Domestic arms race update

Many on the Left giggled and grinned at "right wing paranoia" when the Department of Homeland Security began seeking massive contracts for more ammo last year. But with consumers now stripping retail ammo inventories for months on end, guess who sounds paranoid now?

Consider this headline and sub-header today at Salon.com:

With gun nuts hoarding bullets, will cops be disarmed? 

Gun owners terrified of nonexistent plans to restrict ammo are hoarding bullets. Now police are running out

The writer at Salon tries to spin consumer buying and fears of ammo restrictions as being based on non-existent threats. But that's not true.

Democrats began rattling sabers for restrictions on ammo sales last summer when Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy was forefront in a pitch to limit online ammo sales nationwide.

Earlier this year, a lawmaker in California put a bill in motion for tight ammunition sales restrictions in that state.

Also in January, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo boasted of new ammo restrictions he rammed through the state legislature and signed into law:

All dealers in ammunition must be registered with the State Police, and each sale will require both a state background check and transmission of a record of the sale to State Police, so as to enable alerts of high volume purchases.... Dealers must report any loss of inventory. The legislation will also include a ban on direct internet sales of ammunition. Ammunition ordered over the internet must be delivered in a face-to-face transaction with a firearms dealer and the purchaser will be subject to the state background check.

The Left tries to spin concern over new gun and ammo restrictions as unwarranted or non-existent. But the public record says otherwise.

If the Left seriously wants to end the current consumer run on ammunition, maybe it should just cease its assault on gun rights, and quit all its various efforts to put arms and ammo out of reach of law-abiding Americans.

And if police agencies are having trouble finding sufficient stocks of ammo, maybe those agencies should hold Democrat lawmakers accountable for the market forces they set in motion.