I don't like the NFA. I think the prohibitions on SBRs and silencers are particularly pointless.
I also think that in a world where the NFA is still law, whether I like it or not, the pistol braces went far over the "I'm not touching you!" line. The original sig brace was definitely easily used as a stock, but the shape and the straps made sense as an accessibility device (indeed, I'd actually seen it used once by a person who was born with an unusable arm).
By the time of the ruling, all that was gone. I built an AR pistol for about $320 before the pandemic. This was one of the cheapest options, it doesn't have the sig brace accessibility features, neither the shape nor straps, had a screw that would interface with the adjustable stock positions on a standard carbine buffer tube, etc.
There were others with even more features. They were stocks, no way around it. If these had stayed something like the sig brace, we might still have them. Instead the industry flew too close to the sun and melted their wings. It's a damn shame. They were a nice option for making AR/AK/similar "pistols" usable when waiting for a stamp, for situations where SBR legality was an issue, or, yaknow, for the genuinely disabled. That's over now, I'm glad at least (From my understanding) those with the pistols at least get a free stamp, but it's a pain in the ***. I'm disappointed that supposedly pro-gun politicians didn't pass the HPA or other NFA-neutering legislation when they had the chance, but putting stocks on pistols and calling them a brace was never something that was going to be a long term thing.
