Posted on 02/18/2014 7:39:38 AM PST by Nachum
t turns out that the Department of Homeland Security isn’t buying that much ammunition per officer after all… and certainly a lot less per man than most avid shooters go through in a year.
Of course, I won’t ask you to take my word for it (the mind control rays could have gotten me, too), so I’ll turn it over to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which provides a link to the Government Accountability Office report for the debunking (PDF) (here’s the direct GAO
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) annual ammunition purchases have declined since fiscal year 2009 and are comparable in number to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) ammunition purchases. In fiscal year 2013, DHS purchased 84 million rounds of ammunition, which is less than DHS’s ammunition purchases over the past 5 fiscal years, as shown in the figure below. DHS component officials said the decline in ammunition purchases in fiscal year 2013 was primarily a result of budget constraints, which meant reducing the number of training classes, and drawing on their ammunition inventories. From fiscal years 2008 through 2013, DHS purchased an average of 109 million rounds of ammunition for training, qualification, and operational needs, according to DHS data. DHS’s ammunition purchases over the 6-year period equates to an average of 1,200 rounds purchased per firearm-carrying agent or officer per year. Over the past 3 fiscal years (2011-2013), DHS purchased an average of 1,000 rounds per firearm-carrying agent or officer and selected DOJ components purchased 1,300 rounds per firearm-carrying agent or officer.
DHS ammunition purchases are driven primarily by firearm training and qualification requirements. Most DHS firearm-carrying personnel are required to qualify four times per year, though requirements vary by component, as do the number of rounds of ammunition typically used for training and qualification.
(Excerpt) Read more at bearingarms.com ...
Excuse me but how do I know that GAO, DHS, DOJ... are not lying?
“Drawing on ammunition inventories”....?
No mention of just how large those stockpiles are.
Excuse me? You know that they are!
When I snap my fingers, you will awaken relaxed, refreshed and not remember any of this. 3, 2, 1, snap!
Department of Homeland Security. Creepy Nazi name. Twice the budget of the USMC and the same manpower. Didn’t exist in 2000.
What are you talking about? They would NEVER lie to us. Where would you get such a notion??!!
Yeah! Bob and DHS bought up all the .22 LR! Thats it! Thats why I can’t find any .22! I can find .223 5.56 .45 and 9mm but its that darn high powered sniper tactical .22 LR!
Well and all of us who shoot know that you always train with frangible rounds. Sarc
bump
Unfortunately people got hysterical based on the initial information and the quantities listed.
Some cooler heads tried to explain that the quantities being touted as DHS “purchases” were actually contract ceiling quantities which often are far, far, far higher than what an agency will actually ever buy. Government knows this and the private sector knows this.
Unfortunately this story like the one about FEMA buying up every MRE in the US, caught on with alot of conspiratorial thinking folks. Both stories were BS.
No, Bob may be buying some but the majority of the rest is being purchased and hoarded by kooks that believe some of the outlandish internet rumors. No amount of truth will set them free.
Center fire ammo is now readily available in most areas while rimfire ammo shelves are swept clean each day, early in the morning by the same kind of folks that have already started to post on your thread. Lets hope they keep it up. It is very good for the economy and especially the ammo manufacturers and the middle-men in the distribution chain. They are laughing all the way to the bank.
I haven’t been able to locate a brick of .22’s in Texas in eighteen months. Only a few scattered 50 packs.
They can keep laughing, but the tragedy is that the youth shooting and training organizations with which I am involved are running low on .22lr and cancelling events. This will be a 2-4 year break in youth who get to shoot during their formative years.
I tend to agree especially given the article that starts this thread but I’m still left wondering why are there ammo shortages? There are definitely shortages in my area, I know that for a fact. There may not be any hard numerical data to support this claim, but it’s almost like a situation of “who are you going to believe, the Govenrment and industry or your own lying eyes?”
So why is there a shortage of ammo? Anyone know this answer?
I read the American rifle piece and it’s BS.
I don’t want to write a whole article about why every single thing they say is illogical so lets just do one:
DHS is buying enough for every one of their employees to fir 1200 something rounds a year. I challenge you to find any police department that buys that much. Cops, or TSA, or “Social Security Police” for that matter are not “avid shooters” by in any means. They maintain a very basic qualification and it simply does not take 1200 rounds to maintain that level of proficiency. The article admits that the Army qualifies all their people in rifle marksmanship and CONDUCTS A WAR on about 300 per soldier.
OK one more. They break if out by department in the article and TSA (who doesn’t have any armed agents that I know of) uses exactly the SAME number of rounds, I don’t remember the number but it’s like 2 million or something per year for OPERATIONAL use. Exactly the same number every year and somehow the newspapers fail to mention TSA getting into HUGE firefights that burn giant but exactly predictable amounts of ammo every year. BS
Bottom line even if they really are using that much ammo and not just stockpiling it for whatever they have planned, the gestapo has gotten out of hand.
I would not be surprised if the ammunition shortages are at least partially due to difficulties in obtaining brass and copper at reasonable prices.
China has been buying up immense amounts of US scrap copper and brass for years. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also used up large quantities of raw materials.
It certainly isn’t the whole problem but I believe it is part of it.
Because civilian consumers started to buy more than their historical usage based upon all the internet rumors. That lead to a shortage which has fed upon itself. Then the hoarders got involved. They consisted of panicked sportsmen, would-be profiteers, doomsday kooks, anarchists and an assortment of low information folks.
You can't reason with the kooks. They only believe what they want to believe, regardless of the indisputable facts staring them in the face.
Nobody has yet coined a name for the ammo conspiracy kooks, but they operate just like the man-caused global warming hucksters. Pay them no attention.
For the record: The American ammunition industry is currently producing rimfire ammunition at an annual rate of 9.3 BILLION rounds! The government purchases of rimfire ammo is close to none.
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