http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/...0403010926.asp
March 01, 2004, 9:26 a.m.
The Return of a Legislative Legend
Debating "cop-killers."
by Dave Kopel
Sen. Ted Kennedy is offering an amendment to ban ammunition. Kennedy claims that he is aiming at "cop-killer" bullets, but he appears to be badly misinformed on the issue.
....
Unfortunately, some public officials have made misleading claims about officer safety. For example, in 1995 President Clinton announced his support for a massive new ban on many ordinary types of ammunition. In the speech, President Clinton spoke emotionally about a Chicago police officer who had been fatally shot because a "cop-killer" bullet penetrated his vest. There was only one problem with the story: It wasn't true. The officer was shot by a criminal who used ordinary ammunition. One shot hit the officer in the head. Another shot went through an opening in the vest. No shot penetrated the vest.
Although the "cop-killer"-bullet issue had no factual substance, it was politically potent. As with so many other terms invented by gun-prohibition lobbyists, the very name served to bias the debate in favor of prohibition. The national media showed little interest in reporting facts such as the origin of the KTW bullet, or that the KTW was not for sale to the public, or that no police officer had ever been shot at or killed with such a bullet, or that Teflon didn't make bullets more powerful.
Once the bait was set, the switch was made. New York Democratic Rep. Mario Biaggi (who would later leave Congress due to felony convictions involving extensive personal corruption) introduced a bill to outlaw all ammunition capable of penetrating soft body armor if fired from a handgun with a six-inch barrel. This could lead to a ban on most rifle ammunition, since most rifle ammunition will penetrate soft body armor, and many common types of rifle ammunition fit some handguns. Soft body armor is designed to stop handgun ammunition, not rifle ammunition.
When this fact was pointed out, media figures sneered that gun owners wanted to go deer-hunting with cop-killer Teflon bullets "” as if deer were wearing body armor.
As the debated continued, the constant repetition of the phrase "cop-killer bullet" helped drive a wedge between Second Amendment groups and many police officers. The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) "” the largest rank-and-file police group in the U.S. "” had been an enthusiastic supporter of the McClure-Volkmer Firearms Owners' Protection Act (FOPA), a bill to reform abusive enforcement of the 1968 Gun Control Act.
But after the "cop-killer" controversy, the police group's director switched sides, and announced that FOPA was a grave threat to the lives of police officers. FOPA itself had nothing to do with KTW or Teflon ammunition, but the FOP director's broader point was his anger over the "cop-killer bullet" issue.
Many of the friends of the Second Amendment in Congress and the Reagan White House quietly insisted that something be done to get rid of the controversy.
THE FEDERAL BAN
Accordingly, the National Rifle Association and Representative Biaggi reached a compromise: Instead of a penetration standard (which would ban most rifle ammunition), a content standard was adopted. The sale or import of handgun ammunition with a significant amount of steel, titanium, or other metal core was outlawed. (The relevant federal regulation specifies that: "armor piercing ammunition" is a handgun bullet "constructed entirely" from " tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium copper, or depleted uranium," or with certain kinds of jackets on the bullet.)
An important new protection in the compromise bill required that "armor-piercing ammunition" be so labeled. This prevented people from being prosecuted for the unwitting sale of the newly restricted ammunition. For example, some surplus ammunition imported from Czechoslovakia contained a solid core, rather than a lead core, because there had been a lead shortage in the Czechoslovakia when the ammunition was manufactured.
Biaggi pronounced that the compromise achieved everything he had wanted from the original bill. The NRA spread the word that the vote for the compromise would not be scored as a "wrong" vote.
Severe mandatory prison sentences were enacted for use of federally defined "armor-piercing ammunition" in a violent or drug-trafficking crime. The rarity of the actual misuse of such unusual ammunition is demonstrated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms study of firearms crime in 1985-94, which found that there had only been four prosecutions for use of the ammunition in a crime.
BANNING HUNTING AMMUNITION?
The 1997 BATFE report on the threat to police officers from criminal use of ammunition concluded: "Because the existing laws are working, no additional legislation regarding such laws is necessary. In this matter, to err on the conservative side of the existing status quo laws is to avoid any experimentation with police officer lives that could conceivably lead to numerous additional officer fatalities."
Unfortunately, gun-prohibition lobbies and their congressional allies have continued to call for such dangerous "experimentation," notwithstanding the strong opposition of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Under current proposals, if a bullet can penetrate soft body armor (which is designed to stop handguns, not rifles), it could be outlawed. The Kennedy amendment refers to ammunition "designed" to have "armor-piercing capability." How can one know the inner mind of someone who designed a bullet, perhaps decades ago?
The Kennedy amendment refers to rifle ammunition that has more penetrating capability than "standard" ammunition of the same caliber. In other words, a bureaucrat could decide that "standard" ammunition in a certain caliber has a certain weight and velocity, and any round with a greater weight or velocity could be administratively prohibited.
As the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives urges, the safest approach is to leave existing laws in place "” rather than frightening the public and endangering the police in order to score political points. The Fraternal Order of Police agrees, and opposes the Kennedy amendment.
"” David Kopel is the research director at the Independence Institute.
proof ted kennedy still drinks heavily
