Gun owners are alarmed over what they're witnessing in Washington, DC and state legislatures across the country. Realizing they could not succeed in disarming American citizens, Liberal organizations and their political representatives have decided to allow armed citizens to possess all the guns they wish. The hitch is, according to political strategist Mike Baker, the so-called gun-grabbers have decided to track ammunition for those guns by encoding the cartridges and maintaining a database.
Ammo control laws will also stipulate that uncoded ammunition will be confiscated either voluntarily or through coercive means, according to Baker.
There are a number of states that have proposed legislation not to control guns, but to control the ammunition those guns utilize, claims Baker.
At the federal level, H.R. 408 introduced by Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) a new law would require firearms manufacturers to provide ballistics information on all new firearms to BATF, which would retain the information in a National Firearms Ballistics Database. Critics claim part of this bill will be used to mandate encoding ammunition, which is part and parcel of "ballistics" information.
"[Lawmakers] should ignore the media hype on the firearms issue and pay attention to what the public – their constituents – are saying on the matter,” gun rights expert John M. Snyder stated.
“According to an August poll conducted by Zogby International for Associated Television News, the American public rejects the notion that new gun control laws are needed by a two-to-one margin,” Snyder continued.
“Maybe the House of Representatives should have taken a reading of public opinion on this issue before rushing headlong without a roll call vote to pass a bill before the recess,” said Snyder, who is a firearms advisor to the National Association of Chiefs of Police. < http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/default.cfm?Action=ViewMyNews&NRWID=6042 >
Legal experts say that the US Constitution's Tenth Amendment prohibits the federal government from making and enforcing such laws and that controlling ammunition and other such activities are relegated to the individual states.
As a result, such legislation is pending in 18 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington.
Most, if not all, of these states are using a model law created by a left-wing organization Ammunition Accountability. < http://ammunitionaccountability.org/Legislation.htm > Perusal of that organization's web site provides visitors with a recommended law for use by states seeking to control guns by using a "backdoor" approach.
For instance, the Ammunition Accountability web site features an article appearing in the Seattle Weekly about one group's mission to push an ammo control law through the Washington state legislature.
According to the web site "news" story, the idea for coding ammunition originated when the three proponents of ammo coding "heard the story of a police shooting where two officers fired their weapons, but only one hit the suspect. In an investigation of the shooting, both officers were put on leave, since there wasn't an immediate way to determine which one of them had fired the bullet."
< http://www.seattleweekly.com/2008-03-05/news/three-seattle-guys-want-to-bar-code-bullets.php >
While state legislatures differ in the wording of their proposed laws, basically they all require that any and all ammunition be encoded by the manufacturer and they will maintain a mandatory data base of all ammunition sales.
"We of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms oppose this backdoor approach to gun control," Snyder, an official with that gun rights group, told NewswithViews.com.
The sample legislation stipulates that, “each year in the United States, more than 30 percent of all homicides that involve a gun go unsolved; handgun ammunition accounts for 80 percent of all ammunition sold in the United States; current technology for matching a bullet used in a crime to the gun that fired it has worked moderately well for years, but presupposes that the weapon was recovered by law enforcement;” and “bullet coding is a new and effective way for law enforcement to quickly identify persons of interest in gun crime investigations.”
Ammunition coding technology works by laser etching the back of each bullet with an alpha-numeric serial number. Then when a customer purchases a box of, for example, 9mm cartridges, the box of ammunition and the bullets’ coding numbers would be connected to the purchaser in a statewide or national database.
The code on the bullet can be read with a simple magnifying glass and then be run through a statewide or national database to determine who purchased the ammunition and where.
The rationale being used by proponents of such laws is that cartridges can be used to trace a gun owner who committed a crime such as murder or assault with a deadly weapon, according to the National Association for Gun Rights' Executive Director Dudley Brown.
< http://www.nationalgunrights.org/index.shtml >
But opponents of ammo registration laws counter that this will only increase the incidents of criminals collecting spent cartridges and depriving police of other evidence such as fingerprints on a cartridge left at the crime scene.
"NAGR's strategy is simple: make the enemies of our firearms freedoms pay for every inch. While many so-called "gun rights groups" work to curry favor with politicians and the media, NAGR is working aggressively to hold politicians accountable and to put a stop to gun control," said Brown.
"Liberal gun-grabbers are a cunning lot," said Mike Baker. "Instead of concentrating on disarming citizens of their weapons, they're attempting to render those weapons useless by controlling the ammunition. First, they'll keep records of ammunition sold and collect uncoded ammo, then they will be in a better position to restrict the sale of ammunition to law-abiding citizens. It's a cunning approach to disarming Americans," he said.
Comments
Hahahahaha....they'll never take the conservatives ALIVE!!
Based on a tip from an informant, the government decides to confiscate a cache of military-style weapons and ammo believed to be in civilian hands. A force is assembled and sent out in the pre-dawn hours to effect a raid on the site of the suspected weapons cache. But the suspects are tipped off by an informant that the force is coming and by the time they arrive they are confronted by a well armed group theat appears to be a valid threat. Eyewitnesses testimony about what happens next is not conclusive, but a brief exchange of fire occurs and several civilians are killed. Community outrage draws several thousand additional armed civilians to the scene who begin shooting at the government personel. The government force, now outnumbered, calls for backup and begins to withdraw. As the fighting escallates, the backup force is also attacked by armed mobs of civilians and the survivors of both teams are forced to withdraw back to their base.
The date was April 19, 1775. Seven long bloody years later the colonial forces accepted the British surrender.
There are many similarities between the way the British upper classes and the colonists viewed each other and the "red state vs blue state" divide we have today. The British government viewed the colonists as ignorant buffoons, "bitter clinging rednecks" if you will. "Fit for naught but beasts of burden" in the words of one British officer. Neither side expected or wanted a war but regardless, war is what they got. Do we really want to risk repeating their mistakes?
In general ... because arms are protected, ammunition for arms is protected. Ammunition bans or prohibitive taxes and regulatory schemes would effectively turn arms into expensive clubs. These approaches will not pass constitutional muster.
We must consider what the Supreme Court held in Minneapolis Star and Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm'r of
Revenue, 460 U.S. 575, 582-583 (1983) ... that a tax on paper and ink burdens rights protected by the First
Amendment. Schemes which seek to tax, over-regulate, or prohibit ammunition would also burden rights protected by the Second Amendment.
But in brief ... wherever go those who endeavor to diminish our constitutional freedoms ... there we shall be, too, to protect them. Enemies of freedom and individual rights never go away ... and neither shall those that protect freedom.
There is little difference between this method of encoding and the Maryland bill requiring a spent shell from every handgun sold.
In Maryland, as of 2005, the state collected the shells from 43,000 handguns sold in the state. Police had used the database 208 times, yielding six "hits," or matches, the report said. The program had cost the state $2.6 million and had produced no convictions.
And let's not forget that the only way a shell casing of any kind would have a chance to be left behind is if it were fired from a semi-automatic and the shooter didn't bother to recover the brass.
We have a right to bear arms. It would be illogical for any court to deny that today that "arm" does not include common firearm systems. Each system encompasses ammunition and a firing device such as a pistol, rifle, revolver etc.
"It would mandate the disposal by a certain date of all non-coded ammunition listed, whether owned by private citizens or retail outlets".
The word I hear is that if this becomes law the ammo that is out there will be distributed or dropped off or disposed of in the inner cities for free to get back at the liberal law makers. Hope this law doesn't get passed there could be unforseen consequences for all of us.
PS Only posting what I have heard not suggesting anyone do this if the law is passed.
You can ban anything with the stroke of a pen, but dissent. Do these foolish politicians ever learn from history. All revolt are born from intolerable governments ours is moving in the wrong direction. I pray they they wake up They can have my ammunition, but not the way they would prefer.
If non-coded ammo cannot be exchanged for coded ammo at the expense of the govmnt, then this constututes illegal taking of property. They can have the non-coded ammo back..one round at a time..
I will never understand why these politicians insist on turning law abiding citizens into victims, oh wait, yes I do, they don't want to admit that they can't control illegal guns, so they want to make it look like they can by controlling legal guns. As a Democrat and a gun owner, I'm growing increasingly dis-satisfied with my party on this issue.
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