Feds proposed ban on green-tipped bullets re-fueling ammo sales
Published 8:01 pm Saturday, March 7, 2015
I wish I had opened a gun store instead of being so good looking.
Oh, sure in the old days of the Reynolds’ brothers and Richard McBride, even The Sportster, you had to know something about guns, be a pretty good horse trader and occasionally hold a sale.
Today you just wait for a presidential election or another genius idea from the government. Thanks to the frequency of both you don’t put any thing on sale. Instead you just raise the price, ride the wave and when it is over go back to retail price.
It is time again to get out that price gun and up the ante because the feds have their thinking cap on, and we all know what that means.
This time they are after a certain type of .223 or 5.56 caliber ammo, bullets shot through was is universally and wrongly called assault rifles. They aren’t after all .223 bullets. Just the green-tipped ones that are supposedly armor piercing.
That has set a couple of things in motion, all of which are related. First is that because the government moves at a snails pace and no one can trust it to take a sip when a gallon is available, it has created a buying frinzy not only for the green-tipped ammo, but for anything labeled .223 and 5.56. That in turn is pushing up the price.
I get the concern over armor-piercing ammo and the desire to protect law enforcement officers. There is not an NRA life member in American that can argue against it. If they can argue they should be forced to turn in their membership card.
But as usual the government is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Not one murder of a man, woman or child is acceptable, but the issue is really us, humans. Not the gun. There are those within our population who are inherently evil or suffer from mental illness. Unfortunately we really have no place to place or care for either.
Blaming the gun is like blaming the Fritos in Frito pie for a heart attack. The gun and the ammo, pardon the unintended pun, is an easy target. And once again it is the politically correct out for politicians and bureaucrats, and quite honestly shows a true political agenda more than realistic reasoning.
How is that, you say?
At the same time the government is rushing to ban this ammo, auto manufactures are in their own arms race producing cars with 600, 1,000 and even 2,000 horsepower. Cars that are capable of doing 200-plus miles per hour and are street legal.
Anyone care to guess what kills more people — U.S., automobile accidents or attacks with .223 semi-auto rifles?
Other than a public service announcement that runs at 2 in the morning, what have the feds done to reduce the number of auto fatalities caused by cell phone use while driving?
Interestingly, there really is not that many more guns than cars, trucks and buses in this country. The difference is that guns are not the economic dynamo that the automobile industry is.
Also, the number of anti-car people out there is miniscule, and those that are are more often considered kooks than concerned citizens.
Every time these ban-the-gun or ammo debates pop up I am reminded of a time in the 1980s when the Texas Legislature tried to jump on the bandwagon and ban them as well. A friend, a Viet Nam veteran walking with a pronounced limp because of a bullet lodge in his spine, testified against the ban.
His reasoning, he had multiple confirmed kills in battle, all with the shotgun he carried. It was the same shotgun I have hunted with since childhood.
His point was that those who are evil or insane are going to find a way to kill others whether you ban one type of ammo or all of them. Their weapon might just be a hot rod car.
Unfortunately I don’t have a ready-made recommendation. I don’t know the answer. My one suggestion would be for once try to use common sense. If armor-piercing ammo is a threat maybe it should be banned. There is not a need for it in hunting, target shooting or home protection. There are options for all three.
Do it, however, without scaring every gun owner to the point they again start hoarding ammo.
In the past I would have looked at this issue strictly from the side of the hunter or recreational shooter. More recently I have also begun to side with those who have bought guns for home safety because today there are more bad guys than officers in blue.
We don’t need bans, we need real time for real crimes and help for those who need it.
That and I need a gun shop.
Have a comment or opinion on this? Email Steve Knight at outdoor@tylerpaper.com, follow him on Facebook at TylerPaper Outdoors and on Twitter @tyleroutdoor.
