Ammo Ban: The Obama Administration’s ‘Parting Shot’ at Hunting Community

On January 19 — the last full day of Barack Obama’s presidency — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe issued an ammo ban on the use of “traditional ammunition on Service lands.”

The ammo ban was issued unilaterally via Director’s Order 219.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) reported:

[D.O. 219] requires several initiatives to go into effect immediately. Regional Directors are to work with state agencies to ban the use of traditional ammunition. It also ends the use of traditional ammunition on Federal land, including National Parks, tribal lands and national wildlife refuges in order to mirror policies in states where traditional ammunition is already restricted.

D.O. 219 also stipulates that the “Assistant Director, Migratory Birds, in consultation with National Flyway Councils and individual states, will establish a process to phase in a requirement for the use of nontoxic ammunition for recreational hunting of mourning doves and other upland game birds.” In other words, the use of traditional ammunition for dove and upland bird hunting is going to be heavily restricted and eventually eliminated.

NSSF senior vice president Lawrence Keane responded to the Obama administration’s “parting shot” at the hunting community:

This directive is irresponsible and driven not out of sound science but unchecked politics. The timing alone is suspect. This directive was published without dialogue with industry, sportsmen and conservationists. The next director should immediately rescind this, and instead create policy based upon scientific evidence of population impacts with regard to the use of traditional ammunition.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.