A Dictator's Dynamic In Obama's Bullet Ban

A Miami gun shop owner holds a bullet for an AR-15 rifle. The 5.56 mm NATO round has been reclassified as a threat to law enforcement. AP View Enlarged Image

Politics: The president has ordered the reclassification of AR-15 bullets as a threat to lawmen, effectively banning them. It's nonsense. But we see what's going on: a backdoor bid to ban guns and scrap the Second Amendment.

It shouldn't be forgotten that the one time President Obama publicly showed a lot of anger came when the assault-weapon ban he proposed in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre failed to pass in Congress.

In that effort, his minions had falsely claimed that the gunman had used an AR-15 Bushmaster rifle, which was never the case. But that didn't matter, because the real plan was to make the popular hunting rifle the emblem of evil in his attempted gun grab.

Visibly enraged, he vowed to get his way by other means. "This effort is not over," he said at the time.

And that's what brings us here — to the sudden "reclassification" of the 5.56mm NATO round as "armor piercing" ammunition and therefore a threat to law enforcement, and subject to a ban.

First of all, the claim is false. Hunting rifles, including the AR-15, are rarely used in urban street crimes against lawmen, and Obama's people have no examples to speak of. But these rifles are popular among hunters and rural populations who have a significant need for self-defense in wilderness areas with more bears, coyotes and pumas than cops.

But it's not just a false premise that makes this bullet grab so objectionable.

Obama's move pretty well lifts a page from the oldest trick in the dictator's handbook — to limit rights by limiting material access. Instead of banning the free press, dictators everywhere limit access to newsprint. Instead of banning coal-fired plants, as candidate Obama said, just bankrupt coal companies.

And don't underestimate the ends to which the president will go to enact gun control. His administration is already badly implicated in the Fast and Furious scandal of selling guns to Mexican drug lords, presumably in order to raise the chaos factor and encourage public opposition to guns. And it has been caught targeting gun dealers for scrutiny.

Now, instead of accepting that gun control was not passed through the congressional front door, Obama has moved to ban the bullets by reclassifying them as something other than what they are.

In the 1960s' Castroite tradition, it shows he means to get his way by any means necessary. It's an abuse of power, a travesty of law and a template for dictatorship.

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