Under current federal law, armor piercing handgun ammunition is defined under Title 18, Section 921(a)(17), and regulated by Title 18, Section 922(a)(7 & 8).
For those disinclined to try and read the rather dry, technical language, it defines armor piercing ammunition in terms of construction method. Those who have grown used to the characterization of the NRA as against any gun control may be surprised to find that they actually helped write the law, created in 1986, and updated in 1994 to include a type missed in the original. The NRA's position is here.
From 1992 - 2001, (the last year I can find stats for this) 19 officers were killed by bullets penetrating a bullet proof vest. PDF, page 23, chart 11. More Data Here. All were killed by rifles. Note that this is two deaths per year. Out of roughly 750,000 police officers. As far as I know, no police officer has ever been killed by a handgun penetrating their body armor.
As far as I can determine, the ban on armor piercing handgun ammunition that currently exists has been 100% effective.
Rifle ammo is a different issue. One piece of information that is so obvious to gun advocates that it is sometimes skipped over entirely is the relative capabilities of body armor versus rifles. The power difference between rifles and common handguns is difficult to overstate. Very nearly any hunting rifle will go through a 'bullet proof' vest like it isn't there. SWAT teams have very heavy (30-40lbs.) armor that may suffice to stop at least some rifle rounds.
It is the attempt to extend the armor piercing ammunition ban to rifles that conflict occurs between the gun rights and gun control groups.
When talking about armor piercing and rifles, you are no longer talking about vests. You are talking about armored cars. And this is where the problem starts. Gun control groups do not like the technical, specific way the handgun ammo ban was written. They prefer a performance oriented system. Gun rights advocates are fiercely opposed to this.
I will admit I do not fully understand why the gun control groups oppose a technical definition. I just spent about an hour on the VPC site and couldn't find anything. I have read (somewhere?) that they feel it has loopholes.
The gun rights groups oppose the legislation for two reasons. The first is that it is difficult to come up with any standard that will not ban higher powered hunting rifles. A rifle that is designed to take down an elk at 600 yards will blast through any non-military armor. A rifle designed for defence against grizzly bears (a surprisingly common type, often marketed as 'Alaskan' models) will do the same. So a standard based on penetration will affect many popular hunting rifles, and there does not seem to be a way around that.
The second approach is to make the standard flexible. This is to have someone, usually the attorney general, responsible for determining what counts as armor piercing. The problem with that is it is too open for abuse. Get a gun aversive AG, and anything could be banned. Attached to this concern is that the language defining how they will decide what is to be banned is very poorly written; this is a common problem with almost all gun control laws, I do not know why.
My personal opinion is that I cannot see what gains would be achieved by banning any more types of ammunition for being 'armor piercing'. The current law works as designed, and it is in the NRA and other gun rights groups to ensure that it keeps working, so if something does slide through the cracks, fixing it will have their support.
2 comments:
Excellent post. This whole issue of "armor piercing ammunition" is very much misunderstood because it is technical and most news accounts do not get into the details.
The problem is that unless you understand guns, ballistics, and even the different grades of body armor you're susceptible to media hype and the lies from the gun control groups.
You are right; there is no benefit from this legislation. The reason they're pushing it is that they want to get their foot in the door for future bans of more and more and more and...
It certainly looks that way from our perspective. I have been trying to look at it from theirs, but information is few and far between.
Oddly, if you dig down past the press releases there are some fairly reasonable and even knowledgeable articles to be found ob the VPC site... I do not know where they are in the website structure, I found them with a Google site search.
One thing that has always bothered me about the gun control groups has always been their aparrently intentional ignorance about what they are fighting. I have never known if it is intentional or not.
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