Republican Florida Rep. Cory Mills warns that the Biden administration will soon criminalize gun owners amid heated debate on gun control legislation.
In an interview with The New York Post on Wednesday, Mills said that a Democratic-led rule targeting pistol stabilizer braces could affect gun owners’ basic rights under the Second Amendment.
“You’re talking about something that was completely legal. It’s not even a firearm, it’s a piece of furniture for the firearm and you’re now trying to go ahead and criminalize people for this. This is a very slippery slope and a Second Amendment violation,” he told The Post.
This comes after the White House submitted a regulation earlier this year that would effectively regulate pistol stabilizer braces as short-barreled rifles under the “National Firearms Act.”
Handgun stabilizer braces can lengthen a handgun and have a strap to increase the accuracy of the weapon. House Republicans on Tuesday passed legislation to reverse that rule, but President Joe Biden has threatened to veto it.
Under the pistol stabilizer brace rule, those accessories would be subject to stringent registration requirements, additional taxes, and extended wait times.
Mills, an Army veteran, further warned that the policy could also trample on disabled former service members who rely on the braces to overcome obstacles to using firearms.
“One of the things that he talked about was how this pistol stabilizing brace really helped him find purpose. We have to acknowledge the fact that one of the leading contributors to suicide rates in our military veterans is the fact that they no longer feel they have purpose,” Mills said.
Discussions on gun control legislation have been a hot-button issue recently after a series of mass shootings in the country. Former President Barack Obama recently suggested that the U.S. should adopt Australia’s gun laws.
“You know in Australia, they had one mass shooting 50 years ago and they said, ‘No, we’re not doing that anymore,’” Obama said in an interview with CBS. “That is normally how you would expect a society to respond when your children are at risk.”
According to the Australian Parliament, owning a gun is illegal in the country, and using one has its limits.
