Sig discontinuing SB-15 stand alones
We’ve just received notice from Sig Sauer that as of the first of next year, they’ll be discontinuing sales of the stand-alone pistol braces (PSB’s) without the buffer tube kit, both the current PSB models and the newer SBX models.
So, you have to get the full kit. I just snagged two at Amazon because reasons.
December 6th, 2014 at 7:52 pm
Well, that’s better than doing away with the concept entirely, but I wonder why the change.
December 6th, 2014 at 8:52 pm
Guessing here, but because they’re the only game in town, they realized they can make moar $$$ on a $200+ kit than a $115 brace.
December 6th, 2014 at 9:25 pm
CIA is advertising a copy as coming soon already. I suspect sig offering their brace “kit” for 250 MSRP is going to let some other folks come in cheaper as well.
December 6th, 2014 at 10:22 pm
My guess is that too many people complained it didn’t fit right on whatever buffer tube they were using.
December 7th, 2014 at 8:56 am
…and unless you have a lot of those “moar dollars” to flush, you don’t even buy weapons that are dot mil carbines cut down to pistols. Why would you waste 40-60% of the power in a cartridge? If you want a strong .22 pistol, the Kel-Tec .22 mag offering ought to satisfy you, and if it doesn’t, the FN Five Seven will.
The real bottom line here is that the FBATFE will probably rescind their approval of arm braces for pistol versions of carbines anyway. Consider their illogic in approving them in the first place, given their long-standing regs against attachable stocks for military service pistol and the SBR controls.
December 8th, 2014 at 1:48 am
RivrDog,
I wouldn’t say the MK18 is just a “strong .22 pistol…” It is a valid PDW. In calibers like 300 BLK the AR pistol works like a champ.
If BATFE revises their approval of the arm braces then it puts most of their regulatory regime for NFA items into question. That regime is currently primarily based on manufacturer intent, not actual performance. I don’t think ATF wants to throw out literally hundreds or thousands of classifications — or even jeopardize the NFA itself for failure to meet even Rational Basis judicial review — to crush what is really a pretty small market in the big picture.
December 8th, 2014 at 7:54 am
Chris from AK, this is an issue akin to the O/C issue. O/C-ers believe that if no-gun-opinion folk and anti-gun folk see enough peaceably open-carried arms, those folks will be converted to the O/C position.
The “arm-brace” advocates take a specifically-NFA regulated arm, the SBR, and try to “unregulate” it with the addition of the brace. How many photos have you seen of people firing brace-equipped pistols from the shoulder as opposed to firing them from the braced offhand position? I read a lot of gunblogs, and the only photos I’ve seen of brace-equipped pistol shooting in the braced-offhand position are supplied by the brace manufacturers. Everyone else is using the brace as a shoulder stock.
“Common use” is a defined legal concept, but there is also room in that concept to say that if it looks like a rifle, shoots like a rifle, and is almost always USED as a rifle, it’s a rifle, not a “braced pistol”. Since a supportive brace COULD be built which would NOT function as a shoulder stock, the only reason the rigid braces still exist is the FBATFE’s continuing aversion to corporate egg-on-face. They don’t want to have to reverse themselves, as you correctly alluded.
As we go about our law-abiding lives trying to fit into the oddities of the NFAs as amended, the one thing we try to avoid are additional restrictive amendments. IMHO, the existance of the rigid brace is asking, nay, BEGGING the Feds to further restrict us. That’s a conflict-management fail.
December 8th, 2014 at 11:11 am
Rivrdog,
So we comply with their asinine law, without looking for ways to poke holes in it and get it tossed out by courts?
December 8th, 2014 at 2:04 pm
I have Bill Akins and Len Savage on the phone for you.
December 8th, 2014 at 2:34 pm
Rivr, the broader point is that the NFA branch’s determinations hinge on manufacturer intent, not actual performance.
The SIG MPX issue is another perfect example. ATF got smacked by a judge for failing to consider any real world performance data. ATF’s basis for determining the MPX was a suppressor was based solely on manufacturer intent and some constructive possession doctrine. The judge nailed ATF’s tech branch down on refusing to consider any sort of real-world test data.
Now with the Sig arm brace, ATF would have to say that real-world usage (not manufacturer intent) governs NFA classification.
Sig has a sound legal strategy. They are introducing products and legal arguments that force ATF to take contradictory positions on the NFA. If ATF does not have some sort of internally consistent position, then large parts of the NFA can be challenged for failure to meet even rational basis review.
Moreover, the arm brace in particular is great for us: there is a boom in AR pistol uppers. More and more people are getting “skin in the game” with things that used to be regarded as NFA items. This is how we’ve slowly made progress with suppressors. Until there’s a constituency of owners out there that care, it will be hard to liberalize NFA laws at the state and federal level.
The difference now, in 2014, compared to Akins and Savage in the past is that now we have Heller. Heller states that the government must meet intermediate scrutiny when trying to restrict items in common use. Sig’s products are going to create the numbers to claim that PDWs are in “common use.” Sig’s legal strategy is planned in such a way that the ATF would struggle to meet even Rational Basis for its rulemaking process, much less intermediate scrutiny.
Besides, it isn’t like the risk is that great. Worst case, if the ATF reclassifies the arm brace as an SBR component, we go back to where we were before: pay $200 for a stamp and wait for months. There is little downside and a lot of upside to Sig’s strategy.
December 8th, 2014 at 5:13 pm
According to my buddy, his supplier was on a conference call where the news was announced and it apparently has more to do with failing sales of Sig’s P516 AR-15 pistol than anything else.
Regardless, I grabbed one along with a buffer tube on Amazon as well. BTW, Uncle, the link to Amazon doesn’t work. Apparently, their stock is already gone.
December 8th, 2014 at 6:58 pm
Those dead links are probably more a matter of Amazon’s arbitrary policy about was is and is not an assault weapon accessory than a lack of braces to sell.
December 8th, 2014 at 7:16 pm
Except I can find plenty of links to SB-15 kits including tube/spring. Just none for the SB-15 alone.