carolyn maloneyPS

If you’ve followed the fight to preserve Americans’ Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms for any time at all, you know the battle is never truly “won.” Pro-freedom advocates engage in a perpetual game of civilian disarmament whack-a-mole, beating back universal background checks here, recalling anti-gun legislators there, then enacting preemption laws to counter local gun control laws back over here. Earlier this week, the pro-gun side took a small step forward with the news that after a deluge of negative comments and bipartisan congressional push-back, our friends at the ATF had withdrawn their proposal to ban 5.56 M855 “armor piercing” ammunition. But the congressional gun-grabber caucus isn’t taking the news lying down . . .

As surely as the sun rises in the east, a rogue’s gallery of hoplophobic Capitol Hilll critters is pushing the ATF to damn the torpedoes and ban the ammo no matter how much flak they may take. From thehill.com:

Congressional Democrats are pressuring the Obama administration to move ahead  “swiftly” with a proposal that would ban a form of armor-piercing ammunition.

In a draft letter first obtained by The Hill, Democrats are urging the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to use his “existing authority” to keep “dangerous ammunition out of our communities.”

“We hope that the Bureau will swiftly review comments on the proposed framework and issue a revised proposal that will address the danger posed by handguns that fire 5.56mm and other rifle ammunition,” Democrats write in the letter.

Can anyone who opposed the M855 ban really be surprised?

House Democrats in their letter say they are “very disappointed” that the ATF delayed the rule. The proposal, they say, is true to the spirit of the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act, which Congress passed in 1986 to ensure that officers do “not face extreme safety risk from firearm technology.”

Never mind the fact that the Fraternal Order of Police let it be known that the ban would have virtually no practical effect on crime or officer safety in the real world. After all, the goal here isn’t protecting beat cops. That’s just a transparent fig leaf. What the Carolyn Maloneys and Steve Israels of the world really want are fewer options and higher costs for America’s law abiding gun owners.

“If law-abiding gun owners cannot obtain rifle ammunition, or face substantial difficulty in finding ammunition available and at reasonable prices because government entities are banning such ammunition, then the Second Amendment is at risk,” said a letter (to the ATF) signed by 53 Republican senators.

Again, you probably knew that.

[h/t DrVino]

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113 COMMENTS

  1. Seriously.

    Insurrection.

    Now.

    Hang them all.

    Ever. Single. Traitor.

    The future of the Republic hangs in the balance.

    • Relax. I hate to hear it too, but chances are this isn’t going to change anything with the ATF. Of course the DNC is going to wine about this, they can’t do much more than that.

      • They just saw the opposition the American people have to this ban, but are still trying to push it through, proving they don’t care about what we want.

  4. There must be some mistake here. I see that “53 Republican Senators” signed a letter advising ATF to back off, and “Congressional Democrats” have written a letter asking ATF to move forward with the ban. We are regularly assured here that there is no difference between the parties vis-à-vis gun rights. Are you sure the article is written correctly?

    • Right? All those Pro Gun Democrats we keep hearing about! That have higher NRA ratings than the GOP contender! They will surely keep the DNC in line! It’s actually the establishment GOP thats for gun control! sarc/

      In reality, any “pro gun dem” is just flat out lying so they can tow the party line, take your guns, then laugh their way to re election..

      • “In reality, any “pro gun dem” is just flat out lying so they can tow the party line, take your guns, then laugh their way to re election..”

        My democrat state senator must not have gotten that memo since he keeps voting to loosen state gun laws. What applies to federal politics doesn’t always apply to state politics.

    • What actually gets posted here is that being a republican does not necessarily imply support for gun rights, while being a democrat does not necessarily imply opposition to them. Don’t blame RF if you misunderstand what he posts.

      See Rep. Peter King (R) and his sponsorship of the latest universal background check bill, or Sen. John McCain (R) who has a D- from the GOA. And there are many democrats (more likely at the local and state level) who oppose gun control and introduce pro-gun legislation. We have some here in WA.

      Generally though, R >> D where gun rights are concerned.

      • Anyone that knows anything about Peter King in NY. He is about as much a Republican as Auuuurnold was in Kaliffourniia,

      • I wasn’t referring to RF, I think he pretty well knows the score. We have a significant number of regular posters here who regularly insist that there is no significant difference between the major parties on the issue. Heck, there’s a post that hints in that direction farther down in this thread.

        • >> We have a significant number of regular posters here who regularly insist that there is no significant difference between the major parties on the issue.

          Can you give an example of such a post?

          What people normally say is that there are anti-gun Rs and pro-gun Ds, and that’s it.

        • I say there’s not difference between the parties, not on gun rights, but on overall rights and freedoms. It wasn’t Democrats that gave us the Patriot Act and DHS, Iraq, etc. Republicans are “small government” until they have control, then they ramp up the government to enforce religious morality, crony capitalism, and unjustifiable war.

          Both Ds and Rs end results are just more government and more screwing over the people.

        • Yup. The tu quoque fallacy, that when repeated, ad nauseum, just confirms the suspicion the speakerc is either a deliberate troll or simply unable to reason, and best ignored.

      • Also, just because most Rs “support” gun rights, doesn’t mean they support ALL civil rights.

        • Still proud of that Obama vote Grindstone? How many democrats voted for that “unjustifiable war”? How many voted for the patriot act? Surely you know it was a majority. Please list all the civil rights democrats support. Abortion? Health insurance? I bet you are psyched at the chance to vote for Hillary. Big supporter of civil rights that she is.

  5. The ATF and Liberal Antis are always trying to whisper, in their best 16 year old’s boys, voice in the ear of America “relax baby, come on, I only want to put the tip of it in”…

    • Hell, they’ve already got it in and then some. Now they are knockin at the back door.

      • pffff fffff ffffffffffffffffffff

        Oh you guys are terrible (grabs tissue to wipe tears from suppressed laughter)

        • Suppressed laughter?

          You’d better have the right papers for that suppressor, boy, or you’ve got some splaining to do.

  6. That’s just a transparent fig leaf.

    For some inexplicable reason, the thought of Rep. Carolyn Maloney in a transparent fig leaf makes me quite ill. Like projectile vomiting ill. Like so ill that I gotta die to feel better. I’m talking ill.

  8. It’s really unfortunate that political grandstanding is all that elected officials have left. It only leads to the further divide of the two Americas. All .223 or 5.56 will go through soft-body type II armor.

    • “Thanks for the information, now we realize that this round itself is too dangerous and must be banned.”

      What do you think happened with 20mm? How about .50BMG in many states?

    • Yes, and now the mask is slowly coming off, giving us a peek at the ugly underneath. The point here is to establish, even if only in the (uninformed) public narrative, that the new test is “can penetrate soft body armor”. They won’t even bother rewriting the statute to replace the “bullet construction” test … they’ll just state it into existence to much fist-pumping and cheering by the antis and the uninformed (who are now under the impression that M855 is unique in this regard).

  11. I want to see the list of all the dems on board with this. Just goes to show even when the writing is on the wall the dems still want that government power over the people which they subscribe too.

  12. These people are either so dumb they can’t connect the dots and realize gun control isn’t the answer to gun violence (which isn’t really an issue but I digress) or they really do want absolute control of this country. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I swear I have a hard time believing these people or anyone else for that matter are that stupid. I mean there has literally never been a documented case of an leo being killed by an ar pistol let alone one firing green tips(referencing one of the previous ttag posts I believe). Don’t these people have better things to do than trample my rights and invade my privacy?

    • Don’t these people have better things to do than trample my rights and invade my privacy?

      No, they do not. All the laws we will ever need — and then some — have already been written, so trampling your rights — and everyone else’s — is all they have left to justify their useless existence.

      No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

    • It’s fairly simple, really. They look at the current gun crime stats (doesn’t matter how low they are) and any anomalies that pop up now and then (Sandy Hook, Aurora) and they think to themselves: See?! Gun crime still exists, which means all the laws currently on the books are not enough and we need to pass MORE restrictions to solve the problem, unintended consequences be damned!

      They use this approach with everything else, not just guns. Minimum wage, for example. They want people to earn more and have a higher standard of living by forcing employers to pay higher wages. Unfortunately, this makes it too expensive to hire some people and thousands if not millions of folks become instantly unemployable, even though the intent was for them to have a more comfortable life. Typical Keynesian nonsense.

  14. Just pray Hillary doesn’t get elected in 2016. She will make BHO’s most extreme excesses look like business-as-usual.

  15. I fail to understand why this is even a discussion. The law they’re trying to ban it under is unconstitutional, they not only don’t have the delegated authority, it is specifically and unquestionably prohibited. They can’t ban it at all.

    • With guns, cooperative judges, silent MSM, etc, they damn sure can! Not legally, but when did that bother the ATF? Both Waco and Ruby Ridge were flat out murder, which is pretty illegal, and have you heard of anybody fired, much less prosecuted? 80-odd dead including an unarmed mother shot in the face from hiding, and dozens of women and children deliberately burned to death from the protection of tanks, who even lost his job? Hell, the sniper who killed Weaver’s wife was present and sniping at Waco! Not even pretending to care about the law. Fast and Furious just showed us nothing has changed. ATF needs to be closed.

      • @LarryinTX, Ruby Ridge and Waco turned me from a pro-gun moderate into a pro-gun activist. The ATF did more harm to itself than it will ever acknowledge, and did more to promote gun rights than it can ever admit. And because of those two political assassinations and for other reasons, the Democrats lost nine Senate seats, fifty-four House seats and ten governorships in the 1994 midterm elections.

        This is the USA. We don’t need or want a bunch of jackbooted Nazi wannabees running around with full immunity.

        • While that is all true, we STILL have not gotten rid of ATF, more than 20 years later. And they are STILL breaking the law with impunity.

  16. It looks like that chick already took a couple M855’s to her face. No wonder why she wants em banned.

  17. Seriously though, this is why we have to get behind Tom Rooney’s bill:

    “Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL) has advanced a bill in the U.S. House to place a roadblock to future gun bans on manufacture or importation”

  18. Speculation: if we get a pro gun president in ’16, can the gun grabbers ever recover? Even under Obama, their efforts have been almost completely thwarted. What happens when we have nationwide concealed carry, and the only NFA item left is (legal post-’86) machine guns? How about after approved handgun lists and assault weapon bans are struck down? Under a pro-gun president, all this and more could be accomplished by 2024. Could the antis ever come back from something like that?

    Lets make sure we get out and vote, with our ballots, feet, and wallets.

    • Sure they can, the smartest thing gun control advocates could do if we get a pro gun pres. in ’16 is to shut their mouths for a few years and let it not be a topic of discussion. I think if they did that they might be able to regroup and fight for control again, and we wouldn’t have as much support from the fence sitters. With how loud the fight for gun rights has been the last couple years we are getting support from the majority of Americans, and that’s not something we get very often.

      Hey, that’s just me being speculative as well, I’m no expert!

  19. When you have seats created specifically so the incumbent is basically impossible to defeat in a general election this is what happens. You get politicians talking to the primary voters

  20. Let the BATFE ban all the dangerous ammo. Then they can ban all that dangerous booze with 88,000 dead per year, we’ve tried that before but it’ll work this time. Then they can ban tobacco. Then they can ban all explosives, instead of industrial use of it, we can always use drills and large diggers and such. Then maybe others will see the the harm these tyrants do to liberty.

  21. I believe the government’s current administration has a hidden agenda to if not disarm the public that to disadvantage them to defend our U.S. constitution should we be faced with military forced rule done by our U.S. military(which I doubt) or some kind of outside intervention. Remember. WE still don’t know where $200 million U.S. dollars went other than it went out of the country and is still has yet to be explained where the money went. And why did we release 5 major terrorist’s in exchange for a defector from our military. But yet our policy has alway’s been that WE the people DO NOT MAKE CONCESSIONS WITH TERRORIST ORGANIZATION’S.
    It give’s us a lot to think about. And leaves us with still more questions of what is happening to OUR COUNTRY !!!

  22. We know the names of the Senators and Representatives that supported the Constitution, now we would like to see the names of the socialist who are against the 2nd Amendment and thus the Constitution, because it is obvious there are MORE democrats that need to be voted out of office!

    • Exactly. They’re nerfing what tools civvies have left to us while supercharging the militarization of federally bribed, federally-encouraged-to-bully, local & regioonal law enforcement & bureaucracy.

      • As long as cops have to stay inside that MRAP unless it is inside their hardened garage with the armored door closed, they won’t be bothering me much. It is difficult for me to even imagine a scenario in which I’d be shooting at police cars, armored or not.

  24. Pic accompanying the article supports Lincoln’s contention that “Everyone over forty is responsible for what their face looks like”.

  25. What is crazy about the purposed ban is that if you watch the following Video over at Full30. You will see that M855 Terminal Ballistics (Compared to other 5.56mm Ammo) is not that effective.

    https://www.full30.com/video/071df094616cf8c4e2c1bbcd6be59728

    After watching this I really would not recommend it as a defense ammo. Even standard Wolf Ammo was better. What that being said I am strongly opposed to the ban. But seriously I don’t understand why you would think that banning M855 is going to accomplish.

    • “But seriously I don’t understand why you would think that banning M855 is going to accomplish.”

      Think politically, not technically.

      They don’t care if it does or does not save cops’ lives. That has precisely NOTHING to do with their goals.

      Statist control agency got “smacked down” a little bit, and we can’t have that. The proles might get uppity. Gotta show ’em (that’s us, by the way) who’s boss here.

  26. Hilarious that the media will simply not be convinced that this ammunition is NOT “armor piercing.” This is the key point being made by Americans against the ATF’s actions.

    Just keep repeating the lie.

  27. Anti-gun career politicians are the last to assimilate the word that anti-gun = out of a job. Vote the bunch of them out of office!

    But do not get the idea that this is over. The Bloomberg’s of the country are only changing their tactics, not their position!

    Just because we one a few, we’ve lost some too. Stand tall! Donate very carefully. Be ready to support the cause by writing, calling, and knowing what is at stake.

  28. I think that this has been said.
    They are talking about removal from an exemption list.
    Why does it need an exemption when it does not qualify or meet their (ATF) definition of AP in the first place.
    If it falls off the exempt list it doesn’t land in the banned category either.
    Someone explain??

    • The fact that ATF thought M855 ammunition needed an exemption in the first place tells us all we need to know. From the get-go, it was “armor piercing” ammunition and now they are looking to ban it.

  29. Maybe its time we ban democrats, liberals, and progressives as they are a greater risk to the public and police officers than armor penetrating ammo ever was!

  31. They are now trying to say that one of the cops who was just shot in Ferguson was shot by a .556 round. I just friggin said this the other day that this twisted administration was going to hire, or even blackmail, someone to shoot at cops with .556 ammo just so they can use it as leverage to ban it.

    • If that turns out to be true, it will take a preponderance of evidence to convince me that the entire event wasn’t some kind of race-war starting false-flag operation, with the end goal being martial law under the current administration.

  32. “dangerous ammunition out of our communities.” Most of the time ammo tends to just sit in the box until a human puts it into a gun and fires it. Lazy ammo.
    Of course my dangerous 870 just sits in a corner and does not shoot anyone. Lazy 870. I have to pick up the 870 and pull the trigger to shoot it. The 870 will not even go off by itself.

    • ya know, I’ve noticed the same damn thing. I got loaded guns in hand safes around the house, and not a single one of ’em has had the initiative to get off their lazy azzes and bust a cap without me doing all the work for ’em. damn things are just too lazy to be dangerous all by their lonesome.

    • Maybe we should see if we can get them repaired, since they don’t seem to operate like all these other folks’.

  33. I don’t shoot 5.56 but it’s only a matter of time until they classify all center fire as dangerous to LE and try to ban it. And this won’t be a ban on sales, they will make possession a felony like they all ways do.

    • If so I will be forced to hand-over all of mine, one round at a time…but I’m keeping the brass.

    • If we have to choose between chickens**it LE or our freedoms, why not simply ban LE and let us take care of ourselves. Would be cheaper, too, no use for courts or prisons.

  34. The letter to the ATF was signed by 53 senators. Even under common core math, that’s what we here call a majority. This is all Democrap kabuke theatre.

    Now if the Democraps want to agree to suspend the rules and eliminate the filibuster for gun bills, we could get a few things passed.

  35. I think this is a great example of why regulatory powers must be taken away from the BATF, one issue at a time.
    I think if these same democrats realized their antics were costing them something, they’d be less likely to move on every gun control measure fronted.

    Right now it’s cost free and they can troll republicans.
    Eventually they’ll get lucky and ram something through,
    reaching their endgame if we don’t exact a steep toll on their losses.

    • If you read Justice Thomas’ recent SCOTUS Opinion, you will notice that he concurs. Delegating legislative powers to an agency, that have legally enforceable limitations on private behavior, is beyond Congress’ Constitutional authority. To wit:

      “When the Court speaks of Congress improperly delegating power, what it means is Congress’ authorizing an entity to exercise power in a manner inconsistent with the Constitution. For example, Congress improperly “delegates” legislative power when it authorizes an entity other than itself to make a determination that requires an exercise of legislative power. [See Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass’ns.].”

      Its not hard to follow that logic to the conclusion that the BATFE is unconstitutional on its face.

      • I love Thomas. Read his concurrence in Lopez (which struck down the original Gun Free School Zones Act). He’s committed to rolling back 80 years of Federal overreaching.

  37. It’s no surprise these Democrats are trying to cheer-up their disappointed BHO, but it’s just Political Theater and as expected as flies at an August picnic.

    What I want to know is. “Who is that hideous cross-dresser in the photo?” Kinda ruined the afternoon having to put eyes on that. Are Democrats in Congress now dressing-up as Hilary Clinton? If so, that guy certainly got the “Hilary the Hag” look down nicely….except I think his wig is too puffy….

  39. Someone tell these disgusting, physically abhorrent reprobates that any prohibition requires an amendment to the *US* constitution.

    If these people don’t go to jail soon, I’ll officially believe the republic is beyond hope.

  42. Senators pushing the AFT to ban m855 anyway?

    How about the legislators involved propose language for a bill or ammendment which encompasses what they’d like? “Pushing” an agency to do something with regulation that isn’t clearly mandated in the authorizing legislation is a bit … odd for members of a legislative body.

    Or ask the ATF for legislative language that would make it *obvious* and *unequivocal* that banning m855 is covered and intended by the legislation. No stretching the words to force-fit an outside conclusion one might like.

    I expect each of the legislators who has gone on record with this position to cosponsor such a bill in the next session.

    Otherwise, this would seem to be, what’s that word again … shenanigans.

  43. The article is about gun control and the usual democrat idiocy……so what’s with the pic of Garth from Wayne’s world?

  44. I said it before and I’ll say it again. None of you did anything when 5.45×39 was banned because “screw the russians” and “america” now they’re doing the same thing to your precious AR ammo. 5.45 was the test and you let them pass. Idiots!

    • That was a “pop” test given to a half empty classroom.

      Plus the mechanism Obama used to ban the imported 5.45 ammo was different than the attempt to ban domestically manufactured 5.56 ammo. Until the current administration leaves, there is very little you can do about that, in contrast to the ATF’s attempt.

      So yeah you can stop squealing about that now. There is a reason why certain battles are fought, then won.

  45. I love how they refer to m855 as “dangerous ammunition” – I’m pretty sure all ammo is dangerous, it’s kinda the whole point.

    • I think you may have just made a very hollow point there.

      (OK, I’ll go play in the street now.)

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