stonecutter2
Member
Jeez guys.
Crossbows and conventional bows and arrows will penetrate level 2 and 3 armor.
If they followed the logic of what truly defines armor piercing we'd be throwing stones at game animals.
This is the Government that we are talking about though; what they do rarely makes any sense from a scientific perspective.
The issue here is SS109/M855 should never have been listed as armor piercing in the first place because it does not meet the material requirements of (18 U.S.C. 921(a)(17)(B)
The ATF overstepped their bounds ORIGINALLY when they defined it as armor piercing.
NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT, BY FEDERAL STATUTE THE ATF FAILED TO FOLLOW, THE PROJECTILE IS NOT ARMOR PIERCING.
That statute reads:
(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.
(continued)
SS109/M855 fails to meet EITHER requirement, because the jacket is not nearly 25% of overall weight, and the CORE is not 100% ("entirely") steel. It's approximately 1/3 steel, 2/3's soft lead.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=773583
If they fail to heed the advice offered by people who are writing in letters, there's a very high probability of a successful suit against them for their "creative re-interpretation" of the law. The law is black and white. The ATF is moving in shades of orange and chartreuse here.
"From one or a combination of" is the part that I'm fuzzy on. Maybe that's the angle they're playing. Who knows. I'm not saying what they're doing is logical, just trying to grasp the statute and how they might have come to conclude this needed revisiting.