Um Yeah About That

I feared there'd be some own goal blaming going on about the recent ATF give and take.

Let's call the SB15 stock brace what it is.  It's a stock.

How did I come to this conclusion where someone at ATF missed it?

Three words.  Carbine.  Receiver.  Extension.  (also known as a buffer tube).

Prior to SIG putting their stock brace on the market ATF had been consistent that for your AR to be a pistol had have never been assembled as a rifle EVER and it needed to have a pistol receiver extension on it; not a carbine or rifle extension.  A carbine extension without a stock made it an SBR instantly.

What kind of extension does the SB15 use?

ATF is known to be mercurial and contradictory but something is well known, a letter from Tech Branch only applies to the person it is addressed to.  If I have a letter stating it's A-OK to put a <16" barrel on my AR as long as the overall length is >26" without a stamp, it doesn't apply to you.  This too is well known.  Without that letter you've no recourse when you're busted (and even then that letter might do you no damn good).

So when they ruled SIG's gun to be a pistol with the stock brace people wanted to be sure and they wanted to have a letter with their name on it, because one written to SIG doesn't help them unless SIG made the entire gun.

A massive deluge of letters really told Tech Branch they'd let SIG make legal SBRs without paying the taxes.

I know lots of you are unhappy that they noticed the loophole they'd created and closed it.  It sucks.

But the reason that all those letters asking for clarification were written was to avoid ten years in a Federal pound you in the ass prison.

Let's also be honest, ATF would eventually have noticed and removed the approval from people shouldering the things in videos on YouTube anyways.  No matter what SIG claims, the damn thing is a stock; you know it's a stock; you were going to use it as a stock and you're actually upset that they noticed.

If you really, really need to be pissed off and do something.  Calling your congress-weasel is something.  You should do that!

Getting irate on the phone to your congress-weasel and demanding the stupid law be changed would probably go a lot farther than blaming your fellow gun owners for knowing ATF well enough to be prudent before proceeding with a  SBR pistol build.  While you have them on the phone be sure to demand that they take back their legislative authority from the executive branch agency that is the BATFE.

The real blame is with the authors of the NFA, the 73rd Congress who voted for it, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who signed it, the the authors of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, the 90th Congress who voted for it and President Lyndon B Johnson who signed it and the people at ATF who have been pulling rulings out of their asses for decades.

It is especially galling about that 1968 act in that it "corrected" a supreme court ruling that essentially voided the 1934 act!  Interestingly, Haynes is why we really don't have any prosecution of felon in possession.