Gun Control

Because he can’t get Congress to approve the things that he wants to do, Barack Obama has apparently decided to rule by decree for the rest of his time in the White House. One of Obama’s latest moves is to try to ban some of the most popular ammunition for the most popular rifle in America. Previously, the Obama administration attempted unsuccessfully to ban the AR-15. That didn’t work, so now Obama is going after the ammunition. This is yet another example of the war on preppers that is going on all over the nation. Whether you are a gun owner or not, this assault on our constitutional rights should disturb you greatly. Barack Obama has promised to try to squeeze as much “change” as possible out of his last two years, and in the process he is “fundamentally transforming” America. But what will our country look like when he is done?

At the top of the Drudge Report today, there was a story from the Washington Examiner detailing this ammo ban…

As promised, President Obama is using executive actions to impose gun control on the nation, targeting the top-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 style semi-automatic, with a ban on one of the most-used AR bullets by sportsmen and target shooters.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives this month revealed that it is proposing to put the ban on 5.56mm ammo on a fast track, immediately driving up the price of the bullets and prompting retailers, including the huge outdoors company Cabela’s, to urge sportsmen to urge Congress to stop the president.

And here is more on this ammo ban from the NRA…

As NRA has been reporting since the night the news broke, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) is moving to infringe upon the rights of law-abiding gun owners with a drastic reinterpretation of a nearly 30-year-old law regulating so-called “armor piercing” ammunition. So draconian is BATFE’s new “Framework” that it would prohibit the manufacturing, importation, and sale of M855 ball ammunition, one of the most popular cartridges for the most popular rifle in America, the AR-15. Not coincidentally, the AR-15 is among the firearms the Obama Administration has unsuccessfully sought to outlaw. If they can’t ban the pie, so the thinking apparently goes, they might at least get the apples.

In an effort to thwart BATFE’s attempted action, NRA has worked with U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to draft a letter to BATFE expressing the lawmakers’ opposition to the proposed Framework. To read a copy of the letter, please click this link.

According to the letter, “The idea that Congress intended [the ‘armor piercing’ ammunition law] to ban one of the preeminent rifle cartridges in use by Americans for legitimate purposes is preposterous.” It goes on to state that the law “should be construed in accordance with the American tradition of lawful firearms ownership, as protected by the Second Amendment.” This includes due consideration of “the many legitimate uses Americans make of their firearms including target practice, hunting, organized and casual competition, training and skills development, and instructional activities.“ The letter concludes with several pointed questions for B. Todd Jones, BATFE’s director, including why the agency bypassed the Administrative Procedures Act in proposing such a radical change to its prior interpretation and enforcement of the law.

The crazy thing about all of this is the fact that this ammunition has never met the legal definition of being “armor piercing”. So what the Obama administration is attempting to do is outside the law.

A recent Infowars article broke this down…

The ATF is trying to ban M855 AR-15 ammunition by declaring it “armor piercing,” despite the ammo containing lead which exempts it from the classification according to law.

To be considered “armor piercing” under 18 U.S.C. 921 (a)(17)(B), a bullet must have an entirely metal core or have a jacket weighting more than 25% of its weight, which wouldn’t include M855 rounds because their bullets are partly lead.

The definition in full:

(17)

(A) The term “ammunition” means ammunition or cartridge cases, primers, bullets, or propellent powder designed for use in any firearm.

(B) The term “armor piercing ammunition” means- (i) a projectile or projectile core which may be used in a handgun and which is constructed entirely (excluding the presence of traces of other substances) from one or a combination of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium copper, or depleted uranium; or (ii) a full jacketed projectile larger than .22 caliber designed and intended for use in a handgun and whose jacket has a weight of more than 25 percent of the total weight of the projectile.

(C) The term “armor piercing ammunition” does not include shotgun shot required by Federal or State environmental or game regulations for hunting purposes, a frangible projectile designed for target shooting, a projectile which the Attorney General finds is primarily intended to be used for sporting purposes, or any other projectile or projectile core which the Attorney General finds is intended to be used for industrial purposes, including a charge used in an oil and gas well perforating device.

Needless to say, this ban is creating quite a bit of panic among gun owners.

Many gun owners are stocking up on this ammo while they still can…

Word of ATF’s proposal sparked a run on ammo at some Springfield gun stores, and steep price spikes for steel-tipped military surplus ammo at some online ammo dealers. Rounds that sold for 25 to 30 cents apiece tripled at some some stores after BATF posted its proposal on its web site.

“We sold out of what we had in stock,” said Ryan Cook, manager of Eagle Armory in Springfield. “We didn’t have a lot in the store but I might have sold four or five cases after ATF’s statement came out. I called our suppliers but they said there was none available to order. It’s like the ammo shortage before. People are going to panic.”

Like I said earlier, even if you are not a gun owner you have got to be extremely concerned about this erosion of our constitutional rights.

We have a man occupying the White House that seems absolutely determined to stretch the limits of presidential power as far as they can possibly go.

And at this point he has become so arrogant that he doesn’t even care if Congress believes that what he is doing is legal. Just consider what he said during one recent speech…

Pres. Obama is daring Republicans to vote on whether or not his executive actions are legal.

Discussing opposition to his executive amnesty orders at an immigration town hall Wednesday, Obama said he would veto the vote because his actions are “the right thing to do”:

“So in the short term, if Mr. McConnell, the leader of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, want to have a vote on whether what I’m doing is legal or not, they can have that vote. I will veto that vote, because I’m absolutely confident that what we’re doing is the right thing to do.”

This is how republics die. When one man starts grabbing more and more power and nobody stops him, eventually a dictatorship is born.

This is not what our founding fathers intended. If they could see us today, they would be rolling over in their graves.

And a lot of Americans are getting fed up.

In fact, according to one recent survey only 47 percent of Americans still believe that Obama loves this country…

While the creepy #ILOVEOBAMA continues to trend on Twitter, fewer than half of American adults, 47 percent, say they believe that the president loves his country.

According to a survey conducted by Huffington Post/YouGov and released this week, a whopping 35 percent of Americans, more than one in three, believe that Obama doesn’t love the United States, while 17 percent said they weren’t sure.

The poll was conducted in the wake of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani telling a gathering in Manhattan that “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America.”

So what do you think?

Do you believe that what Obama is trying to do is legal?

And do you believe that Obama actually loves this country and everything that it is supposed to stand for?

Please feel free to add to the discussion by posting a comment below…

There are ten counties in northern Colorado that are discussing plans to secede from the state of Colorado in order to form a new state that would be known as “North Colorado”. North Colorado would have a population of more than 300,000 people, and it would be the 42nd largest state in the country by land area. The county officials that are leading this movement say that a “collective mass” of issues has resulted in this desire to leave the state of Colorado for good. In recent years, the Democratically-controlled state legislature has been pursuing new regulations on the oil and gas industries, it has imposed strict new renewable energy standards throughout the state and it has adopted new gun control measures that are highly unpopular with rural voters. The desire to be independent of the meddling bureaucrats in the state capital is certainly a commendable goal, but there are some obstacles that will make establishing a new state very difficult. Hopefully the challenges will not cause those pursuing this new state to lose heart.

Recently, representatives from ten Colorado counties held a meeting in the town of Akron to map out the boundaries for the new state…

Ten counties, including Weld and Morgan, started talking about seceding last month. Now some people Lincoln and Cheyenne counties say they want to join a new state they’d call “North Colorado.”

Organizers of the secession effort say their interests are not being represented at the state Capitol. Representatives from the 10 counties held a meeting on Monday in the town of Akron in Weld County to begin mapping the boundaries for the new state they say will represent the interests of rural Colorado.

Agriculture and the oil and gas industries would dominate this new state. In fact, right now about 80 percent of the oil and gas revenue in the state of Colorado comes from the counties that are talking about seceding…

“I say 80 percent of the oil and gas revenue in the state of Colorado is coming out of northeastern Colorado – Weld, Yuma County, and some of other counties,” Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway said. “Seventy percent of the K-12 funding is coming off the state lands in Weld County alone. I’m telling you we are economic drivers.”

So the state of Colorado may not be very eager to see those counties leave.

But water rights may be an even bigger issue. Four of the five counties that do the most farming in Colorado would become part of North Colorado. But the farmers in those counties are heavily dependent on the water rights that they rent from cities that would not be a part of North Colorado.

A new state could make getting the water that those farmers need much more difficult. The following comes from a Huffington Post article…

“A water right is the livelihood of many, many people in northeast Colorado … and if you put the security of that right at risk at all — as starting a brand new state might do — that could be enough to convince people they don’t want to go forward with this (new state),” said James Witwer, a water attorney in Denver, who represents various municipalities and agricultural water users in northeast Colorado. “It would be problematic and risky.”

Eight major U.S. rivers flow from Colorado’s mountains and into surrounding states and, because of that, Colorado has agreements in place with its neighbors — compacts that require certain amounts of water to flow across state lines.

Such an agreement would have to be made between Colorado and North Colorado.

There are also significant political issues that make a new state a long shot.

Even if the voters approve seceding from the state of Colorado, the new state must also be approved by the Colorado General Assembly and the U.S. Congress.

And getting approval from Congress seems extremely unlikely.

First of all, Democrats in Congress would be fundamentally opposed to this new state for the same reason that Republicans won’t let Washington D.C. become a state. Democrats would not want to allow two new Republican senators from the state of North Colorado to shift the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.

Republicans may not like the idea of North Colorado either, because it could significantly hurt the Republicans in future presidential elections. Right now, Colorado is considered to be a swing state. If North Colorado was formed, the Republicans would always win that state, but Democrats would always take the much larger state of Colorado. It would shift electoral college math even more in favor of the Democrats.

So it is definitely a long shot that we will ever see the state of North Colorado become the 51st state in the Union.

But without a doubt there are a lot of people that are very passionate about the idea. In fact, those organizing this movement say that a few more Colorado counties may join and that even a couple of counties in neighboring Kansas have expressed interest.

And organizers hope to have something on the ballot this November possibly.

It will be very interesting to watch and see what happens. No new state has been created out of an old state since West Virginia seceded from Virginia in 1863. And of course that was during the Civil War.

According to the New York Daily News, there have been lots of attempts to create new states out of old ones in U.S. history, but the vast majority of them have ended up failing…

This process has been successfully used in the past to create five new states — Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maine and West Virginia, according to the National Constitution Center.

But the road to statehood is mostly littered with failures. There have been more than seventy-five unsuccessful attempts at statehood, including the fantasy states of Forgottonia, Texlahoma, Nickajack, Absaroka, and Long Island.

The odds are definitely against North Colorado.

But they should be applauded for stepping up and taking action. You will never accomplish anything if you just sit on your sofa eating chips and watching television all the time.

So what do you think about the possibility of a 51st state called North Colorado? Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

The War On Preppers: Obama Bans Ammo For The Most Popular Rifle In America

Will North Colorado Be The 51st State In The Union?