Ban It Harder: Obama’s ‘Armor-Piercing Bullets’ Suggestion
This class of bullets is already illegal. Why does Obama suggest further legislation?
I was writing an article for another publication about President Obama’s executive orders and presidential memoranda in response to the Newtown shootings; I was struck by how completely trivial nearly all of them were.
Many of them were essentially orders to the federal bureaucracy to enforce existing laws (
such as requiring executive-branch departments to inform the national background check system that a person is prohibited from owning a firearm under existing law), or to take uncontroversial steps such as
tracing the history of firearms confiscated in crimes.
It appears Obama is doing what he does best: he knows that the actions requiring congressional approval are unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House (and possibly even the Democrat-controlled Senate), but he still throws a bone to a vocal and wealthy constituency.
One proposal from Obama enforces the likelihood of this strategy, yet also — once again — suggests that those surrounding him are not the sharpest crayons in the box. The request, which requires congressional approval:
“Protect police by finishing the job of getting rid of armor-piercing bullets.”
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The reason that this definition applies only to handgun ammunition is that all center-fire rifle ammunition, regardless of bullet design, will penetrate soft body armor.
It is certainly possible that Obama wants to ban all center-fire rifle ammunition as well. Certainly, the gun-control groups have shown a great willingness to use these dishonest tactics to achieve their goals. The net effect of such a ban, however, would be to eliminate all hunting of deer and larger animals throughout the United States.
