Obama’s Department of Homeland Security is snapping up bullets at an alarming pace.
The Homeland Security Department wants to buy more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the next four or five years. It says it needs them — roughly the equivalent of five bullets for every person in the United States — for law enforcement agents in training and on duty.
Enough bullets for a 20 year war
The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice. It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month. Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years. In America.
1.6 billion bullets is about 5 rounds per US citizen.
DHS denied purchasing 1.6 billion rounds but….
Several lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee said they were surprised by the requisition and asked why DHS has been purchasing such large quantities of ammo for its 72,000 officers, most of who rarely discharge their weapons in the line of duty.
DHS allocates anywhere from 1,300 to 1,600 rounds of ammunition per officer, or around 1,000 more rounds than is used by the average Army officer. Lawmakers called this excessive and unneeded, particularly as average American citizens face widespread ammunition shortages.
DHS officers “used what seems to be an exorbitant amount of ammo,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), chairman of the House’s Subcommittee on National Security. “The federal government’s massive procurement of ammunition” is troubling.
You see, they’re saving us money.
Federal solicitations to buy the bullets are known as “strategic sourcing contracts,” which help the government get a low price for a big purchase, says Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga . The training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises.
Or maybe they know that ammunition is about to get vastly more expensive. And rare.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not content to infringe on property rights; recent actions taken against the country’s last lead smelting facility will affect the right to keep and bear arms, as well, by substantially impacting the production of ammunition. As of December 31, 2013, the lead refining plant will close for good.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:
About 145 employees of the Doe Run lead smelter [in Herculaneum, Missouri] learned they will lose their jobs at the end of December because of the plant’s closure, the Doe Run Co. said Wednesday. An additional 73 contractor jobs also will be eliminated.
The job cuts were expected. The plant, which has operated for more than a century and is the lone remaining lead smelter in the United States, announced in 2010 that it will cease operations at the end of this year.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the company “made a business decision” to shut down the smelter instead of installing pollution control technologies needed to reduce sulfur dioxide and lead emissions as required by the Clean Air Act.
The EPA is doing the dirty work for Obama in an end around of the Constitution:
In a document published on its website, the EPA explains that in order for Doe Run to continue its operations, the company would have to agree to pay “$65 million to correct violations of several environmental laws at 10 of its lead mining, milling and smelting facilities in southeast Missouri. The settlement also requires the company to pay a $7 million civil penalty.”
The EPA made them an offer they can’t refuse. And it gets worse. Remember Kerry signing that United Nations Arms Treaty?
Article 3 of that agreement outlaws the buying, selling, trading, or transferring by civilians of all “ammunition/munitions fired, launched or delivered by the conventional arms.”
So who else is party to the Treaty?
Two of the countries from which the United States will now be importing lead are Peru and Australia — two members of the 13-nation bloc participating in the TPP.
So they are shutting down manufacture of ammunition here in the US, and trying to ban the import of ammunition from abroad.
That leaves only China as a potential source of ammunition but Obama is leaning on them now as well:
In Novermber 2011, President Obama tipped his hand in this high-stakes game of trade talks when he told Chinese media, “Now, if China says, we want to consult with you about being part of this [the TPP] as well, we welcome that.”
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
You can keep your arms but all we’re going to be able to do with them is batter targets. DHS will have all the ammunition.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
“How will the closure of the lead smelting plant affect Sierra Bullets?
Sierra Responds: How Will the Closure of the Lead Smelting Plant Affect Sierra Bullets?
In other words, Obama is raising the price of CAR BATTERIES, not affecting the creation of bullets.
There’s also the fact that this particular contract is an option to buy, not a contract for bullets. It obligates the contractor to maintain the capability to obtain or manufacture that many rounds over the next five years, it does not obligate the Federal Government to buy them. You can see actual bullet purchases (as vs. the option) at the GSA’s contracts search web site at http://www.fpds.gov . The biggest contract for bullets under 30mm by someone other than the military that I see there is in 2011, HSCEMS11J00012 for $3,487,503.12 by ICE (Immigration Control and Enforcement) Which is interesting, but not unusually large. The next largest contract is a similar-sized one ( HSCEOP06D00009 ) in 2010 for ICE. Seems like pretty much their standard number of rounds to buy, except they haven’t bought much in 2012 and 2013. Next up is contract
PDS01199005CA016055JFBI90017 which is $3,130,000 of bullets for the FBI under a contract originally issued in *1990*. I guess President George H.W. Bush was part of the anti-gun conspiracy :).
If I felt further motivated I could use that GSA contract database site to do a complete query, toss it into a spreadsheet, divide by the average price of bullets, and come up with an approximate number of bullets that the government is actually buying (as versus having an option to buy). But just eyeballing the data it’s quite clear that there’s no 1.6 billion rounds being purchased in any given year and the size of the contracts awarded seem similar to those in earlier Presidents’ tenure.
But wait, why should I go to the actual GSA data when I can repeat conspiracy theories that I heard over the water cooler (or on Alex Jones’s web site, same thing)? Why, actually looking at the data looks like WORK, heaven forbid! Sigh. So it goes.
@Badtux:
Actual GSA data? Is there even such a thing? You mean as in “You can keep your plan and your doctor”?
This entire regime is corrupt. I am not disabused.
@DrJohn:
You mean the GSA that is run by civil servants who were largely appointed by Republican Presidents and who cannot be fired or disciplined by Obama due to Civil Service rules? Really, do you know how crazy it sounds to say that a GSA largely run by Republicans has rigged its contracts database somehow to not report supposedly buying billions of rounds of ammunition? Or are you saying that Republicans are part of the conspiracy too?
Ok, Run the Query Yourself. Sheesh.
The government is not buying up reloading kits. Go to your local gun range and start collecting spent shells and (if they will let you once the range is closed) bullet remains and pack your own.
I’m not going to say this is FUD but…… more and more ammo in all calibers is becoming available. Prices are heading down. 5.56 was pushing $1.00/round is now .30/round for the Russian stuff and .40/round for PMC or some American stuff. This is a 20% drop in a month a pretty good sign that supplies are normalizing.
If these slime balls come and try anything like a gun registration, ban or a gun round up or worse one more false flag attack on a major U.S. city., a.k.a. ” banker funded domestic terrorism” “it’s only made to loo like Arabs gone wild.,”
got to have an underdog to whoop up on., and keeping your eye on the ball is done for you.
The time is now to start making key things happen., moving to higher ground and keeping the powder dry are just starters.,
making political persons know they are on thin ice and worse is also key.,
Nothing wakes up a slumbering giant like having a few fellow giants turning up in very poor circumstance!
They regularly discharge their weapons at the firing range to maintain an ability to meet proficiency standards. Do members of the House Oversight Committee believe they should be allocated one bullet, like Barney Fife, and not required to maintain their skill with firearms?
The 1.6 billion rounds figure for DHS is bogus to begin with.
Why is ammunition in short supply and so expensive? Try hoarding, resulting from the widespread promotion of rumors such as this one over the past five years. Such rumors have pushed the sale of guns and ammunition through the roof.
Frankly, I think what we have been seeing may be the creation of Obama’s “Civilian Corps as well armed and funded as the military.” Some assumed they would be regular civilians, however, that’s not how pro-gun control progressives would build such a corps, as they only want “law enforcement” to have weapons. The military is arming government law enforcement agencies all over the nation with military weapons systems and hardware, clearly with the blessing of Washington DC. Our 4th Amendment Freedoms have been slowly stripped away until they are virtually nonexistent. Look at the Federal government’s vast blanket espionage and data collection systems on the American people without the need of a traditional court order. Our Police have been turned into standing armies in every locality. Who can doubt that they already have mobilization orders on file, ready to be enacted to enforce martial law by Presidential Directive or Act of Congress. I propose that the freedom of the American people and our Constitution is possibly being set-up for a checkmate scenario. I wouldn’t put it past any of the President’s administration, (and certainly not AG Holder,) to keep pushing against conservative patriots in hopes of instigating Boston Massacre type events goading citizens into retaliatory actions, in order to justify a Nationwide Marshal Law crackdown. Most Marshal Law forces would then likely be ordered to go house to house and confiscate weapons (‘until such time the national emergency that required martial law has ended. AKA never.) Most likely “dissidents” such as TEA Party Members and all those potentially dangerous veterans would be rounded up and placed in internment camps. There would of course be a good many who “would not go peacefully” but the MSM will simply paint them as home-grown terrorists.
I hope that I’m wrong, but with this President’s complete disdain for the rule of law (The Constitution,) and considering the typically violent history of how Socialist regimes and other Dictatorships have taken power, I think that we should seriously consider the possible direction where this nation is being led and what the future may hold.
@Ditto:
The militarization of police forces long precedes Obama. I first saw people commenting on it back during the Clinton and Bush II administrations, it probably precedes even that but I had other priorities before the Clintonistas and Busheviks. But the thing about local police forces is a) they are locally controlled, and b) if the Federal Government tried to give them orders that they didn’t want to obey, they’d likely just ignore them. And no, that’s not hyperbole. I went to a music festival in San Francisco a few years ago. There was a lot of, uhm, *herbal* smoke in the air. There were people walking around selling brownies with a leaf on the label. The SFPD was out in force to make sure there was no mayhem. They utterly ignored the herbal remedies and herbally augmented brownies, they just stood at the back of the audience bopping to the music, despite federal orders to crack down on marijuana use in San Francisco. Their response: The audiences at this music festival were being mellow and not making trouble, so go away. It took several weeks of concerted propaganda before the Department of Homeland Security could convince local police forces to move in on those idiotic “Occupy Wall Street” protesters with tear gas and beanbag rounds. Nevermind actually *shoot* Americans.
So while annoying that the police have been militarized (since the military and police have fundamentally different purposes — police are for keeping the peace, the military is for breaking the peace with extreme prejudice when there’s folks overseas whose peace we want to be in pieces), I don’t see this as a centralized threat to American freedoms. I’m more concerned about the mercenaries. Blackwater may be gone after several name changes failed to remove the stigma from their name, but the mercenaries they hired, famed for killing civilians without second thought, are not. They’re still out there, working for someone. Often that someone is the Federal Government. Nobody signs up to be a police officer in America because they want to kill fellow Americans. Same deal with signing up for the US military, you sign up to kill other people overseas, not fellow Americans, and swear allegiance to the Constitution. But those mercenaries… a lot of them aren’t even American, and even those who are, a lot of them have sworn allegiance only to the dollar bill and will kill whoever the people paying them says to kill. Seeing Blackwater mercenaries prowling through New Orleans with M-16’s after the Federal Flood (what it’s called locally, when the federally designed and built levees failed because of fundamental flaws in the federal design) was chilling. It wasn’t legal for them to do that, brandishing weapons is illegal in Louisiana if you’re not law enforcement and you’re not in the woods hunting. They didn’t care. And neither the NOPD or Louisiana State Police had any power to do anything about that, because the Blackwater mercenaries were being protected by the Department of Homeland Security goons who had sealed off all routes into and out of New Orleans.
I view that as the prototype for how the Federals will treat anything they view as “domestic insurrection” in the future. Cut the power and phone and Internet, seal it off with DHS forces, then send in the mercenaries. And in the aftermath, the dead will be “disappeared” just as what happened in the aftermath of the Federal Flood, which killed tens of thousands of people, but officially only 1,464 people were killed. They didn’t even bother identifying hundreds of those that they officially admitted had been killed, they just bulldozed the bodies into a common grave and stuck a monument on top of it. That’s the future I see if someone really wants to do a number on America. Tiananmen Square would look like a square dance.
@Greg:
According to whom?
Spoken like an academic who has no idea what he’s talking about.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/12/01/Higher-Ammo-Prices-Anticipated-As-EPA-Regs-Close-Lead-Smelter
EPA to ban lead bullets – will end sportsman shooting
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/28/epa-agents-raid-ammunition-company-on-alleged-environmental-violations/
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/08/13/socal-senator-pushes-for-ammunition-buying-license/
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/topstories/article/301896/483/Anger-management-for-bullets
http://mediatrackers.org/2013/02/15/democrats-seek-to-ban-hunting-ammunition-in-wisconsin/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/28/california-lawmakers-weigh-first-statewide-ban-on-lead-ammo/?intcmp=trending
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57577379/connecticut-lawmakers-agree-on-tough-gun-control-bill/
@Greg:
So let’s go ahead and look at all the agencies that have recently purchased live ammunition purportedly for target practice.
The U.S. Postal Service
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Weather Service, which claims is a clerical error
The Social Security Administration
The Department of Education
The IRS
The Department of Homeland Security
Did I miss any?
We’re left to wonder if the officials from these agencies also are required to be willing to disarm and fire upon Americans.
@Kraken: All those agencies that you mention have law enforcement departments, such as the Postal Inspectors Office, which investigates postal workers and others stealing / defacing mail. Again, should each armed law enforcement officer be allocated one bullet, like Barney Fife?
I find it interesting that the folks who believe that the US government can’t do anything well suddenly believe that the US government could be somehow super-competent at imposing jack booted thug rule on America. I haven’t seen that level of competence in Federal operations for, like, forever. There are local pockets of competence. But they are pockets only, and if President Obama ordered them to impose jack booted thug rule, they’d ask for it in writing, they’d send back the order for revision because it was on form X Y Triple Dash Z rather than on form X Y Triple Dash A, they’d file objections with the Civil Service Board and Congress that the order was not in keeping with their Congressional charter, if their objections were overruled they’d convene a committee for investigating mechanisms for creating an implementation committee for execution of the order and said committee would meet once a month for the next five years coming up with a plan for creating an implementation committee for executing the order which in turn would take *another* five years to actually create the implementation plan which in turn would be passed up to the next higher level of the Executive Department for approval, in other words, it would *not* be a piece of cake. The bureaucracy’s prime objective is the preservation of the bureaucracy, and jack booted thug rule would not be in keeping with that, because then instead of cushy Civil Service jobs for life, they’d have to worry about jack boots showing up and taking them behind the truck barn and shooting them. It seems ironic that bureaucratic incompetence is one of the biggest impediments to jack booted thug rule in America, but when you think about it… would we really want it the other way around? Just sayin’.
@Kraken, #12:
Actually, spoken like a rational person who doesn’t automatically buy into every crackpot conspiracy theory that comes down the pike.
Now it all falls into place. Mailmen! They’re civilians. They wear uniforms! And they’ve been issued a fleet of little white vans, which will be used to pick up guns door-to-door when the Confiscation Proclamation is issued!
They’ll probably need more vans. More guns and ammunition have been sold to private owners over the past few years than at any time in recent memory. The truth is, paranoia about Barack Obama is probably the best thing that ever happened to the U.S. gun industry. They’ve probably been laughing all the way to the bank. People have got their guns, and the industry has got their money. So there’s one answer, at least, to the question about who conspiracy theories serve. Another answer would be right-wing politicians.
We can now add the Pentagon to this list.
http://allenbwest.com/2014/04/pentagon-destroy-1-billion-worth-ammo-makes-sense/
This is where Greg tells us how the destroyed ammunition is intended for target practice.
@Greg:
Well, let’s put this in terms that ou might be able to understand.
Can you tell me, what happens to illicit drugs when they’re outlawed and forced onto the black market?
CAPTCHA seems to be acting up again today.
The Department of Agriculture orders submachine guns with 30 round magazines, and ballistic body armor.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/05/14/Dept-Of-Agriculture-Orders-Submachine-Guns-With-30-Round-Magazines
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/05/15/Dept-of-Agriculture-Orders-Ballistic-Body-Armor
This is where the Collective tells us that this is all for target practice.
Gun sellers say ‘high risk’ label from feds cuts off banking options, restricts business
Another front on the war against the 2nd Amendment
All I have to say is” AGENDA 21…” United Nations….somebody needs to read it….it’s about as Real as it gets…it’s above Barack Obama
The real reason that ammunition is in short supply and prices have skyrocketed:
The NRA Reveals Who’s to Blame for Ammo Shortage