Ammo Ban - Historical Post

Friday, December 12, 2008

Happy Holidays: Now dispose of all of your ammunition!  Every last round!  From now on, you will be able to buy only overpriced ammunition that will be registered to you in a government database. Not yet--at least for now.  A small company, Ammunition Accountability--which wants to help anti-gunners price and regulate the Second Amendment out of existence, profit at the expense of our rights, or both--has found radical anti-gun legislators in 18 states willing to introduce bills pushing such nonsense. But few anti-gun proposals are so overtly aimed at destroying the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.  As we began noting on www.nraila.org in January, so-called "encoded ammunition" or "serialized ammunition" bills would require ammunition manufacturers to engrave a serial number on the base of the bullet and the inside of the cartridge casing of each round of ammunition for popular sporting caliber center-fire rifles, all center-fire pistols, all .22 rimfire rifles and pistols, and all 12 gauge shotguns.  In all but one of the bills, people would be required to forfeit all personally owned non-"encoded" ammunition.  After a certain date, it would be illegal to possess non-"encoded" ammunition.  Reloading would be rendered illegal. People would be required to separately register every box of "encoded ammunition" and the registration would be supplied to the police.  Each box of ammunition would have a unique serial number, thus a separate registration.  Gun owners would have to maintain records if they sell ammunition to anyone, including family members or friends.  The cost of ammunition would soar, for police and private citizens alike.  The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturing Institute estimates it would take three weeks to produce ammunition currently produced in a single day.  A tax of five cents a round would be imposed on private citizens, not only upon initial sale, but every time the ammunition changes hands thereafter. And to what benefit in terms of fighting crime?  Criminals already steal guns and would certainly steal ammunition.  Burglaries would be encouraged.  Criminals could also use shotguns, which fire pellets too small to encode, and which use shell casings made of plastic, which would be difficult to engrave.  Criminals could also collect ammunition cases from shooting ranges, and reload them with molten lead bullets made without serial numbers. Congress eliminated a handgun ammunition sale recordation requirement in 1983, because there was no law enforcement benefit.  Be on the lookout in your states in the next legislative session for anti-gun zealots who refuse to learn from history, plus continue their crusade against our Second Amendment rights.