As a group, gun owners have been conditioned to be pretty wary of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That said, the recent tumult surrounding “pistol braces” has us even more anxious than usual. These braces are devices designed to help people operate large handguns based on familiar platforms such as the venerable AKM and AR-15. This whole mess relates to the administrative agency’s attempts to shoehorn these arms into the National Firearms Act, a terrible law wrought with hidden contradictions.

As initially conceived, the NFA sought to ban virtually all “concealable” firearms. Congress, recognizing that it did not have the authority to enact such a ban outright, attempted to achieve the same objective through the NFA’s prohibitively expensive taxation and registration scheme.