Back door gun ban

In the landmark Supreme Court of the United States decision, Heller vs DC, the Justices finally ponied up and agreed that the Second Amendment of the US Constitution does indeed guarantee Americans' right to own guns.

Now, in several states, legislation has been introduced that might be a back-door ban of weapons. If the Looters can't take away our guns, maybe they can take away our ammunition. These bills go by a variety of names, but they all essentially do the same thing.

These bills would require ammunition manufacturers to "encode" every single bullet and cartridge with a serial number, under the guise of improving public safety. Surprise, surprise: that these bills are being heavily lobbied by a commercial enterprise that has a patent on technology to imprint the codes. They are trying to create a demand for their product by making it mandatory.

My state was one of the culprits in 2008. Fortunately, these unconstitutional bills didn't pass. The legislation would have required that private citizens turn in all of their currently-owned ammunition, without any compensation; it would be illegal to possess non-encoded ammo. Every box of new, encoded, ammo would need to be registered. It would be illegal for people to reload their own ammunition, a process practiced by tens of thousands of gun owners. Private citizens would have to keep detailed records of when and where the ammo was used. A tax of up to 5 cents PER bullet would need to be paid.

The ultimate effect of these bills, if passed, would be to prevent gun owners from having ammunition for defense, practice, sport and hunting. The fact that these bills are not gun bans is a really just a technicality because, in practical terms, ammo bans are gun bans.