It made it harder for people to buy stabilized brief — braces. Put a pistol on a brace, and it ma- — turns into a gun. Makes them where you can have a higher-caliber weapon — a higher-caliber bullet coming out of that gun. It’s essentially turning it into a short-barreled rifle, which has been a weapon of choice by a number of mass shooters.
President Joe Biden, “Remarks by President Biden at the National Safer Communities Summit,” University of Hartford, West Hartford, Connecticut, June 16, 2023.
In three sentences, Biden has made multiple nonsensical and false statements. Few seem to realize that stabilizing braces for pistols were originally designed to allow wounded and disabled veterans who may have lost the use of part of their hand to hold handguns. They are essentially a strap attached to the gun which allows the disabled person to hold the gun when it recoils. Disabled individuals are often viewed as easy targets by criminals, and stabilizers make it easier to defend themselves.
— “Put a pistol on a brace, and it ma- — turns into a gun.”
A “stabilizing brace” doesn’t turn a pistol into a gun. It is already a gun.
— “Makes them where you can have a higher-caliber weapon — a higher-caliber bullet coming out of that gun.”
Two mass public shootings with stabilizing braces used pistols firing .223 caliber bullets (Dayton, Ohio, in 2019 and Boulder, Colorado, in 2021). The braces help people hold guns with the recoil, but the recoil from the used guns in these attacks was not particularly great and there is no evidence offered that the braces made any difference in these attacks. The list below shows how .223 rifle bullets compare to other rifle bullets.
If Biden is worried about more powerful guns with less recoil, plenty of alternatives are already available. Out of 82 bullets used in rifles, 70 of them are ranked as more powerful than a .223. In addition, with short barrels, such as for a pistol, the bullet will leave the barrel before full pressure is developed and travel at a lower velocity. A handgun will likely have more recoil than a rifle shooting the same round. That’s because rifles weigh more, and heavier guns dampen more recoil. The bottom line is that many guns fire “higher-caliber” bullets, and if recoil is an issue, the murderers can use a rifle. If there are concerns about the barrel length a murderer can saw down the barrel of a rifle.
— “It’s essentially turning it into a short-barreled rifle, which has been a weapon of choice by a number of mass shooters.”
Short-barreled rifles are not the weapon of choice for these murderers. Just two mass public shooters over the last 25 years have used handguns with pistol braces. 56.4% of them used only handguns and 3.2% used only shotguns. 14.9% used only a rifle of any type, and another 16% used a rifle along with another type of gun.
According to the Congressional Research Service there are between 10 and 40 million pistol braces. In June 2021, the ATF estimated “manufacturers have sold between 3 million and 7 million ‘stabilizing braces’ between the years 2013 to 2020 or over the course of eight years.” Even with the low estimate of 3 million, assuming that pistol braces were sold at the same rate over 2021 and 2022 as they were during the previous eight years, that implies about 3.75 million. But just over a quarter of a million were registered, so only between 0.6% and 6.7% complied.
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