SECTION 4.
(a) All handgun and assault weapon ammunition manufactured or sold in thestate after January 1, 2009, shall be coded by the manufacturer.
(b) No later than January 1, 2011, all non-coded ammunition for the calibers
listed in this act, whether owned by private citizens or retail outlets, shall be disposed.
Tyrant wannabes in the Tennessee legislature are going for an ammo grab, in this case, Memphis Mandarins Reginald Tate and Larry Miller.
Here are the links for SENATE BILL 3395 and its counterpart, HOUSE BILL 3245. You can track status of the bills here.
They want to require etching "identifiers" on "the base of the bullet projectile"--and note it says "all," so .22 ammo sold in blocks is evidently not exempt. Then note requirements for a manufacturer's registry, a vendor's registry, mandates for investigations by the TBI, and staffing and maintaining a database--nothing that will stop one violent criminal from using noncompliant ammunition in a stolen firearm...
Can you imagine a more foolish squandering of financial resources at a time when Tennesseans are struggling to keep their jobs and their houses, or law enforcement resources when they can't prevent crime already without sidelining personnel on this nonsense?
Oh but that's OK, because there's "No fiscal note for the bill!"
That's because the overlords envision an "end user fee":
SECTION 7.
(a) The cost of establishing and maintaining the ACSD shall be funded by an end-user fee. Vendors shall charge an additional one half cent ($.005) per bullet or round of ammunition to the purchaser.
(b) There is established the coded ammunition fund for deposit of the end-user fees described in this section. Moneys in the fund, upon appropriation, shall be available to the TBI for infrastructure, implementation, operational, enforcement, and future development costs of this act.
And, of course, if half a cent is good, why in a few years, a whole cent will be even better! Besides, costs are going up and gun owners are outnumbered and generally despised by our urban constituencies--why not go for even more?
I wonder how many ammunition makers are going to just pull up stakes? And the "All" caveat seems to rule out handloading, or at least I don't see an exemption that states for certain at what threshold of production a self-producer becomes a "manufacturer"...
I also don't see any provisions for out-of-state "sportsmen" bringing tourist dollars in to hunt and shoot. I suppose setting up traps for them can also be a good source of revenue...
Question for all you "law abiding" Tennessee gun owners, the only people this bill will affect (that is, the ones not responsible for the problems): When they order you to surrender your non compliant ammo a little under three years from now, are you going to give it to them?
I don't know the chances this abomination has of passing--but I do know Tennessee is the state that inflicted Al Gore on the rest of us, and the urban representation seems just as unabashedly Marxist as anywhere else. Were I a Tennessean, I'd be on the horn to my representative at opening of business tomorrow morning, and I'd follow that up with a letter and an email.
[Via Stewart Rhodes]