Alan Gottlieb
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
The Second Amendment Foundation has launched a nationwide television and radio campaign challenging a proposal by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF) to ban specific ammunition for modern sport-utility rifles.
The ad may be viewed here.
SAF hopes to generate at least one million calls to a toll-free number with a two-fold purpose: Send a message to the Obama administration, and raise support for the SAF effort, which may include a court challenge if the ban is implemented.
The one-minute advertisement will play on the Fox News channel and Glenn Beck’s Blaze network, according to SASF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. The video began appearing on YouTube a couple of days prior to the official launch.
In a press release, Gottlieb alluded to last week’s letters from SAF and its sister organization, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, to B. Todd Jones, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Those letters oppose the plan to ban M855 “green tipped” ammunition for .223-caliber semi-auto rifles.
SAF General Counsel Miko Tempski had warned Jones in a three-page dissection of the proposed ban that if the agency goes ahead with its plan, SAF will take court action. Today’s media campaign launch, according to the Washington Times and the SAF press release, is aimed at getting public support for legal action.
“We’re firing up American gun owners at the grassroots level to send a message that should be loud and clear: Keep your hands off our guns, ammunition and our right to keep and bear arms,” Gottlieb said in his press release.
While the ban proposal came from the BATF, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in early March that the president supports a ban on the grounds that it will save the lives of police officers. But SAF’s Tempski challenged that position in his letter to Jones, which may be read here.
“Short of hypotheticals,” Tempski wrote, “neither the proposed framework, nor its Administration supporters have cited a single example of the problem this new regulation is supposed to fix. Instead, they appeal to emotion, claiming that this is intended to protect a constituency the Administration has long attacked and vilified: America’s police officers.”
Miko Tempski, SAF general counsel
There has been no evidence that any M855 ammunition has ever been involved in a police shooting in which the round was fired from a handgun.
Another signal that this ban may create problems for the White House and BATF came when 239 members of Congress sent their own letter opposing the ammunition ban. There are genuine concerns that this proposal is a backdoor way for the administration, by executive action or administrative rule change, to hammer down on owners of semi-auto rifles and pistols by drying up a popular and affordable type of ammunition.
At least two major companies that serve hunters and shooters have encouraged their customers to oppose the proposed ban. The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms also sent a letter to Jones. That letter may be read here.
“The president has long supported a ban on semiautomatic rifles and their magazines,” Gottlieb said. “Now his administration is going after the ammunition. Evidently, they’ve decided that rifles and magazines won’t be a problem if people have no ammunition to put in them.”
The argument has become one of technicalities, with the debate centering around the actual bullet construction, and its intended use. The bullet in question has a copper outer layer, which is called the “jacket,” with a core consisting of a soft steel section ahead of a lead section. It was never designed as a pistol cartridge, and it is commonly used in competition, for recreational shooting, varmint hunting and predator control.
The .223-caliber cartridge was specifically exempted from being classed as “armor piercing.” A separate flap erupted when it was discovered that the exemption had vanished from the latest ATF regulations booklet. This caused many people to presume the ban had already been instituted and that the whole public comment process, scheduled to end March 16, was all for show.
BATF quickly issued a statement blaming a publishing error, and promising that the exemption will appear in the on-line version. It could not have happened at a worse moment, and many believe that the only reason the agency is correcting the on-line version of its regulations is because it “got caught” eliminating the exemption.
Because the M855 cartridge can be used in handguns built on the AR-15 action, the BATF now wants to reverse the exemption. The “armor piercing” ammo ban was aimed at handgun rounds that could ostensibly penetrate soft body armor worn by most police officers. It was never designed to prohibit rifle ammunition, since virtually any centerfire rifle bullet is capable of going through the bullet-resistant vests.
Gottlieb noted that Obama’s time in office is winding down and the next 22 months could be challenging for Second Amendment activists.
“There are less than two years remaining in Barack Obama’s presidency,” Gottlieb said. “He’s scrambling to create a legacy, and a big part of that is effort is to establish himself as the man who brought restrictive gun control to America. He has weakened our military, eroded our diplomatic credibility and now he’s scrambling to destroy the Second Amendment. We’re giving Americans the voice to stop him.”
