Republicans are condemning Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Director Steven Dettelbach for being unable to reject the suggestion Americans could be jailed for not having a registered pistol brace come May 31.
"In this morning's @JudiciaryGOP hearing, ATF Director Dettelbach can't provide an answer to @RepTroyNehls about whether the millions of Americans who own pistol braces will go to jail based on the ATF's final rule," Rep. Barry Moore, R-Ala., tweeted Wednesday. "Unacceptable."
The exchange showed Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, grilling Dettelbach on the limits of ATF authority when enforcing a new law for pistol braces, which staunch Second Amendment conservatives want protected as a constitutional right.
"My point is this: Local law enforcement pulls over a car, the guy's drunk. All of a sudden he’s doing an inventory and he finds one of these braces in the back of his car, right? And that brace hasn't been registered because the guy had no clue this was even out there. Are you going to put that guy in jail for that brace? What is local law enforcement going to do?"
Dettelbach responded, "the ATF doesn't deal with the brace; the ATF deals with the weapon as assembled as a whole, determining whether it is a short-barreled rifle."
Nehls grew frustrated as his time expired during the hearing.
"I'm not getting anything from him," Nehls said. "I just want the American people, everybody to understand, you're going after veterans, individuals like myself."
Conservatives and gun-rights groups challenged new federal regulations on pistols with stabilizing braces, suing in January to block a gun-control action touted by President Joe Biden after the accessories were used in two mass shootings.
Two lawsuits were filed in federal court in Texas against the move to treat the guns like short-barreled rifles, a weapon like a sawed-off shotgun that has been heavily regulated since the 1930s.
The cases argue millions of people have guns with the braces and use them to make firing "more accurate, and therefore safer," according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of three veterans by the conservative Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
They said in the lawsuit the new rule from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives forces owners into "unthinkable choices" of removing the brace, submitting to a national registry, or opening themselves up to possible charges.
"The new rule unlawfully usurps Congressional authority by significantly expanding the definition of 'rifle' under federal law and, with it, imposes potential criminal liability on millions of Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights," the lawsuit argues.
A decade ago, the ATF found the braces did not make guns similar to short-barreled rifles.
At least three million guns with stabilizing braces are in circulation in the U.S., according to the ATF. Other estimates place the number much higher, the suit claims. The plaintiffs are asking the court to block enforcement of the rule.
The regulation was one of several steps Biden announced in 2021 after a man using a stabilizing brace killed 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. A stabilizing brace was also used in a shooting in Dayton, Ohio, that left nine people dead in 2019.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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