Comment on FR Doc # 2026-08930

I strongly support the proposed removal of the brace-specific paragraphs added to the definitions of “rifle” in 27 CFR 478.11 and 479.11 by the 2023 final rule. I am a small, home-based Federal firearms licensee. The 2023 rule created substantial uncertainty for my business, my customers, manufacturers, distributors, and ordinary firearm owners. It attempted to determine whether a firearm was “designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder” through a subjective combination of configuration, surface area, sights, length of pull, marketing materials, and supposed community use. These factors did not give the regulated public a reliable way to determine whether a particular firearm was a pistol or a short-barreled rifle. A regulation carrying potential criminal consequences must give people clear notice of what conduct is prohibited. The 2023 rule did the opposite. Two physically identical firearms could potentially be treated differently because of marketing language, an optic, how ATF believed people commonly used the firearm, or some other factor unrelated to the firearm’s basic mechanical operation. A small dealer cannot reasonably be expected to predict how ATF might balance those factors in every possible combination of firearm, brace, buffer tube, optic, and accessory. That uncertainty harms small businesses. Dealers must decide whether products can lawfully be stocked, advertised, transferred, accepted for gunsmithing, or taken in trade. Manufacturers face the risk of investing in a product that ATF might later reclassify. Customers may avoid lawful products because they cannot determine whether a future interpretation will expose them to registration requirements or criminal liability. These are real compliance and commercial burdens even when they cannot be measured easily. ATF estimates that removing the 2023 requirements would save the public approximately $144.38 million annually. That estimate reinforces the magnitude of the burden, but the most important benefit is the removal of an unworkable classification system. Although the making and transfer tax for most NFA firearms is now zero, NFA registration, approval, transfer, interstate-transportation, and possession requirements remain consequential. Eliminating the tax therefore did not cure the uncertainty created by the brace rule. ATF originally accepted stabilizing braces because they allowed large pistols to be fired more safely and made those firearms more accessible to people with disabilities or limited strength. Once braces became widely accepted, manufacturers naturally developed different designs and customers found different lawful ways to use them. ATF then attempted to draw a regulatory boundary between braces and stocks based on features that increasingly overlap. The resulting line was neither objective nor administrable. The correct response is not another worksheet, revised point system, technical guidance document, or open-ended balancing test. ATF should finalize the proposed deletions and return to the statutory definition enacted by Congress. A firearm actually designed, made, and intended to be fired from the shoulder may still be evaluated under that definition. However, the mere presence of a brace or other rearward accessory should not create a presumption that a pistol has become a rifle. I also urge ATF not to recreate the deleted criteria later through informal guidance or classification practices. Product-specific classifications requested by manufacturers may be useful, but unpublished or inconsistently applied standards would restore the same uncertainty this proposal is intended to remove. Any future binding standard should be authorized by Congress, genuinely objective, and adopted through proper notice-and-comment procedures. More fundamentally, Congress should reconsider whether short-barreled rifles should remain within the NFA at all. The elimination of the associated making and transfer tax, combined with the difficulty of distinguishing among pistols, braced pistols, and short-barreled rifles, demonstrates how little practical sense the present classification system makes. ATF cannot resolve that larger statutory problem through increasingly elaborate interpretations. For these reasons, I strongly support finalizing the proposed rule as written and completely removing the brace-specific factoring criteria adopted in 2023.