In layman’s terms: New Jersey Attorney General, Matthew Platkin, supports ending the sale of 5.56 ammo to civilians.
New Jersey Attorney General, Matthew Platkin, penned his name to a letter in support of banning one of the most popular calibers of ammunition in the United States.
Platkin joined 20 other attorneys general, including New York state Attorney General, Letitia James, in writing a letter to Stefanie Feldman, Director of the newly-created White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, calling for ending the sale of so-called “military-grade ammunition” manufactured at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant on the commercial market.
The letter specifically calls out the popular 5.56-millimeter round by name (a round used in millions of legally-owned AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles) and attempts to make the specious claim that availability of this ammunition is somehow a cause of mass shootings.
According to recent reports, the ammunition made at Lake City for our military has been sold to civilians in mass quantities, leading to these bullets being used in mass shootings, including a shooting in which three law enforcement officers were killed and multiple school shootings. Lake City rounds have become the ammunition of choice for use in mass shootings…
Gun crimes throughout the country include firearms chambered in dozens of different calibers, so the specific focus on the 5.56-millimeter round seems to be a backdoor attempt at banning civilians from being able to use popular semi-automatic rifles by creating a de facto ban on the ammunition they use. This is, of course, unconstitutional and illogical.
The clear hostility to the Second Amendment, and law-abiding citizens is evident in the baseless accusations and assertions made in the letter, like this one:
Ammunition from Lake City is manufactured for military use and does not belong in our communities.
No credence is given to the fact that tens of millions of law-abiding gun owners shoot perhaps billions of this type of round every year, and have done so for decades.
The mechanism to ban this ammo is laid out in their request to the White House: “…its sale to private parties should not be subsidized by taxpayer dollars.”
It is indeed an odd argument that government-subsidized activities should not be linked to an expression of a Constitutional right like the Second Amendment. We have no such challenges against, for example, government-subsidized radio programming (NPR) that supports First Amendment activity. Nor tax benefits for charitable religious organizations. This is clearly a direct attack on the Second Amendment.
Platkin is notoriously anti-Second Amendment and is constantly defending, even promoting, the “carry killer” Bruen-response bill signed in December of 2022 which attempted to make nearly every location in the State of New Jersey a “sensitive place” where concealed carry is banned. He goes so far as to make social media posts to businesses across the state to let them know they can prohibit guns in their locations. This law is currently being challenged in court, and judges have already suspended portions of it for its unconstitutional nature.
We will continue to cover this story.
All it would take to end this madness is for every gun owner in the state to vote these individuals out of office. Unfortunately there are a large number of gun owners that don’t vote and many who vote for democrats.
The contract Winchester has with lake city allows them to produce 5.56 for the civilian market and allows them to provide ammunition to the government at a lower cost. Banning Winchester from producing for civilian use most likely would involve a contract change.