ATF delays plan to ban armor piercing bullets

WASHINGTON — Federal officials on Tuesday backed off a plan to block the sale and manufacture of a popular kind of armor-piercing ammunition in the face of intense opposition from Republican lawmakers and gun enthusiasts.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had proposed to restrict the armor-piercing 5.56-millimeter “M855 green tip” rifle bullet, saying its increasing use in handguns that could be concealed posed a threat to law enforcement officers.

But in a Twitter post on Tuesday, the agency acknowledged the intense opposition to the change and said it would shelve the proposal for now.

“You spoke, we listened,” the post said. “ATFHQ plans more study on the proposed AP Ammo exemption framework.”

A statement on the agency’s website said the ATF had received over 80,000 opinions even before the comment period for the proposed regulatory change was due to end next Monday. The agency said the “vast majority of the comments received to date are critical” of the proposal.

“Accordingly, ATF will not at this time seek to issue a final framework,” the statement said. “After the close of the comment period, ATF will process the comments received” and “further evaluate the issues raised.”

A spokesman for the Department of Justice, which oversees the ATF, declined to comment. A spokesman for President Barack Obama also did not respond to a request for comment.

Millions of green-tip steel and lead bullets are sold every year to hunters and target shooters. The military-style bullets are typically used in AR-15 semiau- tomatic rifles and are relatively inexpensive. Despite the steel construction, the government has allowed them to be sold for the past 30 years under an exemption from laws that prohibit so-called armor-piercing ammunition.

But the firearms agency proposed last month to reclassify the bullet, saying it is increasingly possible for the ammunition to be loaded into handguns, rather than rifles, which can be more easily concealed. That poses a threat to police officers and others who might confront a criminal armed with the bullets, the agency said.

Gun control groups and some law enforcement organizations had hailed the proposed rule, saying that it would help keep police officers safe and that the bullets were not necessary for hunters or target shooters.

But gun rights organizations reacted angrily to the proposal, accusing Obama’s administration of trying to impose new gun control measures by restricting ammunition because it could not pass broader gun legislation in Congress.

Advocates of the bullet’s continued use said steel made it no more or less lethal than a regular, lead-only bullet when fired from a rifle. In a letter to the director of the ATF on Monday, 53 Republican senators called the proposed regulation a threat to Second Amendment rights.

“If law-abiding gun owners cannot obtain rifle ammunition, or face substantial difficulty in finding ammunition available and at reasonable prices because government entities are banning such ammunition, then the Second Amendment is at risk,” the senators said in the letter.

The turnabout by the agency is a victory for Republican lawmakers and gun rights organizations like the National Rifle Association.