federal courts, including one case joined by attorneys general from twenty-five states.
In March, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a preliminary injunction to prevent the Biden administration from enforcing the pistol brace ban.
