UPDATE: ATF HAS DROPPED THE PROPOSED BAN!

More than half of the U.S. Senate including Cory Gardner took the ATF to task this week for its proposed regulation to outlaw ammunition for a sporting rifle.

This time, the government’s target is the popular ammunition used in the AR-15 rifle, owned by five million Americans for sport shooting and home protection.

The threateningly crafted scheme by the Obama administration is a menace to gun owners because of the precedent it would set to essentially outlaw many forms of firearms – by banning the ammunition.

Republican senators led by Charles Grassley of Iowa on Thursday blasted the ATF for acting outside of the law passed by Congress in 1986, called the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act (LEOPA).

“Second Amendment rights require not only access to firearms but to bullets. 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,” the senators wrote.

The law exempted ammunition for sporting purposes such as target shooting and hunting, but once again the ATF thinks it is above the law, above Congress.

ATF would determine what amounts to “substantial evidence” and whether the “ammunition is not primarily intended for [sporting] purposes.” The statute was not enacted to give authority to ATF to do either. In 1986, the sponsors of the legislation were emphatic in stating that ammunition commonly used in rifles for target practice or hunting was not of the type of ammunition that the bill would ban. ATF seems to have decided to ban ammunition types that the law did not ban, then developed from whole cloth an “objective” test to supposedly provide it with the ability to ban the ammunition types it already had selected for prohibition.

On the other side of the hill, nearly 240 House members led by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia have also condemned ATF’s actions and are asking what ammunition the government will next target. All of Colorado’s House Republicans signed the letter:

While the banning of these popular cartridges is the most visible and immediate effect of ATF’s shifting policy, the “Framework” has other serious implications. It will, for example, inhibit the development and use of rifle ammunition containing non-lead materials, even as efforts are afoot both at the federal and state levels to impose bans or restrictions on lead ammunitions. The eventual collision of these trends could result in drastically reduced options for unlawful ammunition users.

PEAK NATION™ will remember that the EPA wanted to ban lead in ammunition used for hunting, because it is dangerous to animals.

Kudos to the Colorado Republicans who stood up for our Constitutional rights, which this administration is trying so desperately to annihilate.