Why Has The Department of Homeland Security Ordered 3x More Ammunition Than The Entire Iraq War?

I genuinely think that people need to examine the facts and the relativity to what is currently going on in the world. Many people believe that the U.S. government is encroaching on our right to own firearms. I do believe that there are powers to be that do indeed want this. However, they know that this is an uphill battle because the 2nd Amendment is a pretty direct piece of law. Furthermore, courts across America including the Supreme Court have ruled that guns are individual rights, they have even explicitly stated that the AR-15 is a viable firearm to be used for defense.

So because it is an uphill battle the politicians know that they must take back doors to curb firearms in America. So instead of amending the Constitution, they simply limit the effectiveness of a firearm by reducing the pool of weapons, restrict the people allowed to own firearms, restrict trade, and make ammunition scarce.

President Obama has already signed back-door Executive Orders to limit some of these things. He wants to create a better database to limit the firearms to the mentally unstable. While this sounds like a noble gesture, I question it’s effect. The Department of Homeland Security has put out at least two memos stating that military veterans are high on the suspect list for domestic terrorism. They have also said that people who strongly disagree with the government or have bought bulk ammunition are also high on the list of possible suspects of domestic terrorism. To me if you already have those definitions all it takes is a hop and a skip for you to say “hey, you can’t buy this gun until you go get a health check” to which I go in and am validated to be sane due to my military experience and my feelings of suspicion against my government. It is real easy for this paper-jockey to deem me unstable and thus take away my right to own a firearm. If they want to take away my right then do it the right way – do it in court.

They also want to limit the option of a person-to-person sale. This also seems problematic to me because this too is a hop and skip away from them controlling who gets what. Let’s say that I want to pass a firearm down to my son. With this rule I may be banned from passing a firearm down to which the firearm would die with me and then be turned over to the state (probably to be destroyed).

What is most concerning to me, and anyone that has recently been to a place that sells ammunition will also know this, that ammunition is scarce. I never thought I’d see it, but even 22LR is nowhere to be found. If one cannot obtain ammunition for their firearm then their firearm is useless and irrelevant. What if the U.S. government knows they cannot take the guns so they are simply taking the ammunition in a perfectly legal way by simply buying the ammunition before we can?

The way the market works is that of supply and demand. If one buys then that item is removed from the shelf and nobody else can buy it. In this case the Department of Homeland Security is buying a lot of ammunition right off the top so that it never hits the shelf for normal citizens to purchase. The ammunition manufacturers more than likely are just going to fulfil orders to whoever puts up the most money, which in this case is the government because their order is massive. The DHS has purchased 1.6 billion rounds in the last year. Other government agencies also have purchased ammunition as well, albeit not as much. An additional 21.6 million rounds have also recently been requested.

As InfoWars points out here, “To put that in perspective, during the height of active battle operations in Iraq, US soldiers used 5.5 million rounds of ammunition a month. Extrapolating the figures, the DHS has purchased enough bullets over the last 10 months to wage a full scale war for almost 30 years.” Another way to look at these figures is that the Iraq war lasted from March 2003 until December 2011, which is 105 months. If each month the U.S. military used 5.5million rounds of ammunition then that means that over the 8 years and 9 months we used 577.5 million (0.577 billion) rounds. To use the DHS’ order of 1.6billon we’d have to have 3 Iraq wars going on. Sinking in yet?

And what is the DHS’ official reasoning for the influx of the bulk ammo? Two reasons it seems – (1) training and (2) they are expecting an ‘influx’ of immigrants.

I call bullshit on that for two reasons. First off much of the 1.6 billion rounds is hollow-point. For the most part everyone trains with ball ammo, not hollow-point. Hollow-point is used against soft targets because they expand and cause more carnal damage. Secondly, most training happens a few times a year. There is no way that they need that much ammunition to train with.

So I can only figure two things as to why they would purchase that much ammo. (1) The agency created to deal with threats within the borders is preparing for some sort of catalyclsmic event where they need to have plenty of ammunition for crowd control – they will use it against it’s own citizens. Or (2) they are buying ammunition to dry up the supply so that we cannot purchase the ammunition and thus make our firearms useless. Or (3) they are purchasing bulk ammo to accomplish both goals listed above.

I see no other reason.