Raskin defends pistol brace rule: 'We want them to read the 2nd Amendment'

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) defended the Biden administration’s restriction on pistol braces and rejected arguments from Republicans who claim it violates the Second Amendment, saying, “We don’t want them to repeal the Second Amendment. We want them to read the Second Amendment.”

Raskin argued that his Republican colleagues repeatedly invoke the second half of the Second Amendment, describing the right to keep and bear arms, but gloss over the first half that says, “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.” 

“They say we want to repeal the Second Amendment. Mr. Speaker, we don’t want them to repeal the Second Amendment. We want them to read the Second Amendment,” Raskin said on the House floor Tuesday. “Because the Second Amendment would ask us why we are allowing people to go into elementary schools, Walmarts, supermarkets, churches and synagogues all over America with AR-15s enabled, sometimes with the stabilizing brace – as in Dayton, Ohio, Boulder, Colorado, Colorado Springs, Nashville, Tennessee – and assassinate our people.”

“If a foreign government were doing it, we would declare war on them, but since we’re just allowing the gun industry to spread these weapons of mass destruction around the country, they want to allow it. And they say that the Second Amendment must be respected in this strange and distorted way because they believe the Second Amendment gives the people the right to overthrow the government,” he continued. 

Raskin’s floor remarks Tuesday come as the House votes on the Biden administration’s tighter restrictions on firearms with “stabilizing braces,” which the administration announced in January. 

The rule, put forth by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), would reclassify pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles. It would also require people with existing pistols that have stabilizing braces to register the firearms with the government by May 31, 2023.

The House approved the bill Tuesday on a mostly party-line vote and sent the bill to the Senate for consideration. The White House has threatened to veto the Republican-backed resolution disapproving the ATF’s rule.