The Fraternal Order of Police has been very clear that they don’t find the common M855 cartridge used by shooters of 5.56 rifles, to be a threat to law enforcement officers.
A top police representative on Tuesday said that there is no history of criminals using a round popular among AR-15 rifle shooters against officers, undermining the Obama administration’s argument for banning the 5.56 M855 “lightgreen tip.”
“Any ammunition is of concern to police in the wrong hands, but this specific round has historically not posed a law enforcement problem,” said James Pasco, executive director of the Washington office of the Fraternal Order of Police, the world’s largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers, with more than 325,000 members.
He told Secrets that the round used mostly for target practice “is not typically used against law enforcement.”
The United States military has likewise found the M855 bullet—a 62-grain lead ball round with a tiny mild steel insert that keeps it from creating fight-stopping wounds—to be a less-lethal-than-optimal round.
As a matter of fact, the military determined that this bullet is so “less lethal” that it began attempting to develop more lethal rounds in 1993, after the bad guys shot with it in the Battle of Mogadishu simply shrugged the hits off and kept on fighting. You might have heard about the incident. It was immortalized in the movie Black Hawk Down.
Special Operations Command (SOCOM) ended up developing the MK262 cartridge to replace the miserable performance of the M855, while the Marines adopted the MK318. The Army created an entirely new bullet (well, they kinda stole it), and called it the M855A1.
So if the M855 isn’t that good at killing people, what is the military doing with it?
They’re using it for target practice, the same as American civilians and police. M855 is cheap to make, easy to find, cycles reliably in most 5.56 rifles, and is accurate enough at the short to mid ranges where this training round is most frequently used.
So why is the Obama Administration attempting to claim that this bullet is too dangerous for civilians to use, even when police and the military don’t agree?
If you ask the Obama Administration and their rogue ATF, they’ll attempt to claim that the round is “armor-piercing.” They’re only half lying. After all, any rifle ammunition will pierce soft body armor designed to stop pistol bullets. But the M855 doesn’t come close to meeting the legal definition of an “armor-piercing” round. No matter how the Administration attempts to stretch it, the M855 simply isn’t a problem.
So what is the real reason the Obama Administration attempting to ban the popular M855 training round?
We can only guess.
Fortunately, we all know that we have a President who wouldn’t abuse the power of executive branch agencies in the pursuit of spiteful personal vendettas, such as using the IRS, EPA, and FBI to target political opponents. He’s certainly not the kind of man who would target gun owners for stopping his attempt to ban AR-15 rifles by illegally circumventing Congress to outlaw the ammunition used by those rifles.
Besides, as we all know, Barack Obama loves the police. He wouldn’t do anything to make their lives more difficult, or their jobs more dangerous, such as doubling the cost of their carbine training ammunition, an effect that even the talk of an M855 ban has already accomplished in just three weeks as panic buying has driven up demand.
After all if Obama had a son, he’d be a cop, and he’d treat him with respect.
Right?
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