Free Republic

I was doing a radio interview this morning and the host asked me why the Department of Homeland Security needed 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. The easy answer for me was, “They don’t.” Of course the follow-up question for him was, “Then why are they buying it?” And that’s the billion-dollar question isn’t it. What is the federal government going to do with all that ammo? Why do they need it? Why are they buying it? It’s unprecedented. Are we on the cusp of physical domination by the United States Federal Government? And, if so, how will the American people...

Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma has publicly stated a belief that the gigantic DHS ammo purchases we read about are intended to dry up national ammo supplies and deny ammo to civilian users: http://freerepublic.com/%5Ehttp://www.wnd.com/2013/05/inhofe-dhs-ammo-grab-to-dry-up-supply/ I asked a number of ammo suppliers and component manufacturers about this at the convention in Houston this weekend and and could not get anybody to admit to anything of this nature, all claimed that they were working at top capacity and that civilian demand alone was distorting the market. I don't buy it. I don't see any way that civilian demand could be keeping 22 ammo...

“I now agree that it’s fruitless to give the benefit of the doubt to people who are so obviously corrupt, so clearly malevolent, so bent on hurting innocent people for their own sick gain,” Aurora Sentinel editor Dave Perry wrote in an April 25 editorial. “No more due process in the clear-cut case of insidious terrorism. “When the facts are so clearly before all Americans, for the whole world to see, why bother with this country’s odious and cumbersome system of justice?” he asked. “Send the guilty monsters directly to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity and let them rot in...

1) Because Obama Is Half Black? 2) Because We Are Afraid Of An Economic Collapse That Will Never Come? 3) Because We Are Paranoid Over Unfounded Threats Of Martial Law? 4) Because We Refuse To Accept That The World Is Changing Without Us?

Armscor, popular manufacturer of a wide variety of approachable and affordable 1911 pistols and other firearms, is expanding with new ammunition and firearms manufacturing facilities in Pahrump, Nevada. In addition to helping gun-hungry people everywhere get their hands on firearms and ammunition, their new faciities are expected to create about 50 jobs and be in full production by this time next year. “We are thrilled with the demand for our Rock Island Armory branded products in the US,” said Martin Tuason, CEO of Armscor and Rock Island Armory. “Our new facility will give us the opportunity to increase production and...

Republicans want to limit the number of bullets federal agencies can purchase so American gun owners can buy more.

Federal Power: Homeland Security's procurement officer is grilled in Congress on why federal agents who rarely fire weapons need several times more bullets annually than an Army officer. Who or what are they shooting at? Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz on Thursday asked Nick Nayak, DHS' chief procurement officer, a question we and others have been asking: Why has the Department of Homeland Security been buying so much ammunition? Dismissed as a concern only of right-wing conspiracy theorists, the reported amounts as high as 2 billion rounds have varied and been explained not as a one-time purchase but a bulk buy...

Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah-3rd District) had serious questions for DHS representatives on Thursday. Fox News reports: Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security is using roughly 1,000 rounds of ammunition more per person than the U.S. Army, as he and other lawmakers sharply questioned DHS officials on their “massive” bullet buys. “It is entirely … inexplicable why the Department of Homeland Security needs so much ammunition,” Chaffetz, R-Utah, said at a hearing. The hearing itself was unusual, as questions about the department’s ammunition purchases until recently had bubbled largely under the radar — on blogs and...

Republicans in the Senate and House are expected to introduce a joint bill Friday that would limit the amount of ammunition that federal agencies are allowed to buy and stockpile over the next six months, the Washington Free Beacon reports. The bill, titled the Ammunition Management for More Accountability or “AMMO” Act, is being proposed after several lawmakers have voiced concerns about some federal agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, seemingly stockpiling large quantities of ammo. “DHS, for instance, has placed two-years worth of ammunition, or nearly 247 million rounds, in its inventory,” the Free Beacon notes. In a...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reserves the right to buy up to 750 million rounds of ammunition over the next five years and currently has “two years worth” of ammo on hand, or around 247 million rounds in its inventory, the department’s top procurement official said Thursday during congressional testimony. DHS has already purchased around 41 million rounds of ammunition this year alone, Nick Nayak, DHS’s chief procurement officer, said during an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill. Some $37 million in taxpayer dollars will be spent on the purchase of ammunition in the entirety of fiscal year 2013.

Over the course of the last month, while Americans were distracted with the threat of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and the devastation wrought by the Boston bombings, President Obama was quietly working behind the scenes to craft laws and regulations that will further erode the Second Amendment. Congress, and thus We the People, may have unequivocally rejected federal legislation in March which aimed to outlaw most semi-automatic rifles, restrict magazine capacity, and force national registration, but that didn’t stop the President from ceding regulatory control over firearms importation to the United Nations just two weeks later. What the...

556RECON.com tracks trends and pricing for 5.56x45 NATO from on-line vendors (Cheaper Than Dirt, AmmoNet, etc.), and the average price has started to drop, if just by a few pennies per round. 62gr Green Tip has dropped from $1.10 to as low as $1.03. This is the average price, the lowest PPR is at 70 cents per round. 55gr Average PPR has dropped to $.90, with the lowest price at 70 cents per round. Interestingly, Cheaper Than Dirt, where I (used to) buy, is consistently at the expensive end of the list, with LAX and Palmetto being the best buys....

Walmart ammunition shelves - left side Walmart ammunition shelves - right side I stopped in a the Foothills WalMart in Yuma today, to see what was happening with their ammuniton supply. As you can see, there wasn't much. some 20,16, and 12 guage bird shot, mostly 7 1/2. I was surprised to see that they had a few boxes of 12 gauge 00 buckshot, at $4.67 for five cartridges. They also had a couple of boxes each of 7mm Remington Magnum, Winchester 270, and 300 Winchester Magnum. The only rimfire that I saw was some .17 magnum. Raymundo, at...

Try going to your neighborhood Wal-Mart to buy some .22 bullets for target shooting, or a couple of boxes of shotgun shells, and you’ll discover what hunters and gun enthusiasts have been muttering about for months now: The shelves are bare. Manufacturers are operating flat-out but can’t keep up with demand, as consumers snap up every box of ammo as soon as it comes on the market. Wal-Mart limits buyers to three boxes when they’re available, and Cabela‘s is limiting online orders to one box per day of the popular .22 long shells increasingly used as cheap ammo for target...

Amid the myriad questions and theories behind the ammunition shortage currently being experienced across the country, manufacturers have gone on the record to say they are producing as much as they can and are working to produce even more. Hornady ammunition, makers of some of the most popular self-defense ammo for concealed carry applications, explained it this way: "We are producing as much as we can, much more than last year, which was a lot more than the year before, etc. No one wants to ship more during this time than we do." The demand for Hornady's ammo is so...

The sudden shortage of ammo available just isn’t making sense. Yes, DHS has made substantial purchases (~1.6b rounds) but when one looks at the numbers, this alone cannot account for such dramatic shortages of supply. Just estimating, for purpose of an example, 1.6b rounds is a huge purchase but how does this break out? 1.6b divided by 50 rounds/box equals 32m boxes. There are 50 states and for purposes of simplifying this example, say there are 50 cities in each state and 5 stores (outlets) per city. This computes to 125,000 total outlets in the US. If one divides 32m...

There are dozens of articles hyping government purchases of ammunition over the last nine months. After spending weeks researching this topic, this is a collection of commonly held myths that are based more on panic than fact.  With the recent release of a letter from the Department of Homeland Security to Senator Coburn, the numbers we calculated independently seem to corroborate the narrative coming from DHS. The concerns surrounding DHS stockpiling ammunition are nothing but more fear-mongering and largely unwarranted. For once, here are the facts to set the record straight:MYTH: DHS purchased 750 million rounds of several different types of...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has responded to a letter dated November 13, 2012 from Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) regarding the agency's ammunition purchases. Sen. Coburn published the response on the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs website yesterday, April 1, 2013. The response, dated February 4, 2013, says that DHS buys ammunition in bulk to "significantly lower costs."

<p>WND recently reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has purchased well over a billion rounds of ammunition over the past year.</p> <p>The magnitude of the federal government’s ammunition buildup has made headlines as members of the military, police departments and consumers find shelves bare.</p>

The caller wanted to know whether Lloyd Cook had any 9 mm ammunition in stock. “I asked him how much did he want,” said Cook, owner of an Independence gun range, “and he said, ‘All of it.’” Across the country, bullets are flying off store shelves as people stockpile ammunition. The big question: Why? “There is no good answer for this,” said Kevin Jamison, a Gladstone lawyer and spokesman for the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance. “Panic buying seems to account for some of the shortage, but I don’t believe it can be all of it.” Some point to concerns that...