I don't know. If true, it's very strange (and suspicious). If not true, well......
“(does NOAA even have any guns)”
Yes, in Fisheries Enforcement or some agency like that. Fed fishing cops on boats. The odd thing is that the purchase was made through the National Weather Service!
Bingo! And they certainly don’t need millions of rounds of bullets meant for overkill. Why not just buy tear gas and rubber bullets if worried about riots too? The whole thing reeks.
Yes, NOAA and other departments do have armed agents. Some gov’t agents do come in contact with highly agitated (read: felony-in-progress) people on a predictable basis, and just like you may wish to go about armed lest you be attacked, so would they. Most of these acronymed agencies are larger than we think, and include some odd “nowhere else to put ‘em” jobs, such as NOAA’s Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement. Given that being armed is reasonable, then so is practice which should entail something on the order of 2000 rounds per year per agent. In NOAA’s case, 46,000 rounds gets divvied up among 134 agents, making the total quite reasonable (if not paltry).
I’m concluding much of the purchases amounts to normal end-of-fiscial-year activities which we just now found out about.
It’s the rest of those purchases that raise an eyebrow...