From CNN Money, Gun control is one thing, but what about bullets?
A small group of gun-control advocates have, for years, been making the case that bullets are as good, if not better, a target for regulation than guns. Without bullets, they point out, a gun is a useless piece of metal. And unlike guns, bullets must continually be replaced. “If I buy a firearm, I take good care of it, it can last a lifetime,” says Garen Wintemute, an emergency physician and Director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. “The larger share of the market is in the consumables, like ammunition.”
…
The proposed new system in California would require a background check at every purchase, and would draw on the database of prohibited purchasers, updated in real time, that the state already uses for gun sales.
What about background checks before you make a post on Facebook or tweet something? What about a background check each time before you go to church, vote, or read something of political nature? It’s a constitutionally protected right and these proposals create a chilling effect upon that right.
Even ignoring the principles involved these people are delusional. They are almost completely out of touch with reality. Last year, in my spare time, I reloaded 9531 rounds on my little bench using a simple hand-powered press and other tools. In the last week, putting a little more effort into it because of an upcoming class, I manufactured 1200 rounds. At that rate I could easily assemble over 60,000 rounds in a year. That’s more than enough, even including a fair number for misses, for all the murders committed by people with guns in the entire country. There
So…how do they propose they might be able to stop the black market manufacture of ammunition? There are probably 100s of thousands of people in this country with reloading equipment and components. As soon as there is serious talk of trying to shut us down the component market will explode and people like me will have the components to assemble 100,000s of thousands of rounds (I currently have components for about 10K rounds on hand) before they can get the restrictions in place.
It’s called incrementalism. First they make loaded ammo impossible or
prohibitively expensive. When that does not work….(SURPRISE)…they
move on to tax components out of the reach of most people. Some of
these people ARE total idiots who truly believe that ‘one more law’ will
solve the problem. Most are not. They are fully aware that the laws they
seek will do nothing to curb crime. They don’t care. Disarming HONEST
people is and always has been their goal….it’s just that they rarely let
the mask slip and the truth out. As much as they’d love to pull the old
FineSwine ‘America, turn them all in’ coup they can’t, so they will continue
with what they have done for decades….incrementalism, the death by a thousand cuts. As gun owners we can’t satisfied with just preventing these
laws from being passed….because occasionally we fail…and one more step
is taken towards disarmament. We need to be pounding politicians to repeal
laws, not just live with the existing ones.
“So…how do they propose they might be able to stop the black market manufacture of ammunition?”
They don’t. They want a black market to be the only market. They want a situation in which the attempt to live free makes you a law-breaker, just like they are, see? That way, in their minds at least, you’re no longer any better than they.
Blurring the lines between right and wrong makes things more equitable for the criminal class. That’s just about all you need to know about either politics or psychology, right there.
Anyway, you can take that number of current reloading setups and trim it down to the number that could be supplied by black market primers, powder and bullets. That’s to feed an ever deteriorating supply of brass cases unless we also add a black market for production of those.
So unless you’re a well-connected criminal and/or you work for the government, your ammo supply is going to dry up fast whether or not you have the equipment to load it, and then it becomes extremely expensive and dangerous to trade, like cocaine.
THAT is the goal– criminals and government being well armed (they need each other to keep going), and if you’re armed at all it’s with obsolete, deteriorating equipment that you must keep hidden for fear of arrest. Now you’re living like a criminal yourself. See? Now you’ll find out what it’s like. Now things are going to be fair.
Evil is sick and tired of hiding in the shadows, while the good move about freely and get all the credit. Its not FAIR! It’s time the tables were turned. That’s the Fundamental Transformation the coercives want.
As with many other such proposals, I say:
Fine. Let’s try it out on the Secret Service and police forces for a year first, just to see how it works out.
And let’s remember that our police, and Secret Service, are not a protected class. They are civilians. The only reason they can have more powerful guns than the rest of us is because the powers-that-be have said so.
I am very much in favor of a Federal law, affirming the right of citizens to be at least as well-armed as their local police forces. If they can have full-auto M16s, I want one too… and so forth. Contrariwise, if my local police think I’m not to be trusted with a gun, then they should give theirs up first.
From 1968 until 1986 every ammo sale was logged, it solved zero crimes.