Continue to Comment on M855 Ban

Friday, people were e-mailing me about the M855 issue that the ATF had removed the language about the M855 exception from its 2015 Published Ordinances. I will say that a lot of people in the media, including the gun media, got details wrong. ATF is now claiming it was just a mistake. First, the Published Ordinances are not actual law. How ATF makes actual law, at least in this case, is defined by the Administrative Procedure Act. Now, it may well be that the comment period is a sham, and the ATF plans to implement the ban anyway. In fact, that would seem certain.

But that’s NOT to say it means it’s pointless to submit a public comment, which closes on March 16. I’m planning to ask whether I can submit one on behalf of my local club as legislative chair. The law spells out what ATF must do. Yours might raise an important issue that ATF fails to address that could get the regulation invalidated. There’s never a point where you should assume the fix is in and not keep playing the game. Make their defiance of the law grossly apparent to any judge who they end up before.

10 thoughts on “Continue to Comment on M855 Ban”

  1. Submitting substantive comments is important, as they have to process them as part of the APA requirements.

    The White House petition that is being circulated is utterly vacuous and meaningless.

  2. Defiance of the law? The second amendment means they are not allowed to prohibit certain types of ammunition?

  3. Do you really think that any invented ammunition, if it can be fired by a firearm that is in common use, should be legal? Just for the sake of considering your argument, not because I’m saying this exists, let’s say that I invent a bullet that explodes on impact annihilating everything within 30 ft. Because it can be fired by a certain common rifle, it should not be prohibited?

    1. Yes, because the whole “armor piercing” thing is a sham. Any rifle cartridge will go through soft body armor worn by police, and there’s no such thing as an armor piercing handgun bullet. Handguns don’t generate enough muzzle velocity to penetrate armor. Even the KTW scare in the 1980s was nonsense. Those rounds were no better at piercing soft armor than any other round. What gets you through soft armor is velocity, nothing less, nothing more.

      Actual AP rounds are not any more dangerous than non-AP rounds when dealing with soft targets, and small arms aren’t generally all that useful for pricing hard targets. It takes artillery to take out tanks and armored vehicles, and artillery isn’t in common use.

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