ATF Still Targeting Brace Owners — With No Rules Published

Gun Owners of America pressed the ATF directly for clear guidance after the Biden brace rule was struck down in court. The agency's response? Find out when you're charged.

That's not a regulatory gray area. That's a trap.

ATF officials told GOA that gun owners may not learn their firearm is considered illegal until they're already facing federal charges. No published guidance. No clear standards. Enforcement by ambush — against Americans who followed the law as they understood it.

This is the Biden ATF's rotting legacy, and Acting AG Todd Blanche needs to get his arms around it now. The Biden administration weaponized the ATF against millions of peaceable brace owners for three years. Courts killed the rule — but the bureaucratic mindset that spawned it still runs the agency.

The NFA's definitions of "short-barreled rifle" haven't changed. ATF examiners still make subjective, arbitrary calls on what separates a stock from a brace. Without written, published guidance, every brace owner in America flies blind.

GOA deserves credit for refusing to treat the rule's repeal as a clean win — because it wasn't. A bureaucracy that punishes first and clarifies never isn't a reformed bureaucracy. It's a slower-moving threat.

Bottom line: if you own a pistol with a stabilizing brace, the federal government may already consider you a felon — and hasn't bothered to tell you why or under what specific conditions. That is un-American, unconstitutional, and unacceptable.

Call your representatives today. Demand the ATF publish clear, binding, written guidance on brace legality — or get out of the brace business entirely. And support GOA's ongoing legal pressure to drag this agency into the sunlight where it belongs.