Washington still sucking up ammo supplies

The federal government drew the ire of Congress for sucking up ammunition supplies so fast that citizens and even police forces have been unable to meet their own needs.

Lawmakers looked into legislation to force the feds to back off, but apparently nothing has been done.

The latest agency to buy massive amounts of ammunition is the Transportation Security Administration, which doesn't even arm most of its agents.

The FedBizOpps.gov website reports that the TSA is seeking to purchase nearly 3.5 million rounds of .347 SIG caliber training ammunition. Weapons experts told WND the .347 is an unknown caliber, and the document likely contained a mistake, instead intending to reference a .357 caliber.

The agency's workers mostly are unarmed, with the primary exception being the federal air marshals who travel aboard airliners to deter and respond to violence, hijackings and terrorism.

There are no firm numbers available on the number of agents, but experts estimate there are several thousand. The planned purchase, then, would give the agency the availability of nearly 10,000 rounds per day for "training."

TSA officials declined to respond to a WND request for more information.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitan0 admitted in April that the federal government was drying up ammunition supplies.

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She was asked by a House panel about the huge government purchases, estimated to be in the range of 1.6 billion rounds, enough for many years of war at the rate ammunition is used by the U.S. military.

Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., wanted to know whether the reports were accurate.

"This was a five-year strategic sourcing contract for up to one-point-whatever billion rounds," she confirmed.

Calculations done by the Washington Examiner suggest the reported 1.6 billion rounds would be enough for "something like a 24-year supply of ammunition on hand."

Other consumers of ammunition, however, from the weekend hunter to police departments, are finding the shelves bare.

For example, Utica, N.Y., police have been told it could take up to 10 months to get the ammunition they order. The department especially is having trouble getting .223 and .45 caliber rounds, the type that the federal government also orders.

In Mobile, Ala., Nick Sagler said, "You can't find what you need."

And Jeremy Windle called it an "extreme shortage."

Ronica Williams, at the Greater Gulf State Fairgrounds gun show, said all of the ordinary supplies are back-ordered "six months or better."

In Boca Raton, Fla., the problem is just as bad.

"Right now ammo's pretty hard to get. People bought everything that was to be bought, They've completely cleaned out the supply chain," said a gunsmith.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., believes the purchase orders by the Department of Homeland Security are part of an "intentional" effort by the Obama administration to "dry up the market" for gun-owning citizens.

"We have in this country the Second Amendment that preserves the right to keep and bear arms," Inhofe told radio host Aaron Klein, "and the president doesn't believe in that."

Inhofe was a guest on "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on New York City's WABC, talking about his Ammunition Management for More Obtainability – or AMMO – bill, which is designed to limit non-defense, armed federal agencies to pre-Obama levels of ammunition. The bill, S.843, has been referred to Senate committee, while a similar bill sponsored by Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., has been referred to House committee.

"President Obama has been doing everything he could to stop the private ownership of guns in America," Inhofe asserted. "Yet he's been voted down in a big way by a large majority, and so my feeling is that he's doing this to buy up [ammunition] so honest, law-abiding citizens here in the United States, like my son, can't even buy ammunition because government is purchasing so much."

The DHS has claimed it's placing bulk orders to save money and that 80 percent of the ammunition is used for training purposes, but Inhofe isn't buying the explanation.

"We had someone testify the other day the DHS has the 'right' – this is a bureaucrat who said this – they have the 'right' to buy as much as they want, and they're planning to buy 750 million rounds," Inhofe said. "That is more than three times the amount our soldiers are using for training to defend our nation."

"I believe it's intentional," Inhofe said of the ammunition shortages many private and local law enforcement purchasers are experiencing. "It's just another effort to restrict gun activity and ownership."

The Inhofe interview:

The government has explained that to qualify to fly armed, the person must be a law enforcement officer, have a reason or need for the weapon, and be qualified by position and training.

"The officer must need to have the weapon accessible from the time he or she would otherwise check the weapon until the time it would be claimed after deplaning. The need to have the weapon accessible must be determined by the employing agency, department, or service and be based on [several factors]."

The factors include the need to provide protection, the need to arrive "prepared for duty" or to have control of a prisoner.

The purchase plan describes the products only as "TSA Training Ammunition."

Paul Joseph Watson, who repeatedly has documented such purchases at Infowars.com, noted the TSA announced last month it wanted to rent a firing range near LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

"Significant bullet purchases by the TSA are likely to fuel concerns that the federal government is arming itself to the teeth in preparation for some form of domestic unrest or other catastrophe, following the Department of Homeland Security's commitment to purchase more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the course of the last 18 months," he reported.

He noted it also could signal a huge expansion of the agency's Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response program, which essentially is TSA agents confronting travelers at bus stations, ferry ports, car tunnels, subways, rest areas and other locations and demanding they be patted down.

In Catoosa, Okla., law enforcement agencies have reported paying a lot more for ammunition. In some locations, police departments have requested help from residents with ammo supplies, because their own sources have run out.

WND's reports also have included plans by the FBI to spend up to $100 million over five years on millions of rounds for its machine guns and pistols.

According to a solicitation revised and released March 25 that WND discovered during routine database research, the FBI is gathering the ammunition "to be carried and fired [by FBI Special Agents] in defense of life" as well as for training purposes.

The ammunition includes a combination of field-ready Glock 9mm rounds as well as reduced-lead training ammo. Weapons listed in the Statement of Work, or SOW, are Glock Model 17, Glock Model 19, Glock Model 26, SIG Sauer P226, SIG Sauer P228, Heckler and Koch MP5 9mm submachine gun (K, A2, A3, SF and SD versions).

Among the federal plans:

Although DHS has not yet awarded contracts in that proposed CBP acquisition, late last year it revealed its intention to buy 250 million rounds of Smith & Wesson .40 ammunition over the life of a five-year contract.
DHS separately issued a revised solicitation to buy a combination of 100,000 handgun and rifle rounds destined for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, or FLTC, in Artesia, N.M. It did not disclose the estimated cost.
The department also additionally released another amended procurement notice for 360,000 rounds of jacketed hollow-point .40 caliber training ammo also destined for the Artseia FLTC.
InfoWars.com reported on the initial release of that particular procurement earlier.
Although the estimated cost of the solicitation, likewise, has not been disclosed, DHS recently awarded a $49,000 contract to Grace Ammo LLC for a similar batch of ammo for the Artesia facility.
DHS in January purchased an additional 200,000 rounds of jacketed hollow-point .40 caliber rounds. It awarded a $46,000 contract to Evian Group Inc. in that instance.

The developments appear to coincide with the goals of Democratic strategists.

Their 80-page document, titled "Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging," urges gun-control advocates use images of frightening-looking guns and shooting scenes to make their point.

"The most powerful time to communicate is when concern and emotions are running at their peak," the guide insists. "The debate over gun violence in America is periodically punctuated by high-profile gun violence incidents including Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, the Trayvon Martin killing, Aurora and Oak Creek. When an incident such as these attracts sustained media attention, it creates a unique climate for our communications efforts."

The manual offers a step-by-step guide on how to stir up sympathy for victims, arrest the "moral authority" from opposing groups like the National Rifle Association and keep the debate emotional instead of allowing facts to interfere.

"Essentially it's a how-to book on inciting a moral panic," comments James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal.

The guidebook, discovered by the Second Amendment Foundation and reported by Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner, was prepared by four strategists, including Al Quinlan of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, which touts it is "committed to progressive goals" and includes among its clients the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, among dozens of other left-leaning organizations.

But at least some of the gun restriction strategies already have backfired. In Colorado, where majority Democrats pushed through this year a multitude of new gun laws and limits, found a community organization could no longer do gun buybacks in which owners turn over weapons to local activists who then destroy them.

That's because of the new law requiring a background check for every individual purchase, every weapon, every time. Officials said it was impossible to set it up so that background checks could be done on the agencies for each weapon that is purchased, so the sale would not be legal.

It was in June when DHS plans to buy rounds were targeted by Congress. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said there are questions about the purchase plans that need to be answered.

And in May, Proctor, Minn., police chief Walter Wobig said he was asking his residents to help supply ammunition, because the town's supplier had informed him it would be months before his order could be filled.

The attack on gun rights and ammunition supplies under the Obama administration has prompted resistance.

WND reported on a video dramatization that was created to demonstrate in shocking, living color one reason gun-rights advocates resist bans on high-capacity magazines for firearms: Armed thugs don't always attack alone.

The video by MB Studio Productions depicts a startling but believable scenario in which armed thieves target a house when the family is at home. The family calls 911 and the father quickly retrieves his pistol from a gun safe. But after fending off the first armed intruder, the father stands horrified after pulling the trigger on a gun now empty of bullets as the second intruder enters the home.

The dramatization's final scene is tragic, and the video concludes with the words, "Because your government decided how many rounds you need to protect your family."

The MB Studio Productions video can be seen below. (Editor's note: The following video contains violence and two instances of obscene language some viewers may find offensive):