Listing to NPR on my drive home yesterday, I heard an interview with Johnny Durry, a gun shop owner in San Antonio. In the interview, Durry talked about gun ammunition shortages since the election of President Obama last November. People, he said, have been stocking up on half-lifetime- to lifetime-supplies of ammunition at one time.
The thing those anti-gun people don’t understand is the people are buying it to protect themselves. They’re so scared of the socialist type of let’s take over the banks, let’s talk about take over the oil companies, let’s give all of this money to people without jobs, let’s reward all these people who are not working hard, and they said, “Well if the government is going that way, what are they going to try to take away from us now?” And you know what the big concern is? They’re worried about not being able to get any ammo and not being able to protect themselves.
This is only one shop owner’s story, but still, the message both frightened me and angered me. What the hell do people need a lifetime-supply of ammunition for? To protect themselves? From whom or what? Are they planning on a Canadian invasion?
Is it not reasonable to believe, if the government really were aiming to take away people’s guns as in coming to their homes and confiscating them, they’d take away the ammunition from them also? So if an ATF agent knocks on their doors tomorrow, he’d be confiscating their ammo, too, no? Unless they plan on using the lifetime-supply of bullets on the ATF agent?
Seriously, I fail to see the logic here. This isn’t a decision by the Obama Administration. Congress has to pass the law to ban guns, which seems unlikely, but Congress would first have to get around that pesky thing called the Constitution and repeal the Second Amendment. Amending the Constitution would take 2/3 of both houses of Congress AND 3/4 of states. Nearly impossible. But for the sake of argument, let’s say Congress managed to outlaw personal possession of guns and had agents go door-to-door to seize them as these paranoid gun owners described in the NPR story seem to fear. Why would they need a lifetime-supply of ammo? First, they won’t have a gun to use the ammo with. Second, the ammo would likely be seized along with the gun (unless they all formed a merry band of militia men and women and raised arms against the government then, of course, we have a bigger problem).
So I ask again, what the hell do people need a lifetime-supply of ammunition for?
