Democrats have begun to describe AR/AK pistols as “Concealable Assault-Style Rifles” and are pushing the Biden administration to cover these firearms under the NFA.

Democrat representatives have written a letter suggesting that these firearms should require a $200 tax stamp and registration. The letter was sponsored by Democrat Rep Val Demings, Joe Neguse, Ed Perlmutter, and Mike Thompson as well as about half the Democrat caucus.

From guns.com: 

“Concealable assault-style firearms that fire rifle rounds pose an unreasonable threat to our communities and should be fully regulated under the National Firearms Act consistent with the intent and history of the law,” says the letter, urging Biden to “to immediately promulgate regulations to cover these concealable assault firearms under the National Firearms Act.”

Despite what the letter contends, AR pistols have been available on the U.S. consumer market for over 40 years, in compliance with established federal law and definitions on handguns and how they differentiate from NFA-regulated short-barreled rifles.

The Gwinn/Bushmaster 5.56mm NATO Armpistol, a compact 20-inch-long bullpup handgun that utilized some AR-15 parts, was around back in the early 1970s. By 1986, the Australian Automatic Arms Corp was exporting its SAP pistol to the U.S., an AR-15-ish handgun with a fiberglass receiver and forearm along with a 10.5-inch barrel. As early as 1993, the Rocky Mountain Arms Patriot and the Olympic Arms OA93, both full-fledged AR-pattern handguns were being sold on the market.

Even during the decade-long federal assault weapon ban that ran from 1994 to 2004, some of these handguns were barred from production under an arbitrary 50-ounce unloaded weight limit and other characteristics that defined the guns as “assault pistols” but they were not subject to NFA regulation. Olympic at the time responded to the ban with modified versions of the OA93, the lightened and featureless OA-96 and OA-98 pistols, which were compliant.

If the Biden Administration were to make a rule change at the ATF then millions of gun owners would be impacted. It would be almost impossible to enforce but would make many Americans criminals. The AR platform in particular is one of the most popular, many of those first-time gun buyers from last year would be affected.

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