Is the Obama Administration Full of Chowderheads?

One might think so, for the brain-dead idiots at the EPA are considering essentially banning the manufacturing of gun ammunition and fishing sinkers in this country.

This is breathtakingly stupid on several levels.

First off, if you have ever looked at where most state and Federal conservation money comes from, it is from things such as the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and special taxes on the sale of firearms and ammunition. For just the first quarter of 2010 alone, the Feds alone took in over $100 million. That money is used for Federal conservation efforts and if you think that those funds would be replaced from the general tax revenues, I submit that you are badly mistaken.

Second, this petition has no chance of doing anything other than inflaming the roughly 100 million gun owners in an election year.

Third, any such ban would not have any effect on all-up ammunition, which is exempt from the Toxic Substances Control Act. It would destroy reloading, though.

Fourth, even if the petition came anywhere near close to being enacted as a rule, Congress would fix that in a jiffy, as there are, between the Democrats in the West and Midwest and the GOP, more than enough votes to modify the TSCA to deprive the EPA of rule-making power over ammunition components.

The one thing that the gunnie community will overlook, though, is that it seems that under the TSCA, the EPA has no choice but to consider a petition to ban or control something. The EPA does not have to, however, open the floor on a petition to public comment.

I suspect that the EPA may be doing this, now, in order to kill off the petition. Maybe they are playing a nuanced game of using the public comments to kill it.

But maybe not, maybe they are indeed stupid enough to have this out there in the runup to the Fall elections.

Either way, I suggest that you read the first link and then comment on the petition. It wouldn't hurt to drop a letter to your congresscritter (unless your congresscriter is a rabid 2nd Amendment foe like Chuck Schumer or Carolyn McCarthy).

(H/T)