PA Bill Number: SB1198

Title: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and ...

Description: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and .. ...

Last Action: Referred to AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS

Last Action Date: May 17, 2024

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Obama administration ammo ban proposal being sold under false pretenses :: 03/04/2015

By now there are very few who follow the gun rights/"gun control" debate who are unaware that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has proposed banning sales to private citizens of some of the most popular ammunition, for the country's most popular centerfire rifles.

The M855 "green tip" 5.56x45mm NATO/.223 Remington round, beloved of AR-15 owners primarily for its low price, features a bullet with a steel tip.

According to the BATFE, that steel tip, and the fact that although designed as a rifle round, there are "pistols" (very large, difficult to conceal ones) that can fire it, mean that the round meets the statutory definition of "armor piercing." The relevant section of federal law words it this way:

(B) The term “armor piercing ammunition” means—
(i) a projectile or projectile core which may be used in a handgun and which is constructed entirely (excluding the presence of traces of other substances) from one or a combination of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium copper or depleted uranium; or

(ii) a full jacketed projectile larger than .22 caliber designed and intended for use in a handgun and whose jacket has a weight of more than 25 percent of the total weight of the projectile.

We can dismiss (ii) right away--the jacket constitutes far less than 25% of the bullet's weight. According to the BATFE, though, (i) applies, because of the steel tip. The problem with that claim is that the tip is only part of the core of the projectile, with the lead base amounting to something like 80% of the weight. This means, obviously, that the projectile core is not "constructed entirely (excluding the presence of traces of other substances) from one or a combination of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium copper or depleted uranium)." Nevertheless, BATFE says the steel tip is enough to qualify the round for "armor piercing" status.

Until now, that has not particularly mattered, because the Attorney General has graciously allowed the ammunition to enjoy a "sporting purposes" exemption to the ban (and let's not even get started on the peril of allowing the government to restrict guns and ammunition based on their usefulness in sport). Why yank that exemption now? Obviously not because the ammunition has suddenly become less fun to use in shooting sports--the ammo hasn't changed, after all. The reason, supposedly, is the danger to law enforcement.

OK then--what has changed in this supposed threat to law enforcement officers since 1986, when BATFE granted the exemption? According to that agency, the change is the appearance on the civilian market of pistols that can fire the round--pistols that unlike the single-shot models generally recognized as intended for sport, and not of much interest to people with nefarious, violent intentions, are repeaters. That, the BATFE tells us, is the difference:

Applying the sporting purposes framework set-forth above, the 5.56mm projectile that ATF exempted in 1986 does not qualify for an exemption because that projectile when loaded into SS109 and M855 cartridges may be used in a handgun other than a single-shot handgun. Specifically, 5.56mm projectiles loaded into the SS109 and M855 cartridges are commonly used in both “AR-type” rifles and “AR-type” handguns. The AR platform is the semi-automatic version of the M16 machinegun originally designed for and used by the military. The AR-based handguns and rifles utilize the same magazines and share identical receivers. These AR-type handguns were not commercially available when the armor piercing ammunition exemption was granted in 1986.

The problem, though, is that this is utterly false. The Bushmaster Arm Pistol, although not a member of the AR-15 family, was a semi-automatic, detachable magazine-fed firearm (so, as an "assault weapon," presumably just as much of a "threat" to law enforcement as a pistol based on the AR-15 platform would be), and went on the market in 1977 (and was produced through 1990). Likewise Bushmaster's "Carbon-15" pistols, which are based on the AR-15, has been on the market since at least 2003--why is this a problem only 12 years later?

Certainly not because of an epidemic of officers being shot with such rounds. As House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) notes in a letter (which garnered signatures from 172 Congressman in the first two days) to BATFE director B.Todd Jones, "Millions upon millions of M855 rounds have been sold and used in the U.S., yet ATF has not even alleged – much less offered evidence – that even one such round has ever been fired from a handgun at a police officer." And if the BATFE has no evidence of that, they certainly have no evidence of such a round having been fired from a handgun through an officer's body armor--the "threat" that supposedly justifies the ban.

Another ridiculous aspect of this is that the steel tip on the M855 round is not what provides the round with its "armor-piercing" capability. That is almost entirely a function of velocity and kinetic energy, both of which are possessed in similar quantities by 5.56mm bullets that do not use any of the proscribed materials.

In fact, the .22 TCM, which is expected to be able to launch a 40-grain bullet at 2100 feet per second, will easily penetrate most police soft body armor, even with a bullet constructed entirely of unrestricted metals--and from a vastly more concealable, 1911-format pistol--including some models accepting 17-round magazines.

If the metallic composition of the bullets were such an important determining factor in a round's ability to penetrate armor, there would presumably not be perennial attempts to redefine "armor-piercing" along performance parameters, rather than bullet construction.

One (presumably very much unintended) argument against banning "armor piercing" handgun ammunition for private citizens came a while back from a very surprising source--the Violence Policy Center. As that group's director, Josh Sugarmann, was cited in the U.S. News & World Report:

Gun control advocacy groups like Sugarmann's say the body armor worn by the shooters in Newtown [which wasn't "body armor," anyway] and Aurora undermines the argument made by gun advocates that shootings can be stopped by someone with a handgun.

In other words, Sugarmann seems to be arguing that armed private citizens would have a reasonable chance at stopping mass shootings, if only they were not denied handgun ammunition capable of defeating body armor.

In the final analysis, to be free, we the people must have the means to present a credible threat to those who would presume to rule us--and to the enforcers of that rule--should they dare to slip the bonds of the Constitutional limits on their power. Ammunition that can penetrate government myrmidons' armor, usable in a firearm that can be easily concealed, is a part of that threat--and that's why the Obama regime wants it banned.