Posted on 04/05/2013 6:42:29 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
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 ammunition in August 2012.
FACT: The DHS contract never stated 750 million rounds at any time. It is a five year contract with a maximum purchase of 70 million rounds over the life of the contract. Military Times recently addressed this issue as well.
MYTH: DHS purchased an unprecedented 450 million rounds of .40 S&W 180gr hollow point bullets in 2012.
FACT: This is a standard five year contract that follows a historical purchasing pattern of DHS. Furthermore, it is not an “unprecedented” purchase by DHS. In fact, it is not even a purchase by DHS but by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Starting in 2003, orders of 50 million and 225 million .40 S&W hollow point ammunition totaling 275 million rounds were purchased. After the expiration of the five year contracts in 2008, ICE purchased an additional 575 million rounds of .40 S&W hollow point ammunition with two separate orders (200 million and 375 million). Now, with the expiration of the 2008 contract, ICE has ordered a maximum of 450 million rounds over the next five years.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Now we only need Tom Stilson to explain DHS purchasing light armor vehicles myth.
What’s to explain? DHS didn’t purchase them, the Marines did.
But Big Sis said they bought them in bulk to save money.
It’s no myth that no one can get ammunition. Even Homeland Security. That fact demands an explanation. If our rulers fail to give us one don’t blame people for trying to come up with one themselves.
Because DHS is flush with the dole but marines don't?
Maybe you misunderstood me. DHS did not buy the MRAPs, the Marines did. I’m not talking about the ammunition.
FACT: The government purchases large quantities of ammunition in ID/IQ (Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity) orders, only guaranteeing to purchase as little as 1,000 or 100,000 rounds per year. The large orders lock in rates in the event ammunition prices increase as they have in recent years.
Isn't ICE a part of DHS?
Two interesting points in the article:
1. The government has bought .22lr....I’m really curious as to why.
2. The government buys hollow points by the million, and as the article points out several times, 99% of this ammo is for training. I don’t train with hollow point, since I can’t afford it. Why does the government think it can afford it?
The reason there's an ammunition shortage is that people are buying a lot of ammunition. It's very simple.
It's a self-perpetuating feedback loop. There was panic buying after Newtown, and once reports of shortages popped up, even more people panicked and went out to buy ammunition, leading to more shortages, more panic buying, and so on. The silly panic over DHS ammo purchases (but not the small purchases themselves) has increased the phenomenon even more.
For gun owners, the answer to "why is there an ammo shortage" can be found by looking in a mirror.
That’s one idea.
Page 19,999-Obamacare doesn’t cover “lead posioning!”
They are testing common rounds found by US gun owners against body armor.
Fed law enforcement has apparently trained with hollow point for a long time.
Don’t have the source handy but apparently once the purchases are in large enough quantities the price differential for hollow points gets a lot smaller.
One of the things contributing to the falsehoods and myths surrounding government ammo purchases is that for any conceivable Google search, the first several hundred results are now repeats of all the idiotic panic articles from the blogosphere instead of actual truthful information.
Why DHS? So far DHS has not come up with an answer.
"The agency also refused to answer questions posed by Congress on the procurement of the armored vehicles...."DHS lies to public; large movement of armored vehicles reported (Granted a few days old 'news').
Good luck with that. I tried a while back to show comparative orders under Bush and now and was shot down. The only thing that changed was going to 5 year contracts versus it was year by year. This does create a bottleneck with the suppliers but it isn’t the crazy, they are prepping for war on us stuff.
Who orchestrating the fear-mongering? What is their motive?
Seems to me these boys are concocting a conspiracy theory in order to puncture a conspiracy theory.
Concur, we are causing the ammo shortage. I have friends that talk about buying ammo like it is rare vintage wine. These same friends kept maybe a few boxes on hand a year ago.
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