Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

[NCR85]

http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/feds-buyi...r-24-year-war/

http://news.investors.com/politics-a...-purchases.htm

What's behind this? The data is hard to believe. It sounds disproportionate by any conceivable standard.


Here's one speculation: an attempt to boost GDP via military spending before the elections. We know military spending abruptly fell in the quarter after the elections were done.

[wayiwalk]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

Sometimes I think the things done by this administration are so dumb, or counter productive to the needs of the country, contrary to what you'd expect from the party that portrays itself as the dove party, etc, I mean, you can make a really long list here, that I think they are done just to make right wingers foam at the mouth, because they consider it is fun to do that and offers great distractions from larger issues.

PS - the other party's administrations are equally adept for getting the left wingers to FOAM.

[reggie]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

This is just non-military purchases?

Federal, non-military agencies, .... have purchased enough ammunition recently to not only shoot every American five times, but also engage in a prolonged, domestic war.

The numbers are based on recent reports that put the total federal ammunition buy in the last 10 months at approaching two billion rounds.

Fear is really being amp'd. I guess the propagandists have to keep the public Amygdala's in-play in order to punch-in the immense level of programming req'd. What an ugly ugly time we are living in.... makes Nazi Germany look like preschool.

[LorenS]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

I'm not sure this is a big deal.

Training takes a lot of bullets. In the Army we were given 20 just to sight in before qualification. A typical round of qualification would be something like 40 targets and you get two shots each. We did practice rounds before final qualification and we also had live fire at night and live fire in NBC gear (gas masks and protective suits). A live fire exercise is usually at least 40 rounds (2x 20 round magazines).

That was just Basic training for a clerk. Infantry guys shoot more.

I would expect a law enforcement officer to fire at least 1000 rounds per year for training. Unlike the military, law enforcement are likely to never shoot a round for keeps, but they still need to be trained for that unlikely event.

If the gov were planning something serious they would not necessarily need more ammo. I shoot 20 to 30 rounds at the range for every single bullet I shoot at an elk. If I was going to "slaughter" a bunch of elk I could just redeploy my training ammo, no change, just a different target.

If you want people to be proficient they need ammo to train. I shoot several hundred rounds per year and I don't shoot much.

Hollow point ammo feeds differently than FMJ, it has a different ballistic coefficient and can have a different point of impact. You can train with FMJ most of the time, but you need to sight in and qualify with what you're going to be carrying.

It's also possible that due to the "shortage" there is significant overbooking going on.

You can see places online that sell surplus ammo. A lot of it is packaged for law enforcement (LE pays less than 1/2 typical WalMart prices). Obviously there are a lot of orders that get placed but never delivered.

There is also a big difference between an RFQ (request for quote) and a booked order, complete with payment authorization.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

“There are currently more than 70 different federal law enforcement agencies employing over 120,000 officers with arrest and firearms authority, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics data for 2008,” explained Knox in a recent WND column. “That’s an increase of nearly 30 percent between 2004 and 2008. If the trends have continued upward at a relatively steady rate, that would put the total number of federal law enforcement officers at somewhere between 135,000 and 145,000.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/feds-buyi...5fgQyGipTwB.99

So cops are up 30% even while the crime rate is down. That's Obamas (oops, Bush!) solution to unemployment.

Too bad you can't go long on bureaucracy and law enforcement.

[c1ue]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

Maybe they're just responding to the real data coming from the War on Terrah:

http://jonathanturley.org/2011/01/10...urgent-killed/

If you need 250000 bullets per insurgent killed, no wonder they're buying so many. That might just be for a handful of 'postal' incidents.

/sarc

[reggie]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

I'm not sure this is a big deal.

Training takes a lot of bullets. In the Army we were given 20 just to sight in before qualification. A typical round of qualification would be something like 40 targets and you get two shots each. We did practice rounds before final qualification and we also had live fire at night and live fire in NBC gear (gas masks and protective suits). A live fire exercise is usually at least 40 rounds (2x 20 round magazines).

That was just Basic training for a clerk. Infantry guys shoot more.

I would expect a law enforcement officer to fire at least 1000 rounds per year for training. Unlike the military, law enforcement are likely to never shoot a round for keeps, but they still need to be trained for that unlikely event.

If the gov were planning something serious they would not necessarily need more ammo. I shoot 20 to 30 rounds at the range for every single bullet I shoot at an elk. If I was going to "slaughter" a bunch of elk I could just redeploy my training ammo, no change, just a different target.

If you want people to be proficient they need ammo to train. I shoot several hundred rounds per year and I don't shoot much.

Hollow point ammo feeds differently than FMJ, it has a different ballistic coefficient and can have a different point of impact. You can train with FMJ most of the time, but you need to sight in and qualify with what you're going to be carrying.

It's also possible that due to the "shortage" there is significant overbooking going on.

You can see places online that sell surplus ammo. A lot of it is packaged for law enforcement (LE pays less than 1/2 typical WalMart prices). Obviously there are a lot of orders that get placed but never delivered.

There is also a big difference between an RFQ (request for quote) and a booked order, complete with payment authorization.

The purpose of the media article and the purpose of the ammo are not necessariliy connected and can be analyzed separately. Which topic are we discussing here?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

I'm not sure this is a big deal.

Training takes a lot of bullets. In the Army we were given 20 just to sight in before qualification. A typical round of qualification would be something like 40 targets and you get two shots each. We did practice rounds before final qualification and we also had live fire at night and live fire in NBC gear (gas masks and protective suits). A live fire exercise is usually at least 40 rounds (2x 20 round magazines).

That was just Basic training for a clerk. Infantry guys shoot more.

I would expect a law enforcement officer to fire at least 1000 rounds per year for training. Unlike the military, law enforcement are likely to never shoot a round for keeps, but they still need to be trained for that unlikely event.

If the gov were planning something serious they would not necessarily need more ammo. I shoot 20 to 30 rounds at the range for every single bullet I shoot at an elk. If I was going to "slaughter" a bunch of elk I could just redeploy my training ammo, no change, just a different target.

If you want people to be proficient they need ammo to train. I shoot several hundred rounds per year and I don't shoot much.

Hollow point ammo feeds differently than FMJ, it has a different ballistic coefficient and can have a different point of impact. You can train with FMJ most of the time, but you need to sight in and qualify with what you're going to be carrying.

It's also possible that due to the "shortage" there is significant overbooking going on.

You can see places online that sell surplus ammo. A lot of it is packaged for law enforcement (LE pays less than 1/2 typical WalMart prices). Obviously there are a lot of orders that get placed but never delivered.

There is also a big difference between an RFQ (request for quote) and a booked order, complete with payment authorization.

Thanks for those insights, LorenS.
Another factor might be good old fashioned insider graft - congress critters pushing extra ammo purchases to benefit trade groups that gave them good campaign contributions.

[aaron]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

Or, they know the currency is going to be trashed soon and need to stock up. Hyperinflation will result in a messed up supply chain. The military and law force need to be maintained, no matter what circumstances are coming. I have some gold and food stocked up. Heck, I even have 900 rounds that I meant to use for practice. It is perfectly rational to make sure you have ammo. Katrina and the LA riots demonstrated that, no?

Our country has also "saved up" a huge supply of food. With one executive order, all that corn we put into our cars can be used for international trade and domestic consumption.

We will need lots of fuel as well if we are unable to import enough. Well, we are frackin' digging like crazy for gas and oil all using borrowed, imaginary money. When capital is gone for new wells, at the least the old wells will be producing for some time.

The government and gurus have all said borrow as much as you can and buy a house. We all blame the government/banks for the problems. Well, we have a lot of houses now, and we may just need them if there is no capital to build new ones for years.

Bubbles in fiber & Internet. Bubbles in housing. Bubbles in oil and gas exploration. Bubbles in agriculture. And, now the greatest bubble of all is blowing up... Healthcare.

Food, shelter, medical care, energy. If you knew the shit was going to hit the fan, would you not direct policy to those items? Imagine if all debts were extinguished? We will still have what we will need to survive.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/feds-buyi...r-24-year-war/

http://news.investors.com/politics-a...-purchases.htm

What's behind this? The data is hard to believe. It sounds disproportionate by any conceivable standard.


Here's one speculation: an attempt to boost GDP via military spending before the elections. We know military spending abruptly fell in the quarter after the elections were done.

I remember when a similar story came out last April.

It turns out it was overblown. Apparently, back in April 2012, the press release came from the ammunition manufacturing company on a stock trading site. They got a contract with Homeland Security's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE - the guys who do boarder security) to sell ammunition for the standard .40 cal p229 sig sidearm that they carry.

The contract was a one year contract with a maximum renewal period of five years. It capped total deliveries over 5 years at 450 million units, but does not specify that 450 million bullets have to be bought. There are 15,000 ICE agents.


So, if you take the highest end estimate and say they'll buy 90 million bullets per year then that leaves 6,000 bullets per agent per year. If each agent goest to target practice twice per week, that's 60 bullets per target practice. Which is high, but not too unreasonable.


So there you have it. They probably will never actually buy 450,000,000 anyways. The press release was just a way for the ammo manufacturer to puff up its stock price. And it didn't even work, as I recall.

That's how these stories and figures get started, though. Put out a release adding up all of the top cap numbers in a multi-year contract to try and puff up your stock performance, and get all of the investor sites to talk about it, which drives the conspiracy traffic to the investor site and puffs up advertising revenue, all the while hoping a few will buy shares in the ammo manufacturer.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

So cops are up 30% even while the crime rate is down. That's Obamas solution to unemployment.

Too bad you can't go long on bureaucracy and law enforcement.

Obama wasn't the President in 2008.

“There are currently more than 70 different federal law enforcement agencies employing over 120,000 officers with arrest and firearms authority, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics data for 2008,” explained Knox in a recent WND column. “That’s an increase of nearly 30 percent between 2004 and 2008.

[flintlock]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

Some say this is nothing more than the Obama administrations attempt at going around Congress on gun control. No bullets will eventually put a damper on gun sales. My guess is speculators have bought up everything they can get their hands on and that combined with massive govt purchases, means ammo is in short supply. You can still buy it, just expect to pay a lot more, and not through the usual channels.

[lektrode]

Re: Feds buying enough bullets for '24-year war'

since the heavyweights are putting in on these conspiracies, figger its time for the lightweight POV....
;)

Or, they know the currency is going to be trashed soon and need to stock up. Hyperinflation will result in a messed up supply chain. The military and law force need to be maintained, no matter what circumstances are coming. ...
.......
Bubbles in fiber & Internet. Bubbles in housing. Bubbles in oil and gas exploration. Bubbles in agriculture. And, now the greatest bubble of all is blowing up... Healthcare.

Food, shelter, medical care, energy. If you knew the shit was going to hit the fan, would you not direct policy to those items? Imagine if all debts were extinguished? We will still have what we will need to survive.

and dont forget the biggest bubble, overall, of them all:
the .gov bubble... thats been pumped-up to unprecedented proportions over the past 4-5 years, in particular.
i mean hell, they cant cut even 3% of it without it being a DISASTER (for all the usual suspects... uhhh.. i mean programs)
and what better way to pump the military-industrial complex - esp when you've just 'ended the wars' - than to fill the bullet boxes of every agency other than DOD - seems to me that kills a couple birds, while at same time allows the admin to crow about 're-ordering priorities'

I remember when a similar story came out last April.

....
So there you have it. They probably will never actually buy 450,000,000 anyways. The press release was just a way for the ammo manufacturer to puff up its stock price. And it didn't even work, as I recall.

That's how these stories and figures get started, though. Put out a release adding up all of the top cap numbers in a multi-year contract to try and puff up your stock performance, and get all of the investor sites to talk about it, which drives the conspiracy traffic to the investor site and puffs up advertising revenue, all the while hoping a few will buy shares in the ammo manufacturer.

methinks dc hits the bullseye dead center on this angle too

since this all adds to GDP dont forget, and well... what good is a 'recovery' without that, anyway?
but its gonna take a heluva lot more than bullets to reach escape velocity on the output gap, so still waiting on signs of intelligent life from the beltway - altho we're seeing plenty of heat, all of a sudden - too bad there aint much light...

Some say this is nothing more than the Obama administrations attempt at going around Congress on gun control. No bullets will eventually put a damper on gun sales. My guess is speculators have bought up everything they can get their hands on and that combined with massive govt purchases, means ammo is in short supply. You can still buy it, just expect to pay a lot more, and not through the usual channels.

well allrighty then: the conspiracy theory du jour!
;)
but ya know what they say: nothing cures high prices, like high prices.
methinks there'll be a bumper crop of bullets by next year at this time, and cheaper than ever (short of hyperinflation)
as all the mfr's over-produce, slash at each others profit margins in the ultimate race to the bottom and the inevitable drop out of the marginal players and TA DA!!!
the big/profitable concerns will gobble up the weaker ones: full circle, just like usual...