If the title of this article doesn’t make sense to you, then you need to read up. In the meantime, what you need to know is that the ATF has, in its infinite wisdom, decided to ban all imports of 5.45 x 39 ammunition, which goes in many rifles such as this. (By the way, if your first thought upon clicking that link was “Well, why would you even NEED one of those?” then please exit stage left to the sheep pasture.)
How can the ATF just make some unilateral decision like this, you ask? Here’s how it works. It’s illegal to import what is considered “armor-piercing” ammunition to the United States. The criteria for what is considered armor piercing is:
- a projectile or projectile core which may be used in a handgun and which is constructed entirely (excluding the presence of traces of other substances) from one or a combination of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium copper, or depleted uranium; or
- a full jacketed projectile larger than .22 caliber designed and intended for use in a handgun and whose jacket has a weight of more than 25 percent of the total weight of the projectile.
Rifle ammunition was left out of this law because as any hunter knows, a high-powered hunting rifle can cut through a lot of things. So why the big deal about 5.45 x 39? Lots of people own them, and a lot of that ammo comes from outside the US.
The Bang Switch explains:
The rumor [about the ATF banning this ammo] stems from an importer who had filed a Form 6 to bring in a shipment of 7N6 surplus ammo from Russia. The form approval went well past 2 weeks, which is the normal time frame for a Form 6 to be approved by the BATF. The importer emailed the BATF to find out what was going on with this particular import request and received this email response back.
Since apparently a firearm manufacturer made a handgun that takes this ammo, now the ATF has the excuse under the law to ban it. It’s a sneaky and backdoored way to bring in gun control; sure, says Daddy Federal, you can have that big, scary rifle, but you can’t have any ammo for it. As you can see in this blog post, gun owners didn’t want anyone making a handgun in this caliber for this very reason. Who’s the manufacturer that designed a handgun prototype for this ammo? No one knows.
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