Replies

“”rounds of anti personal ammunition””

Sigh.... “anti-personnel ammunition” would be the correct spelling, but the terminology is still ridiculous from a “gunblog”. If a left wing idiot made the same statement there would be plenty of scorn heaped upon them by FReepers.

Bulk purchasing by government agencies saves taxpayer money and guarantees pricing/availability for years.

The NRA obviously thinks this is conspiratorial crap -

http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/articles/2012/federal-law-enforcement-agencies-buy-ammunition.aspx

Last paragraph from the NRA:

“””As most gun owners will agree, skepticism of government is healthy. But today, there are more than enough actual threats to the Second Amendment to keep gun owners busy. With two key Supreme Court decisions hanging by a one-vote margin, the Justice Department deeply involved in a cover-up of a disastrous Mexican gun smuggling operation, and President Obama touting a ban on popular semi-automatic firearms, there is no need to invent additional threats to our rights.”””

Reply from a GOP Congress critter’s office -

http://westmoreland.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=642&Itemid=372

We can fairly question the need for some of these departments to have SWAT teams and I certainly do. However, that is a seperate issue from ammo purchasing via long term contracts. All Federal agencies have criminal investigator positions (Office of Inspector General) who have arrest powers under Federal law and therefore are considered job series 1811 (Federal Agents). All Federal agencies have armed security forces that protect official buildings and other sensitive locations. These individuals all qualify quarterly with their duty weapons and that adds up quickly. Even the agencies that subcontract their armed security usually supply the ammunition to the “contractors” for the required qualifications.

There are many other issues that I am far more concerned about than this. Namely the 16T in federal debt they are passing on to my children.

Sigh indeed. This is what happens when someone who just started paying attention looks at a federal budget. Something to add to volunbeer’s comments: federal agencies (and state and municipal government employees) routinely make what look like outrageous purchases for the simple reason that if they don’t spend the money in their budget toward the end of the fiscal year, it gets “swept,” that is, taken back. So they stock up on things they think they will eventually need anyway in the unlikely event that they receive LESS money in next year’s budget. The federal fiscal year ends September 30. Go figure.

We can fairly question the need for some of these departments to have SWAT teams and I certainly do. However, that is a seperate issue from ammo purchasing via long term contracts.

If the government creates more and more swat teams, such as used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and many other agencies, would they not demand more ammunition?

Did ya happen to notice government has now armed simple park rangers all over the country? Or the fact they have created armed divisions within all types of government departments?

How about the hundreds of billions spent on turning city, state and federal buildings into armed fortresses complete with every kind of security measure known?

Even going into many courts nowadays they appear as high security prisons, with armed guards, scanners, dogs, metal detectors, CCTV cameras everywhere etc.

In addition, why do so many smaller rural type towns nowadays have their own swat teams?

What is all this for?

I beg to differ on several fronts. You don’t need hollow points for practice or qualification and would save hundreds of millions by buying standard FMJ rounds for practice. For those with little or no experience in firearms and practice/qualification procedures, you take the hollow points out of the magazines that are used daily and replace with FMJ practice/qualification rounds. When you are done practicing/qualifying, you reload your hollow points back into your magazines. I’m sure if I can get 2nd Lts to follow and understand the practice, 3 out of 5 federal agents could probably figure it out ... the other 2 of 5, you’d probably have to do the unloading and loading yourself as they probably wouldn’t be familiar with weapons or ammo enough to trust them to do it safely. The number of rounds ordered is ridiculous. If they can’t qualify with 50 or so rounds with a pistol, they should be issued bricks instead of pistols for their own safety or maybe assigned to desk jobs where scissors or staplers are not required. Additionally, I suspect that they don’t practice/qualify more than twice a year with most only once a year which again leads to why so much ammo.