I've said for years that it makes no sense that putting a stock on a pistol turns it into a rifle. It's not a rifle, it's a pistol with a shoulder stock
Not according to federal law. But you knew that already.
and it makes no sense that some guns like the Mauser or Luger pistols are exempt from the SBR laws when using a shoulder stock because they have some historical hooey that makes them special because if that's the case then it's bullshit
I agree that it is bullshit but IMHO they exempted stuff like ancient Mauser, Luger, BHPs etc because a lot of those things predated the NFA and there were tons in circulation as war trophies or whatever. So rather than make people dewat them or force someone to pay a tax on what was otherwise a title 1 handgun, they simply exempted them rather than process stamps (or create an amnesty) for those things. It also did not help matters that they likely, at the time, had no way of knowing who had these kinds of guns with an attendant shoulder
stock.
that pre 1900 antique break action shotguns that have barrels under 18 inches are still classified as Short Barrel Shotguns because shorter shotguns were favored for close quarters back then.
Yes, likely more stupidity on their part but keep digging on SBS/AOW and things get murky back then, real fast.
I have no doubts that the modern ATF (cuz under Bush Sr. and Clinton they were jackboots) has looked at the stupidity of the SBR/SBS laws in that taking a rifle or shotgun with the minimum OAL and barrel lengths and making them shorter does nothing to increase their lethality and really, how many violent crimes involving guns are short barrel shotguns and rifles used? Further, what exactly is stopping any criminal, who is in possession of a rifle or shotgun and intending to use it in commision of a crime, from chopping the barrel down illegally?
Actually most of this brace stuff is a Trump thing, although I believe some of the waffley stuff happened at the tail end of the Obama admin, too, when they started to step away from
their previous viewpoints.
The answer is nothing, all it becomes is an extra charge on a list of charges to add a few years to a jail sentence, yet what it does in reality is put the law abiding American at a disadvantage if they feel an SBR or SBS is better for their own protection.
Another interesting facet of the SBR & SBS laws is back when the NFA was being written, the anti's at the time weren't even focusing on them, it was handguns they wanted to ban outright. SBR/SBS regulation was a compromise because one side didn't want all handguns banned.
I partially disagree, moral panic retards (the same people who largely banned automatic knives, etc) likely threw SBS and SBR into the mix because of things like Bonnie and Clyde, probably the most famous people to ever use "short rifles/machine guns" and "short shotguns". Bonnie and Clyde got gunned down in May, NFA passed in July of that year. So they started with a
boner for machine guns but other stuff got tacked on, because of the screeching/braying of moral panic types.
I'm sure if we asked any field agent within the ATF who's been on the job over 5 years what sense most of the gun laws that are on the books have in regards to fighting crime or improving public safety, they'd say very little because they know what the data and facts are. Apart from machine guns and destructive devices and some AOW's, I don't think the ATF wants anything to do with most of the shit the NFA and GCA created. Yeah, I'm sure the ATF loves getting hundreds of guns a year from possible importers to see if they'll pass the stupid points system for the Sporting Purposes test, then fail, but have manufacturing moved into the US and have the whole thing wind up being moot.
Any agents who aren't shitbirds, sure, they would agree that most of the stuff is dumb and has very little to do with criminal activity. The ones that are just looking to rack up a
score and are ambivalent about RKBA, they love all those stupid laws because it gives them more obscure charges to throw on the pile.
So, bottom line is will ATF go back on the pistol braces? Not willingly no, but they will if a President with a different attitude than the current one comes in. I wouldn't doubt it if the ATF had been waiting for Obama to go before they approached Sessions or Trump on basically legalizing braces to help reduce the workload that goes into the tax stamp process so that money from the budget can be used elsewhere and I can only imagine how the ATF feels about the thousands of suppressors they have to register every year.
I firmly believe there are different factions within BATFE. There is one faction that is probably like "well if the NFA exists it should be modernized and we should make all this shit electronic so
we can do it faster" and then there's another faction that likely embraces the inherent stupidity of the entire thing as a form of obstructionism, although I think the NFA branch dealing
with stacks and stacks of shit would likely say to those people- "these laws aren't deterring anyone from buying this stuff, outside of MAYBE a handful of states that ban NFA based on its federal designation as such, otherwise we wouldn't have piles of NFA applications to process" etc. It is pretty mind numbing to me that someone can't go to an 07/SOT and just pay $200 + a fee, and have a dealer log into an ATF site and register the damn gun/can/whatever all electronically with rapid approval, with a "stamps.com" like thing that literally pumps out a barcoded stamp on the spot or something. The only thing that would legitimately still "take time" is transferring a pre 86 machine gun which hadn't be transferred in a long ass time because they'd actually need an examiner to, well, actually examine the paperwork and trail of shit behind it. Other than that there's no reason why an NFA transfer should be any different than a computer based NICS check, with the exception that the dealer would just forward the tax payment to the feds on the spot.