Pennsylvania bill would ban reloading

From the Keystone State:

Reloading ammunition in Pennsylvania may become a thing of the past if a bill currently in state legislature is passed.

According to the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), “in the last year, so-called “encoded” or “serialized” ammunition bills have been introduced in 13 states — Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Washington.”

The bills, if passed, would require all bullets and cartridge cases to be marked with a code and registered to the owners in a computerized database, therefore, reloading would be outlawed.

“It (the bill) would eliminate reloading because there would be no way to serial it (the ammunition),” Rollin Anderson of Anderson’s Gun Shop in Watsontown said. “A lot of guys that handload (reload) are not happy about it.”
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Ammunition you already own could also be at risk as many of the bills state that people would be required to forfeit all personally owned “non-encoded” ammunition after a certain date. Therefore, reloading would actually be deemed illegal.

“I think it’s ridiculous!” commented State Rep. Merle Phillips. “They’d take away reloading which a lot of gun owners do to save money. It makes no sense.”

Along with encoding and registering ammunition, there would also be a five cent tax on each bullet sold, therefore, a minimum $2.50 increase per box would be enforced.
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According to the Ammunition Accountability Web site, the legislation was prompted by a “newly forming group” that includes “gun crime victims, industry representatives, law enforcement, public officials, public policy experts and more.”

However, Angus McClellan of the NRA-ILA Grassroots said, “this is a proposal by a commercial enterprise that has a patent on technology to imprint the codes. They are trying to create a demand for their product by making it mandatory. The owner of the company admitted on NRA News that his lobbying firm put up the whole thing.”

Article here. As the article notes, ammo serialization bills are being pushed in a number of states. If (when?) this legislation passes, expect a state legislature in an anti-gun state like New Jersey or Illinois to pass such a law first. Unless, of course, Congress decides to pass such a law for the entire country, a law that our new Antigunner-In-Chief President Obama will, I suspect, be happy to sign.