The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

There's no end to these people who happily supply terrorists and rogue regimes - but want to annoy and frustrate the law abiding American by acting like a tin pot dictator;

https://www.nraila.org/articles/2015021 ... ar-15-ammo

In a move clearly intended by the Obama Administration to suppress the acquisition, ownership and use of AR-15s and other .223 caliber general purpose rifles, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives unexpectedly announced today that it intends to ban commonplace M855 ball ammunition as “armor piercing ammunition.” The decision continues Obama’s use of his executive authority to impose gun control restrictions and bypass Congress.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ar15/comments/2 ... _ban_m855/

How long before someone gets the same idea in the UK - or is green tip S5 in the UK??

AP is very much Section 5 in the UK Chuck!

I must admit as somebody who has shot with the HME .50 cal guys here in the UK I do chuckle that whilst they are not allowed to use AP rounds many use solid brass bullets that are totally legal but will punch through an inche of steel plate at a fair distance.

Thanks for that Fedaykin - tracer is still OK though isn't it?.

Thing is green tip is not full blown Armour Piercing is it, AP sems to have a different designation.

AP is Black tipped in UK

M855 has a steel penetrator tip, it's not really AP. It's already banned from most ranges where they use steel targets.
It'll be a similar ban to the 5.45mm Russian surplus ban, which also has a steel penetrator.

BamBam wrote:M855 has a steel penetrator tip, it's not really AP. It's already banned from most ranges where they use steel targets.
It'll be a similar ban to the 5.45mm Russian surplus ban, which also has a steel penetrator.

From a US site regarding the ban on importing 7n6 5.45x39 ammunition

"The 7n6 was not an issue as long as the BATFE didn’t catch wind of a 5.45×39 handgun on the U.S. market. Until one did appear, 7N6 surplus could flow freely from Russia, Ukraine and other sources. However, it would only be a matter of time before someone got the bright idea to produce a 5.45×39 pistol domestically or someone applied for a Form 6 to import one.The Special Advisory letter claims that in 2011 a Polish made 5.45×39 Onyks 89S pistol was submitted for import approval by an unspecified entity. This seems a bit fishy to me since it rarely takes the BATFE almost 2 years to ban something once they have cause. It’s also worth mentioning that several companies such as Robinson Armament and JBI Armory have produced 5.45×39 handguns domestically for several years and we didn’t hear so much as a peep out of the BATFE until 2014.

The import request that the BATFE claims prompted their action was for a “Fabryka Bronie Radom, Model Onyks 89S”. Try finding something on Google about this firearm. If your Google-Fu is roughly as powerful as mine, all you will find is a reference to an obscure Polish military select fire rifle. It’s so obscure in fact that only 200 were produced in Poland and to my knowledge none were ever imported nor sold on the U.S. market as semi-automatic pistols. It’s possible I’ve missed something in my research so I welcome my readers to point me in the right direction if you know where I may find this elusive creature here in the U.S."

Its worth noting the steel core of a 5.45 7n6 is the same steel as the core of a x39 and 54r round.

Here's a pulled bullet, m855, green tip SS109 NATO.


Here's the steel penetrator, the rest of the bullet core is lead.

M855 (and by extension all SS109-type ammunition) is perhaps best classified as semi-armour-piercing. The hardened steel penetrator is in fact designed to penetrate armour, so while I disagree with a great deal of what the BATFE does, this is not exactly what I would call unexpected.

Maybe not unexpected but wholly unnecessary one would think. A pander to the anti gun nuts by someone?

There's an exemption for all the ammo already in stock at the moment and I doubt there will be any more made as the US military aren't buying any more M855. The new M855A1 is what the military are buying now and that won't be available to civilians anyway.

M855A1 we've been shooting all this week. It is a much better round than the M855.