Gun Owners Just Got Blindsided by The DOJ
Trump voters bought AR pistols and braced themselves for Biden's ATF war on gun owners to die on January 20.
Sixteen months into the second term, a federal court killed a much-despised ATF rule – but the agency just told that same court it doesn't need the rule to keep coming after you.
Here's what Trump's own Justice Department just did to the people who put him back in the White House.
The ATF Pistol Brace Rule Gun Owners Thought Was Dead
Biden's ATF spent 2023 reclassifying pistol-stabilizing braces – the shoulder attachments used by millions of gun owners, including disabled veterans – as features that transform a pistol into a short-barreled rifle under the National Firearms Act.
That meant millions of braced firearms overnight required NFA registration, federal paperwork, and the threat of felony charges for non-compliance.
Gun owners were given a grace period and told to register, destroy, or surrender their weapons.
Second Amendment groups immediately challenged the rule in court, multiple federal judges issued injunctions, and by 2025 a federal court vacated the rule entirely.
The Trump DOJ dropped its appeal in July 2025.
It looked like the fight was over.
It wasn't.
What Todd Blanche and the ATF Just Admitted in Federal Court
In a March 16 filing in State of Texas et al. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the ATF told the court the entire case is now moot – because the rule no longer exists.
Then, in the same brief, the agency acknowledged it is still enforcing its interpretation that some braced pistols qualify as unregistered short-barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act.
The rule may be dead. The ATF's legal theory isn't.
Gun Owners of America put it plainly: the DOJ has spent over a year defending Biden-era gun control with word games in federal court, and if the administration wants to call itself the most pro-Second Amendment DOJ in history, it is long past time to start acting like it.
The DOJ pushed back, telling The Washington Times the claim is wrong – that the Biden brace rule has been vacated and ATF is not enforcing it.
Both sides are technically correct, and that is exactly the problem.
Trump Called the Stabilizing Brace Ban Unconstitutional and Promised to Kill It
Here is where it gets impossible to excuse.
Trump campaigned in Indianapolis in 2023 and Harrisburg in 2024 promising to end the pistol brace ban on day one of his return to office.
The NRA and Gun Owners of America spent the final months of 2024 telling members that a Trump victory meant the fight was finished.
The Republican Party platform included explicit language defending Second Amendment rights against executive overreach – the exact kind of overreach the brace rule represented.
Trump voters in the firearms community didn't just vote on the economy or the border.
They voted specifically because they believed Trump would walk into the DOJ on day one and shut this down for good.
Why the ATF Is Still Treating Your AR Pistol as a Felony SBR
The answer runs straight through the permanent bureaucracy.
The ATF hasn’t been abolished, or even meaningfully gutted.
The same people who built the brace rule under Biden remain in place.
So an agency that lost in court and watched its rule get thrown out, responded by telling a federal judge it doesn't need the rule to keep treating your braced AR pistol as a potential felony.
Injunctions protecting most braced-firearm owners remain in place – for now.
But injunctions are not permanent, and the ATF has made clear it believes those injunctions only cover the vacated rule, not its broader statutory authority.
Gun Owners of America is pursuing a permanent injunction in federal court to close that gap.
Until that fight is resolved, millions of Americans who bought braced pistols in good faith are one adverse ruling away from federal criminal exposure – not because a new law was passed, not because Congress acted, but because there’s still an ATF and career bureaucrats inside of it refuse to accept that they lost.
Biden's people tried to take their guns with a regulation.
Trump's bureaucracy is keeping the legal theory warm.
Sources:
- Jonah Gottschalk, "Trump DOJ Keeps Biden-Era Gun Rule," Daily Caller News Foundation, April 10, 2026.
- "ATF Final Rule: Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached 'Stabilizing Braces,'" Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, January 2023.
- Kerry Picket, "ATF Scrutinized for Enforcing Pistol Brace Rule Years After Court Killed the Regulation," The Washington Times, March 23, 2026.
- Amy Swearer, "The ATF's Pistol Brace Rule Is Unconstitutional Overreach," The Heritage Foundation, March 2023.
- "Republican Party Platform 2024," Republican National Committee, July 2024.
