GOA Thanks the Tens of Thousands who Took Action in Rebuking the ATF

Great news!

In a Notice issued yesterday by the Associate Deputy Director of the ATF, the agency has officially withdrawn its pistol brace proposal that GOA had alerted you to here.

Yes, you read that right. Gun owners have won a huge  Christmas Eve victory!

The prior Notice by the ATF claimed to provide “guidance” about how the agency would classify braced pistols using “objective factors,” but in reality, the agency proposal left gun owners in the dark.

The underlying danger of the ATF’s murky guidance was that millions of gun owners would have feared potential jailtime for illegally possessing an unregistered Short-Barreled Rifle or Short-Barreled Shotgun. But for now, the proposed Notice is null and void.

This is a huge deal, and there are a lot of people who deserve credit.

We are so very thankful for the tens of thousands of gun owners who issued their stinging rebukes to the ATF … to the many pro-gun journalists and YouTubers who helped sound the alarm … and to the 90 members of Congress who sent an opposition letter to the ATF.

GOA submitted comments of our own to the ATF, stating:

The Notice is Kabuki theater, designed to clothe another lawless ATF action with an air of legitimacy, while in reality completely reversing prior agency policy as  pertains to popular pistol braces owned by millions of Americans, and undermining their reliance on prior ATF assurances that their firearms are lawful to own with pistol braces attached.

You can read the rest of our comments decrying this unconstitutional action here.

Gun owners will have to stay vigilant, and we will continue pressing to remove Short-Barreled Rifles and Short-Barreled Shotguns from the National Firearms Act.

But for now, this is a wonderful early Christmas present.