Biden would require the Justice Department to create a new rule “to make clear when a device marketed as a stabilizing brace effectively turns a pistol into a short-barreled rifle subject to the requirements of the National Firearms Act.” The only purpose of this policy is to undo Supreme Court precedent and subject more innocent gun-owners to federal regulation, including registration requirements. The notion that a device with lawful functions should become restricted (to only those who register it) because there are ways to use it for illegal purposes is not a notion any free people ought to accept.

Biden also wants to crack down on “ghost guns,” self-assembled firearms that don’t fall under a legal classification and are therefore exempt from mandatory background checks and serial numbers. It is totally legal in America for people to build their own firearms. Biden wants to make sure that it is as difficult as possible to do so.

We’ll have to wait for the legal text proposed by the Justice Department, but it is likely Biden will go after the businesses that supply self-assembly firearm kits. Again, the point here is to restrict access.

Do criminals build ghost guns? Perhaps a small number do. But again, a free country does not treat the whole population as criminals. The existence of ghost guns makes regulating firearm ownership more difficult. This is not a bad thing, as the nation’s Founding Fathers would agree. In a modern context, it forces the authorities to abandon the foolish pursuit of gun-control laws, whose main effect has always been to tack longer sentences onto defendants who are even more disproportionately nonwhite than those prosecuted for drug crimes. Once the discriminatory fool’s errand of gun control has been abandoned, policymakers will have to focus on anti-crime initiatives that have a chance of actually working.

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Biden’s attempt to restrict ghost guns and stabilizing braces will be the policies to watch closely. He is clearly trying to test the waters to see whether these restrictions hold up. If they do, he will undoubtedly pursue an even more aggressive agenda. He’s already promised as much.