Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) pulled no punches this week when she tore into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) over its unconstitutional overreach into gun regulations.
Specifically, the Tennessee senator tweeted the “ATF’s ruling on their Pistol Brace Rule is nothing more than government overreach. Biden and his unelected bureaucrats are “destroying our Second Amendment.”
Blackburn’s protest was a sharp response to the ATF’s new pistol stabilizer brace regulations. The highly controversial move requires brace owners to register their accessories with the federal government, destroy them or the entire weapon, convert attached pistols into long rifle barrels, or hand in the braces and firearms to the ATF.
The new ruling classifies guns with bracing accessories as short-barreled rifles. This in turn means they require a federal license to possess.
Blackburn is far from the only legislator disgusted with the federal government’s increasing encroachments on Second Amendment liberties.
In another act of resistance to the ATF’s overreaches, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) introduced a bipartisan bill on Tuesday to create an apparatus for firearms companies to appeal ATF rulings.
Crenshaw called the ATF’s actions “sickening” and “a shameless slap in the face to disabled veterans.” Pistol stabilizing braces were developed to allow wounded veterans the chance to continue to enjoy sport shooting.
The Texas representative said his bill merely “brings (the) ATF in line with most other federal regulatory bodies and allows small business owners an avenue to fight these unconstitutional attacks.”
Resistance to the ATF’s escalating actions in firearm regulation is growing. Last week Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced the Abolish the ATF Act in response to the new pistol brace rules and other encroachments on Second Amendment rights.
Gaetz tweeted, “The continued existence of the ATF is increasingly unwarranted based on their repeated actions to convert law-abiding citizens into felons. My bill today would abolish the ATF once and for all.”
And Wednesday, a group of House lawmakers introduced legislation to repeal the National Firearms Act of 1934. The Repeal the NFA Act would remove the ATF’s power to target lawful gun owners with new regulations that would potentially turn them into criminals.
The push was led by Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), who tweeted “The Repeal the NFA Act will strip the ATF of its authority to criminalize lawful gun owners and undo nearly 90 years of assault on our fundamental freedoms.”
Burlison said the act has been used for nearly a century to violate Second Amendment rights. He cited the recent brace rule change as “just another example of these blatant attacks on the constitutional rights of Americans. The ATF-NFA sham needs to end.”
The pushback against the ATF gained momentum with the pistol brace regulations that will effectively make criminals of upstanding citizens. In some jurisdictions, however, these actions will not be taken.
A pair of Oklahoma sheriffs this week announced they will not participate in enforcement of the pistol brace ruling. Marshall County Sheriff Donald Yow and Love County Sheriff Andy Cumberledge said the discovery of a citizen with a stabilizing brace “won’t be addressed.”
Both insisted that state and federal laws will be enforced if a crime is committed with a weapon equipped with a stabilizing brace. However, there will be no confiscations resulting from the ATF ruling.
The ATF exists as a power unto itself — a regulatory agency charged with overseeing basic and explicitly stated constitutional freedoms. Such power, as has been recently demonstrated, is ripe for abuse and demands oversight.
It is refreshing to see lawmakers step up and defend every American’s Second Amendment freedoms against federal overreach, and more needs to be done to guarantee our liberties.
