The media has been clueless about some of this as they are about much of anything to do with firearms.
The “pistol braces” are a kind of weird, niche thing... Normally if you were to purchase say, an AR-15, and cut off the barrel and stock... You’d have just made a “short barreled rifle”, and that’s a no-no.
But.... If the factory produces such a weapon, and markets it as a “pistol”, that’s quite legal under current definitions.
Of course, a short little AR with no stock is rather hard to shoot. So... Again under current regulations, you can add a “brace” which is “not quite a stock”.
A short extension that you can brace against your arm or put in the crook of your arm and now you have a somewhat-easier-to-shoot “pistol”.
All quite legal under current ATF regulations.
Now... The AR-loving crowd thinks these things are the bee’s knees for “home defense”, as they are handy in tight quarters but still... AR firepower.
And as noted in the recent shooting incident, all too effective for that purpose as well, at least at short range.
However, to my knowledge, that’s the only such use of this sort of weapon I’m familiar with; most folks are quite willing to use handguns or anything else they can get hold of.
I think the braces on AR pistols are pretty much silly. The people I know who have bought them pretty much did so just because they're allowed to. When it comes to home defense, there are tons of much more reasonable solutions. Like, I dunno, a plain old 12-guage shotgun? I know, silly me.
So I fear this is a bit of “see, we’re doing SOMETHING legislation, that I fear will have little if any impact.
Reading through the plan as a whole, there's a whole lot of it that is "Scary Black Rifle" syndrome, targeting weapons that make big news on the extremely rare occasions that they get used in a crime, while pretty much glossing over the fact that the overwhelming majority of gun crimes, accidents, and suicides occur with pistols.
Some comments, in no particular order:
Reduce stockpiling of weapons. In order to reduce the stockpiling of firearms, Biden supports legislation restricting the number of firearms an individual may purchase per month to one.
Yeah... there are some "doomsday militia" types out there stockpiling... but the actual violence isn't being committed by them, and the people committing those crimes are pretty much never buying more than one gun a month. Hell, my spousal unit has several firearms of vastly different types, and they're almost all a case of one a *year* because firearms are expensive. The only exception I know of is the matched set of antique-style revolvers, which he bought at the same time... because they're a
matched set.
Close the “hate crime loophole.” Biden will enact legislation prohibiting an individual “who has been convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime, or received an enhanced sentence for a misdemeanor because of hate or bias in its commission” from purchasing or possessing a firearm.
I see where they're going with this, but I'm wary of allowing misdemeanors of any kind disqualify a person from a constitutional right. In this case, I'm doubly skeptical because "hate crime" is a very fuzzy notion and I can envision lots of scenarios where this gets abused.
End the online sale of firearms and ammunitions. Biden will enact legislation to prohibit all online sales of firearms, ammunition, kits, and gun parts.
I honestly have no idea why this is something to tackle in the first place. So far as I know, online sellers have pretty stringent rules already, and those sales are tracked at least as closely as brick-and-mortar sales, if not more. It might vary by state, but I was under the impression that ordering a firearm online you have to have it sent to a licensed retail shop anyway, and pay an additional handling fee, and it gets logged multiple times. This strikes me as pretend safety.
Incentivize state “extreme risk” laws. Extreme risk laws, also called “red flag” laws, enable family members or law enforcement officials to temporarily remove an individual’s access to firearms when that individual is in crisis and poses a danger to themselves or others. Biden will incentivize the adoption of these laws by giving states funds to implement them. And, he’ll direct the U.S. Department of Justice to issue best practices and offer technical assistance to states interested in enacting an extreme risk law.
This is another one that is borderline for me. The intent is good, but there's a lot of opportunity for abuse. I'm hypothetically on-board with it... but I would like to see the criteria for what constitutes "extreme risk".
Dedicate the brightest scientific minds to solving the gun violence public health epidemic.
Eh? Okay... but there are a LOT of other problems I'd like to see the brightest minds tackling, which I think would be more effective in curbing violence overall, including firearm-relates violence.
Address the epidemic of suicides by firearms.
Yeah, this is a no from me. But that really has a lot more to do with my personal view toward suicide. I'd prefer that people who have decide they've had enough take a less messy approach, simply for the sake of those they leave behind, but I don't have a moral objection to suicide in and of itself.
All in all, most of the things that are likely to have an effect are common sense ones like better background checks. The smart gun bit is interesting, and I'm all for it... as long as they can be keyed to more than one set of fingerprints so that spouses don't have to have *two* firearms for home defense.
What I didn't see, and maybe just missed, is a way to address firearms in the hands of people with significant mental health diagnoses. Seriously, my sibling is bi-polar, but does not have any criminal records. I don't want them to own a firearm; I'm barely comfortable with them owning steak knives.
