No, they're not coming after your guns, but they'll be useless so it doesn't really matter:
In a move clearly intended by the Obama Administration to suppress the acquisition, ownership and use of AR-15s and other .223 caliber general purpose rifles, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives unexpectedly announced today that it intends to ban commonplace M855 ball ammunition as “armor piercing ammunition.” The decision continues Obama’s use of his executive authority to impose gun control restrictions and bypass Congress.
The link to the story comes from my brother, who notes that the move would nullify sales of the AR-15, the Ruger Ranch rifle (the one he has) and several other popular rifles. He calls it back-door gun control, which is of course exactly the goal, as this commentary explains:
What gun-rights advocates fear — not without reason — is that this is the beginning of a pincer movement, with the ATF banning non-lead ammunition as a threat to armor-wearing police officers and the EPA banning lead ammunition as a toxin. Never mind that there is no epidemic of police officers being gunned down, despite their body armor, by hoodlums carrying AR-style pistols. The use of such weapons in crimes is so vanishingly rare that no police agency even bothers to track them as a category.But they look scary.
There is no reason to assume that this will stop with .223 ammunition popular for scary-looking AR-style rifles. There are multi-shot handguns, mostly revolvers, chambered for many kinds of rifle cartridges, meaning that the armor-piercing designation could be applied to all sorts of ammunition for hunting rifles.
In a sense, the gun-grabbers were telling the truth when they said that they had no designs on our sporting rifles. But the ammunition for those rifles is another story.
Can't wait till they ban newspaper ink as too toxic to permit. "Hey, we're not messin' with the 1st Amendment. It's about the environment, citizen!"
