On January 14th, 1526, the Treaty of Madrid was signed by the Habsburg emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain — pictured, in a portrait painted by Titian) and his prisoner Francis I, king of France, who had been captured during the Battle of Pavia in February 1525. King Francis was held prisoner until the conclusion of the treaty, when he was allowed to return to France. This treaty came from what some might describe as “an advantageous negotiating position.”
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They of course waited until Friday the 13th — just before a three-day holiday weekend and the annual SHOT Show’s opening weekend… Via the Justice Department, the ATF just announced their final rule, banning nearly all arm-braced pistols. This very complicated 293-page ruling will potentially turn 4+ million law-abiding Americans into felons, if they don’t fully comply.
To be compliant, folks will have to take their pick of several options, within the announced 120-day amnesty period:
1.) Re-barrel, or permanently weld-on or high-temperature silver solder-on a barrel extension or extra long flash hider, bringing their braced pistol barrels to 16+ inches, thus making them legally “rifles”. OR,
2.) Replace their arm brace buffer tubes with a plain round buffer tubes, and destroy or turn in their arm braces (without compensation.) OR,
3.) Do a Federal Short Barreled Rifle (SBR) registration, with all of the fingerprinting, background checking, and paperwork. For this, they now even want you to submit photographs of the pistols — presumably so that you won’t change the configuration at a later date. The $200 for the tax stamp transfer will be waived for the first registration, but charged for any subsequent transfers. OR,
4.) Surrender your arm-braced pistols to Federal law enforcement, without compensation. (The least likely choice, I’m sure.)
I’ve been warning you about this, folks. Do you remember the memes that I’ve posted about this, over the last few years?
I’m sure that there will be court challenges as an uncompensated “taking” and/or for failing the Bruen decision test and Chevron deference — hopefully with a favorable ruling knocking down this Schumer before it would go into effect.
Also note that this rule will come into effect while there is still snow on the ground in northern states, making it very difficult for people to dig up cached guns, to photograph them and get serial numbers, for SBR registration.
Oh, and the rulemaking announcement was made just as the SHOT Show opened, where more than a dozen new arm-braced pistol models were being announced by gun manufacturers. What a slap in the face!
Please contact your congressman and U.S. Senators to urge them to pass legislation removing all “short-barreled” rifles and shotguns from National Firearms Act (NFA) restrictions. That would make the new ATF ruling null and void.
Shame on Merrick Garland and the ATF!
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Because today’s feature article is a book review and summary, it is not eligible for judging in the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. To be eligible, articles must be original works. There are still two weeks left to get your articles written for the current round of the judging.
More than $775,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 104 ends on January 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.