Look out, The Inquirer is op-eding! Seriously, this displays so much ignorance about guns and ammunition, it’s astounding. This is the kind of stuff I’d expect children to come up with. But this was vomited onto paper by an adult and put up as an op-ed by presumably adult editors:
Today, one can walk into a gun shop and purchase, for instance, a .22, .38, or .44-caliber handgun. Most firearms are built to accommodate one size round only. So here’s what would happen if the manufacture of today’s standard-size rounds were outlawed, and .23, .39 and .46-caliber rounds took their place: Eventually, gun owners would run out of the old ammo, and their weapons would become paperweights.
Oh my God. Seriously? I don’t even know where to begin. But I’ll hit a few points:
For most firearms, this would be a barrel change, and that’s about it. Criminals will have no trouble obtaining new barrels for old guns.
Ammunition can be manufactured in basements. At this point the only parts I order out for are primers and powder. I know someone who casts and polycoats bullets in his basement, with a machine that makes thousands at a time. This very very stupid proposal by a very very ignorant person isn’t going to change that. I have enough brass to keep shooting for a decade or more. And for new brass? Presumably the police and military aren’t going to be made to retool, so there will still be plenty, and you can’t regulate it. It would be more pointless than regulating pot, which at least smells bad.
Lastly, does it matter if someone gets shot with a .22 or a .23? Seriously. Grow up. Even after this law is passed, what have you accomplished? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Mexico has restrictions on ammunition similar to what this guy proposes, and Mexican cartels have no trouble obtaining restricted firearms and restricted ammunition, and a .38 Super will kill just as readily as a 9mm.
When you say “by an adult”, don’t forget those 27-year-olds who “literally know nothing.” That’s who is writing the news these days, especially at dead tree media organs. It sounds like a liberal arts major wrote it, because one did.
The only tricky thing is the chemistry for smokeless powder and primers. If there’s a reliable source for those, everything else is fairly straightforward.
How many gun owners have ammo stockpiled? We are buying as much ammo every year as was fired by US forces during all of World War 2.
First off, the idiot clearly has no idea how many cartridges are out there. There are wall charts someone could send him.
But let’s say they make .22 illegal but .21 or .23 are legal. Barrels aren’t serialized; they’re sold as replacement parts. You can get some replacement barrels now, but sooner or later you need the new size. The home ECM (electrochemical machining) rifling methods that the “ProjectButWhatAbout” Barrels group is working on seem to be coming along well, such that the day of the home made barrel seems to be coming. Or is already be here.
You know they’ll screw up the wording. You won’t be able to get 45 acp, but you can get 11.43×23mm.
This reminds me of how, in certain European countries, you can’t get 9x19mm Parabellum, because it’s an Official Military cartridge, and we can’t have civilians using military stuff! Thus, civilians use 9x21mm ammo, which is slightly *more* powerful than the military stuff.
This person needs to be careful with what they wish for. They might just get it!
(Of course, there’s probably little to no difference between 9×19 and 9×21, in practice at least. It’s the thought that counts, though….)
“you can’t get 9x19mm Parabellum, because it’s an Official Military cartridge, and we can’t have civilians using military stuff!”
I’m thinking the reasoning for those ammo laws has always been, to effectively prohibit calibers available in large quantities for military weapons; and has little or nothing to do with the performance of the caliber.
The first time “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland piqued my interest was in the 1970s, when I read (in a “Parade” magazine as I recall) “mere possession of a single round of 5.56mm ammunition will result in a sentence of eight years or more…” Almost instantly my sympathies began to shift from what Good Americans were required to think.