Last night, CBS News challenged Vice President Joe Biden to explain why the Obama administration has not banned so-called “armor piercing” bullets, which are apparently now taking the rap for last week’s police fatalities in Dallas.
Biden’s reaction was that “We’ve been trying to do that for a long time.” What he didn’t explain, however, is that typical police soft body armor is not now, nor was it ever, designed to stop anything but handgun bullets. In some cases, it hasn’t always managed to do that, either, depending upon the material and the type and caliber of bullet and its velocity.
Soft body armor can be penetrated by bullets fired from centerfire rifles. Past attempts to ban “armor piercing” bullets would have outlawed typical hunting bullets, and anyone with even a basic knowledge about firearms knows that.
Biden’s “expertise” about guns was revealed when he advised someone during a video interview that a good way to deter burglars is to walk outside on the deck of one’s house and fire a blast from their double-barreled shotgun in the air.
So when Biden last night claimed there is “zero” sporting purpose for so-called “armor-piercing” bullets, he was either being ignorant or deliberately misleading. Unless a typical bullet-resistant vest is fitted with a steel or ceramic plate, a hunting rifle bullet will punch through. Even having such a plate is apparently no guarantee that such a penetration might not happen, according to some readers reacting to the story at CBS News.
Real “armor piercing” bullets are already banned from import.
Anti-gunners are using last week’s mayhem in Dallas to rev up their war on guns. Democrats, led by presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, have been pushing gun control for more than a year. She has made it part of her campaign.
The political left is far less inclined to discuss the chilling remarks made by the Dallas gunman to a police negotiator, according to the Dallas police chief. Prior to being killed by a police robot-delivered bomb, the gunman reportedly claimed he wanted to kill white people and especially white police officers. Liberals have been dodging and weaving around that for the past several days.
So, the bullets are now the bogeymen.
