If you're looking to practice shooting, there's got to be at least some time on the gun range. While there's a lot of technology that will let you practice at home, none of it is quite the same as sending rounds down range.
And good practice eats up a lot of ammo. Yet despite anti-gunners saying we're not well-trained enough, they're trying to make training harder.
How?
By coming up and once again trying to stop us from getting ammunition shipped to us.
House Democrats have introduced H.R. 7166, a bill that would effectively end direct-to-consumer online ammunition sales nationwide by forcing so-called “face-to-face” identity verification for internet purchases.
While supporters brand it as “common sense,” it is not. Unconstitutional in design, unethical in intent and absurd in its real-world consequences, the proposal doesn’t target criminals. The “Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act” targets law-abiding Americans who buy ammunition for self-defense, training, hunting, pest control and competitive shooting.
What H.R. 7166 Actually Does
While the bill’s text is not yet available for full analysis, the public description is clear: H.R. 7166 requires face-to-face purchases of ammunition, adds licensing requirements for ammunition dealers and imposes new reporting mandates for “bulk” purchases. The framework mirrors a prior version of the same bill, H.R. 584 (118th Congress), which spelled out the goal: prohibit licensed retailers from transferring ammunition unless they verify the buyer’s identity “in the physical presence” of the buyer by examining a photo identification. The sole feature is to make lawful acquisition of ammunition harder, slower, more expensive and — in many communities — functionally impossible.
Courts have long recognized the obvious truth: the right to keep and bear arms is meaningless if individuals cannot acquire the ammunition necessary to use them. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that restrictions on ammunition sales “may burden the core Second Amendment right,” because purchasing ammunition for lawful use falls within the conduct the Second Amendment protects.
That understanding was only strengthened after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which requires the government to justify modern gun regulations by demonstrating consistency with America’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. And notably, the Ninth Circuit panel decision in Rhode v. Bonta struck down California’s ammunition background check regime under that framework.
H.R. 7166 is even more extreme than a background check. It is a nationwide mandate to route internet ammunition purchases through in-person identification verification — by design, eliminating the convenience, accessibility and market competition that lawful online commerce provides.
Now, California tried this, and it didn't actually do anything except make it much harder for competitive shooters to buy the ammunition they need to practice.
It also impacts people who just practice a lot.
No gun store local to me sells ammo in thousand-round lots. For those, I have to go to the internet and have it shipped to me. Since I can easily burn through a few hundred rounds at the range without even blinking, it just makes sense to buy ammo in bulk. That's especially true if you're taking a class. Many tell you to have a thousand rounds of quality ammo, all because you're going to be shooting all day for several days.
Where are people supposed to get that if they can't find it online?
Honestly, it's amazing how often anti-gunners will make the argument that people like you and me aren't really trained enough to be trusted with a firearm on our streets, yet keep trying to throw up barriers to keep us from being as highly trained as possible.
Yeah, their argument is bogus in the first place, but it's also inconsistent when they trot out crap like this. I hate that.
If there's a bright side here, it's that there's no hope in Hades of this actually going anywhere this year. Despite the administration's unfortunate comments over the past couple of weeks, the reality is that this isn't remotely on any Republican's To-Do list. This is just anti-gun Democrats fumbling around in the dark, trying to pretend they're serious about gun control so the money from Giffords and Everytown keeps rolling in ahead of the midterms.
After those midterms, though, there's a bit of a chance, but I still see the president vetoing it, and I doubt they'll ever have a sufficient majority to override that.
It's just a shame that we even have to have this idiotic discussion.
