In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, President Obama seized the moment to push for legislation expanding federal gun control laws. As it turned out, his proposal could not make its way through Congress quickly enough for public opinion to remain on his side.
The Democrat-controlled Senate could not muster the votes for his plan. This was in large part because nothing Congress considered at that time could have prevented the bloody school shooting, committed by a mentally disturbed man who had actually been turned down when he tried to purchase a gun. Instead, he killed his own mother and stole her legally purchased, background-checked weapons from her home.
Even as Obama failed in his mission, he mentioned that he would do what he could on the issue through executive action. Hence the sudden push this year by his Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to ban a kind of ammunition used in the AR-15 rifle, one of America’s most popular models.
The ATF’s justification for this ban is that this kind of round can pierce soft body armor. But as the Washington Examiner‘s Paul Bedard has noted, nearly any rifle round will pierce soft body armor, and so the federal government could, using this same rationale, ban many popular varieties of hunting ammunition.According to the FBI, rifles were used to commit less than 300 homicides in the entire U.S. in 2013 – less than knives, blunt objects, or bare hands.
This particular ammunition is being singled out because AR-style handguns have increased in popularity. Even so, these guns are very expensive, too large to conceal (20 inches long), and do not appear to have been used at any time against police. That’s why America’s most influential police organization has panned ATF’s proposed action as unnecessary.
“Any ammunition is of concern to police in the wrong hands,” James Pasco, executive director of the Washington office of the Fraternal Order of Police, told Bedard. “But this specific round has historically not posed a law enforcement problem.”
Finally, it does not appear that the ammo in question is legally subject to ATF regulation. The law the agency is citing in order to regulate this bullet does not cover ammunition containing any significant amount of lead, as this bullet does.
Polls show that since Sandy Hook, Americans have returned to their default position on gun control. They view it as ineffective in a nation whose residents already own 300 million guns, useless in deterring those determined to commit crimes anyway, and constitutionally suspect.
Now, with a majority in Congress and public opinion against him, Obama is again seeking to extend his authority into an area where it can do little except needle the cultural “other” by making it harder to enjoy one of America’s favorite guns.
Obama, whose derisive attitude toward gun-clinging middle America has been well known since before his presidency, has already been rebuked by the Supreme Court for other such power grabs, at times unanimously. If he genuinely wants to help reduce the risks faced by local law enforcement, surely he can find a better way.