Submitted by Gun Owners of America,
The Department of Justice is currently pursuing criminal charges in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, for possession of a handgun equipped with a pistol stabilizing brace, in the case U.S. v. Taranto.
In response, Gun Owners of America and our friends at the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition (FRAC) are urging the Department of Justice to drop that charge, which sets a dangerous precedent for the millions of Americans who possess up to 40 million such firearms.
In 2021, the Biden Administration tasked the ATF with targeting and cracking down on firearms equipped with accessories known as "pistol braces."
These accessories were originally designed to allow disabled gun owners to "brace" a handgun against their forearm, aiding in shooting longer and heavier firearms with one hand.
For years, ATF approved the devices for use on pistols of all kinds, and promised that the mere attachment of such accessories to handguns did not transform them into short-barreled rifles. That was until the Biden Administration decided to target pistol braces for elimination at the behest of anti-gun billionaire donors.
According to a study from the Congressional Research Service, up to 40 million of these firearms are in private ownership throughout the country. But that wasn't going to stop Biden's Department of Justice and ATF from working to make owners of these pistol-brace-equipped firearms into felons with the stroke of a pen.
To do this, ATF decided to reclassify virtually all pistols with stabilizing braces as "short-barreled rifles" falling under the regulation of the 1934 National Firearms Act and requiring registration.
Failing to comply with ATF's reclassification and registration scheme could have landed gun owners in prison for ten years in addition to a $250,000 fine.
But thanks to numerous lawsuits from groups like Gun Owners of America, FRAC, and others, Biden's pistol brace rule is currently enjoined by numerous courts and even vacated by one.
Translation from legalese? Biden's rule is no longer in effect, and ATF has been ordered not to enforce it.
But this hasn't stopped anti-gun bureaucrats at ATF from attempting to continue to enforce the underlying legal theories that inspired the rule in the first place.
And now, we have our first example of this in the case U.S. v. Taranto.
Anti-gun holdovers from the Biden Administration in the DOJ & ATF know that charging an innocent gun owner with NFA violations for a pistol brace, and nothing more, is not going to stand up, so they had to find a case where someone committed other offenses serious enough that the additional charge for violating the NFA could create a successful precedent, but wouldn't be the centerpiece of the case.
And that's precisely what they found in U.S. v. Taranto.
But before we get into the details of the case, let me just point out that GOA & FRAC's interest in this case is the NFA charge for possessing a pistol-braced handgun, nothing else.
We state this clearly in our letter when we say: "We express no opinion on any of the other unrelated charges levied against Mr. Taranto."
This is because Taranto's case stems from an incident on June 28, 2023, where Taranto was stopped by the Secret Service and FBI in Washington DC and charged with the possession of a firearm, and magazines.
But in the hours leading up to his arrest, Taranto had engaged in what charging documents describe as "erratic" behavior, was livestreaming himself and, according to charging documents, "suggested that he had outfitted his vehicle with a detonator."
He then drove his car into DC, specifically into the Kalorama neighborhood, and into an area monitored by the Secret Service, because of its proximity to important government figures.
When the Secret Service approached him, he fled into the woods—the officers gave chase.
And eventually, when the Secret Service arrested him, and conducted a search of his vehicle, they found a CZ Scorpion pistol equipped with a brace, and more.
Taranto was charged with numerous offenses but, interestingly, according to his inditement, Taranto's pistol is charged as both a handgun, in violation of Washington DC's licensing provisions, and also a short-barreled rifle, in violation of the National Firearms Act.
How can a firearm be both a rifle and a handgun at the same time?
The answer is, of course, that it isn't, and the DOJ's internally conflicting position shows that the government is using the NFA charge for a sinister reason and may be a sign of a larger problem.
In a brief filed by the DOJ lawyers opposing Taranto's motion to dismiss, the U.S. Attorneys had this to say:
"ATF is not barred from continuing to enforce the underlying statute as it always has: by making case-by-case determinations about whether particular braced firearms constitute "rifles" under the statute.
And of course, because the rule reflects ATF's best understanding of the statute, those determinations will naturally tend to look substantially like the determinations that would follow from applying the clear framework outlined in the rule."
Translation?
Even though ATF is currently barred from enforcing the pistol brace rule, it claims that nothing stops it from enforcing the statute—using, of course, the same legal theories on which the rule is based. If this sort of logic -- that appeals only to bureaucrats -- makes your eyes burn, you're not alone.
This is undoubtedly a bad sign for the direction of ATF. Even though the pistol brace rule has been enjoined and vacated, ATF insists it can still charge pistol brace crimes, using the very same theories from its repudiated rule.
Even under a Trump administration, it appears that career anti-gun bureaucrats within ATF, along with some holdover prosecutors at the DOJ, just aren't willing to give up their anti-gun agenda.
This is why GOA has teamed up with FRAC to send a letter, this time to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, DC, asking that office to investigate this federal government overreach and dismiss the pistol brace charge against Taranto.
We are hopeful that, thanks to President Trump's executive order on protecting Second Amendment rights, this charge will be dismissed, thereby protecting millions of law-abiding gun owners from continuing ATF overreach.
Again, this case—and GOA's interest—has nothing to do with Mr. Taranto, but instead with the millions of other gun owners who possess firearms equipped with pistol stabilizing braces. If the DOJ pushes forward with this criminal charge against Taranto, then all of us are at risk.
