House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) issued the statement below following the announcement from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that it will shelve its proposed plan to ban a bullet used with the AR-15 rifle, the most popular sporting rifle in the United States.
"It is a great victory for the 2nd Amendment that President Obama and his liberal lieutenants at the ATF reversed themselves at our strong urging and halted their attempt to infringe upon the hard-fought rights of the American people," Rep. Scalise said. "We fought the Obama Administration on their attempted ammunition grab, and they finally backed down. The Administration's continued attempts to circumvent Congress in order to implement radical regulations is unacceptable, especially when their efforts trample on the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the Bill of Rights, and we will continue to fight any future actions just as we were successful in fighting this latest attempt."
Last week, Scalise and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) sent a letter to the Director of the ATF, urging the Obama Administration to withdraw their reclassification of M855 ball ammunition as "armor piercing ammunition." The designation would have diminished and infringed upon gun owners' Second Amendment rights.