Fully Braced With AR-­15 Pistols

By James Tarr

For most of their existence, AR-­15 pistols were a niche item, which is a polite way of saying they weren’t popular. Those bare buffer tubes sticking out the backend like ugly and awkward vestigial tails didn’t look good, and when you tried to shoulder them while shooting, things didn’t work out so well. In fact, AR pistols were so looked down upon by serious people that when Hollywood stuck an AR-­15 pistol (with no sights) into the hands of veteran CIA operative John Clark (Willem Dafoe) in 1994’s “Clear and Present Danger,” it probably took 10 years off author Tom “King of the Technically Accurate” Clancy’s life.

Things have changed. In 2013, SIG Sauer brought to market the SB15 PSB (pistol stabilizing brace). Since then, an ever-­increasing number of companies have been introducing braces, and companies as conservative as FN and LWRCI are offering pistols equipped with arm braces from the factory.

Despite the doom-­and-­gloomers predicting the demise of the AR pistol brace, the opposite has happened: more and more braces of increasingly interesting design have entered the marketplace.

Let’s take a look at some of the pistol braces currently on the market, separated by manufacturer.