> One of the common, insidious ways by which the regulatory state deprives Americans of constitutional rights is by whittling away at those rights piecemeal through the promulgation of regulations designed to serve an amorphous “public interest” political end at the expense of the constitutional limits on power designed to protect individual liberties. That is the case with a recent rule adopted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to compel law-abiding gun owners to register and be subject to transfer taxes for firearms that have pistol braces. > On Jan. 13, 2023, ATF did a volte-face, arbitrarily and capriciously changing the definition of “rifle” in the regulations to include any firearm “designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder.” (See ATF Final Rule.) The rule will enable ATF on a case-by-case basis to decide whether a firearm is subject to the registration, reporting, transfer, and tax requirements of the National Firearms Act. Instantaneously, the rule makes millions of gun owners technical felons for not registering.