As we discussed yesterday, the comment period is open for the ATF’s proposed rulemaking on certain pistol stabilizing braces. While it is easy to believe that our comments will be ignored and will not effect the outcome, I believe making our voices heard is an important part of the process. I submitted my comment yesterday and dedicated half of it to the fact that laws surrounding the ownership of property are inherently unjust. Our friends at Open Source Defense have made a cleaner, more succinct argument that needs repeating. The NFA laws and regulations are unfair and built on a weak foundation from a 1934 attempt to ban handguns using an exorbitant tax.

The crux of the issue is that having a barrel on a firearm one inch shorter than is “allowed” could land anyone in jail – rich or poor, black or white – without any criminal action. That is the real problem: NFA Laws and regulations are about owning property, not criminal intent.

Please pay OSD a visit and read their latest post.

Open Source Defense: On The ATF, NFA Laws And Regulations

This is a law from 1934, and it’s casually pro-imprisonment in a way that today is usually considered embarrassing. The premise of the law is simple: a 16” barrel is fine, but a 15” barrel without ATF permission is punishable by 10 years in federal prison. Would you grant that as a starting point for a discussion? – OSD

OSD 96: The frog jumps out of the pot

https://opensourcedefense.substack.com/p/osd-96-the-frog-jumps-out-of-the

Last week’s newsletter — “OSD 95: Schrödinger’s gat — the ATF and Polymer80” — closed like this:

The flip side to that coin, though, is that norms work to stabilize a relationship. And relationships are two-sided. So when one side unilaterally throws out the norms, now both sides of the relationship are destabilized, and therefore suddenly hard to predict. For the past few years, manufacturers (particularly in the pistol brace and 80% receiver industries) have tried hard to play ball with the ATF. With the ATF suddenly signaling that it doesn’t want to play anymore, we’ll see what manufacturers —and customers — do.

One effect: this is likely to accelerate technology and business practices that are fundamentally ungovernable. You can model reliable, stable norms essentially as “incentive to play ball with the system” — it’s not all peachy, but hey, you get predictability. Getting rid of that incentive isn’t the end of the game, it’s the beginning. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

The piece was about 80% receivers, but we framed it broadly like that because we figured there’d be more ATF kerfuffles soon. But we didn’t figure on it being quite so soon. Three days later, news came out that the ATF was restating its position on braces. It’s too early to know what the exact effect will be, but at least some pistol brace configurations which today don’t raise an eyebrow are going to start being treated as SBRs by the ATF.

The temptation here is to start litigating the specifics of each pistol brace design. The ATF even mentions that in their statement, listing things like length of pull, the surface area of the back of the brace, and what kind of sight picture you can get when using the brace at arm’s length. Continue reading.

TFB Behind The Gun Podcast Episode #2: Chuck Rossi – OpenSourceDefense.org

Today on the show we have Chuck Rossi. Chuck is a long time Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur with a string of 6 successful startups. Chuck spent two years as an SME for Facebook working to improve and clarify firearm policy for Ads and Content on the platforms. Chuck is a consultant to the NSSF on social media issues for the organization and its members. 

He is also the co-founder of Open Source Defense, a pro-2A organization dedicated to advocating for the Second Amendment in a culture-war free way. Last year Chuck helped TFB restore its Instagram page when it was deleted without warning. Please welcome Chuck Rossi.