GOP daddies:
Republicans want to limit the number of bullets federal agencies can purchase so American gun owners can buy more.
Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe and Rep. Frank Lucas have introduced a bill that would prohibit every government agency — except the military — from buying more ammunition each month, than the monthly average it purchased from 2001 to 2009.
The lawmakers say the Obama administration is buying up exceedingly high levels of ammunition in an attempt to limit the number of bullets the American public have access to on the open marketplace….
Sounds crazy, but once you get past the conventional wisdom of our hippie overlords, you will find that this is something to Republicans’ complaints.
Anyway, both sides do it, remember all the crazy thing anonymous Daily Kos commenters said about Bush?
Derelict
Yeah, we can’t have federal agents being able to protect themselves or other citizens.
On the other hand, I think it’s great that the gun nuts are spending such a huge chunk of their disposable income on tremendous stockpiles of ammo that they’ll never use.
lojasmo
Good lord.
OT: I lost ten pounds and now my pants fall off if I’m not wearing a belt. Literally, off.
ETA I gave my revolver away, and I now have about twenty pounds of .48 rounds in my basement.
BGinCHI
What are these asshats going to obsess about when HRC is President?
Availability of p@nis pumps?
dmsilev
Wait, shouldn’t the Free Market Fairy intervene by (a) causing the price of ammunition to increase due to unmatched supply and demand leading to (b) increases in production?
dmsilev
@BGinCHI:
Vince Foster.
Duh.
b-psycho
As if they’re not making more bullets or something.
Sayne
@lojasmo: 0.o What shoots a .48 Caliber round? I despise guns, but my family is all in to them, so I can’t escape the jargon.
cvstoner
The Republicans have seriously jumped the shark. I mean, like, seriously jumped the shark.
Rosalita
Like gun nuts don’t make their own bullets? bunch of loons
Omnes Omnibus
Obama will just have the DoD buy all the bullets. Amirite?
Also, isn’t it a bit early in the day for Skynyrd?
Jack the Second
Also, anyone surprised that the NRA is opposed to this legislation?
They would LOVE for the Federal government to get in on the one-sided bullets-and-guns arms race the paranoid right is currently engaged.
MikeJ
This sounds like the free market working perfectly.
Walker
Is there any evidence for this, or is this just the new Trutherism?
EconWatcher
OT, but Sandra Day O’Connor now thinks the Court probably shouldn’t have intervened in Bush v. Gore and kinda hurt its reputation by doing so.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/justice-oconnor-maybe-bush-v-gore-was-mistake?ref=fpa
Ya think?
owlbear1
..And Republicans still somehow manage to get pissed when you treat them like 5 year olds.
Amir Khalid
Wait. Doesn’t curtailing federal non-military ammo purchases to free up supply for private buyers assume that the ammo manufacturing sector is already operating at full capacity?
Mandalay
Not completely OT, here is a video of the police interviewing Michael Dunn, who is explaining why he shot eight times into an SUV full of black teenagers who were playing loud music. He’s pretty calm about the whole thing, but six months later he’s also still in jail, and charged with murder.
Also, too, I bet this is Dunn’s favorite movie scene
The Dangerman
Doesn’t this bill violate the 2nd Amendment?
Amir Khalid
@lojasmo:
Clearly, you need to shrink all your pants.
Omnes Omnibus
@EconWatcher: More than 12 years too late, Sandy. She and the others knew how awful it was at the time. Why else would they have issued a “non-precedential” per curium decision? That single decision did more damage to her personal reputation that anything else she ever did.
Thor Heyerdahl
I saw this this morning and realized that parts of America are like stepping into a time machine
Bridging the Divide: Wilcox County, Georgia High School Students Hold First Integrated Prom http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/04/bridging-the-divide-wilcox-county-high-school-students-hold-first-integrated-prom/
The white segregated prom organizers are the same as these dumb and corrupt as shit republicans (apologies to shit…which is actually useful as fertilizer)
Cassidy
@Walker: A google search comes up with Infowars and teatard sites.
@dmsilev: The free market has responded. Ammo is expensive as shit right now. They just don’t like free market solutions apparently.
gene108
@Derelict:
I do wonder, when these guys will realize they aren’t entirely connected to reality.
The Assault Weapons Ban passed and no one swooped in to confiscate their guns and ammo.
Obama got elected and no one swooped in to confiscate their guns and ammo.
Obama got re-elected and no one has swooped in to confiscate their guns and ammo.
At some point, upon careful reflection, they’d realize no one is going to outlaw gun ownership.
Also, too does it unnerve anyone else that a large segment of the most paranoid people, who have some issues with reality are also the most heavily armed?
Malraux
@Rosalita: even if you reload your own ammo, primers are in short supply. For much of Obama’s first term though, the shortage was related to the military buying war levels of ammo, plus every gun nut buying stockpiles of bullitts because “democrats are coming to take my guns”.
kc
It IS hard to find ammo these days, I’m told, due to wingnuts (such as one of my relatives) stockpiling mass quantities of it after Newtown.
NonyNony
@Walker:
This is a paranoid gun-nut idea that has been floating around for at least 4 years – early on it was that Obama was directing agencies to buy up ammo at ridiculous rates to make it impossible for “good citizens” to buy ammo / to prepare FEMA for its inevitable heel turn into the President’s personal Gestapo force. 2 years ago it became “the reason why ammo prices are so high is because …” the above.
Apparently it’s now reached the point where the thing that lives in Jim Infoe’s head that he calls a brain has feasted on this meme and he’s ready to act on it.
And no surprise – the NRA is suddenly scrambling to calm down the monster they created. Feeding paranoid gun-nut fantasies about the gubbmint taking away your guns is good for business, and can justify raising prices through the roof. But if it starts to cut in on those lucrative public contracts for guns and ammo that are the bread and butter of the gun business, the gun industry will replace the idiot who fumbled that ball faster than you can say “noted toady Wayne LaPierre”…
gene108
@Walker:
Just more gun-nut paranoia.
They made a run on ammo in October 2008, when it looked like Obama was going to win, because the voices on their internet, T.V. and radio told them he’d take away all their guns and ammo.
I think gun-nut paranoia is a kind of bi-polar type behavior, where they cycle into a manic phase every few months and have to buy up all the guns and ammo on the shelves because the crazy voices on their internets, T.V.’s and radios tell them to.
kerFuFFler
@Derelict: “On the other hand, I think it’s great that the gun nuts are spending such a huge chunk of their disposable income on tremendous stockpiles of ammo that they’ll never use.”
I worry that the stores of ammo will motivate them to find excuses to use it—–like that jackass who killed a guy who had pulled into the wrong driveway and was trying to leave, or that other asshole who shot up that car full of black teenagers.
I also think their families would be better off if they spent less on weaponry and more on dentistry and music lessons for their kids. (I am only referring to people who amass ridiculous arsenals, not a homeowner with a gun…)
Amir Khalid
@Cassidy:
What, precisely, is the free market responding to? A resurgent fear that Obama will do the thing he has pointedly not been threatening to do since he first became President i.e. confiscate all the guns? (It has occurred to me that bullets without guns to fire them from are not very dangerous.)
Ben Franklin
@kc:
Ammo shortages began in 2009, then OOS’s trended down and ammo was easier to find up until late 2011, when it began again. Even .22’s are almost impossible right now.
I just wonder how many bullets they riddled Jahar’s boat with. They apparently didn’t fear running low.
handsmile
DougJ:
Shouldn’t that be “Gimme back my bullets”? As for “Giv[ing] me back my….,” how ’bout this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv5Hj1MTW7o
(man, I love the B-52s. I forget this sometimes, and then when I’m reminded of the band – kapow!)
More topically, could even the Titan supercomputer solve the “Jim Inhofe: Evil or Stupid?” question?
NotMax
Another Drudge-induced fantasy.
Ben Franklin
Chris Rock on ‘bullet control’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZrFVtmRXrw
Chris
@NonyNony:
Yep. The NRA is a lobbying group for arms dealers, not gun nuts. Every now and then, the distinction makes a difference.
Cassidy
@Amir Khalid: Specifically, our paranoid gun nutters go through phases after every tragedy, election with more democrats, bowel movements, etc. in which they run out and buy guns, especially when whipped on by our various conservative pundits and the NRA. What the gun industry has done is that they don’t raise prices and keep them there. The real money in guns comes in used guns, accessories, and ammo. When it comes to guns, you can buy something brand new for $900 (random number) or a used one for $650, but ammo and accessories stay the same price. When the nutters make a run on ammo, the price of it skyrockets. eventually, prices come back down, people start shooting more, then the next boogieman happens and the cycle repeats.
The gun business is pretty smart. The nutters hate paying premium prices for their stuff and cooked up a conspiracy theory that the gov’t is creating an artifical shortage to deprive them of their god given right to own and stockpile weapons and ammo. The truth of it is they are as predictable as houseflies and the gun industry doesn’t manufacture a surplus. That’s bad for business.
tl;dr….the free market is responding to these idiots and their paranoid fantasies.
Mandalay
@The Dangerman:
More fundamentally, from a Republican perspective doesn’t it violate the free market?
gbear
I’m just surprised that we haven’t had any stories about house fires resulting in massive explosions due to arsenals stored in the basement.
As far as I’m concerned (and with apologies to legitimate hunters) any reason for a shortage of bullets is a good reason.
jon
During the Gulf War, it was the military buying too much, then the Iraq/Afghanistan wars had military and contractors buying too much, and now the military and police and Homeland Security (meaning the Border Patrol and many other agencies) are buying too much. Meanwhile, jobs are being kept in the bullet factories, investors have steady buyers, taxpayers get bulk rate purchase prices (the bullets aren’t all to be delivered at once, after all, so it’s also the bulk rate purchase prices of when the purchase was made,) and bullet factory owners can raise prices and blame the government. Everyone is better off but the bullet buyers the factory owners decided to screw because they want to ensure lots of profit (and not hire any more workers, naturally.)
Ben Franklin
@Amir Khalid:
(It has occurred to me that bullets without guns to fire them from are not very dangerous.)
Never been pistol-whipped, eh?
Omnes Omnibus
@handsmile:
Both, and.
Also too, I want neither fish nor candy this morning.
cvstoner
I always have to wonder what the nuts are stockpiling against. Do they really think they could hold their ground against a trained military unit, if things came to that?
Mandalay
@kc:
Well the DHS is certainly also playing a role:
The Republicans have wildly overplayed their hand, but they sorta have a point: why the fuck does the DHS need to be buying over 100 million bullets each year. (Unless it’s just to fuck with wingnuts).
weaselone
It’s sort of like a tax on the paranoid except the majority of the money is going to the guns and ammo industry. The combination of guns and paranoia is a lethal brew, but there’s a point which is reached fairly quickly where more guns and more bullets pose essentially no additional risk to the public. One nut with a semiautomatic rifle, a side arm and a few hundred rounds is a threat. An additional couple dozen rifles and a few hundred thousand rounds doesn’t up the threat that much unless there’s a fire involved.
We need to up the taxes on guns and ammo though. Think of all that sweet, sweet foregone tax revenue.
Ben Franklin
@Mandalay:
why the fuck does the DHS need to be buying over 100 million bullets each year.
Practice…..80% according to Nappy, goes to practice. Let’s see; 200,000 employees, and assuming every receptionist and bureaucrat is packin’, that’s…….you do the math.
Ben Franklin
@cvstoner:
Do they really think they could hold their ground against a trained military unit, if things came to that?
Hmm. Did you watch the Chris Dorner affair? Jahar in the boat? Law enforcement types want to go home at night, and any casualties interfere with that.
weaselone
@Mandalay:
Oh, I don’t know. Training, perhaps?
Cassidy
@cvstoner: Yes they do.
Seanly
@lojasmo:
.48? Are you shooting some 1820’s hand cannon or ancient musket balls?
Mandalay
@Ben Franklin:
I already did. DHS is buying over 100 million bullets a year, 80% are used for training, and 70,000 DHS employees carry guns.
So each DHS agent is using >1,100 bullets each year for training. I’m not a gun person; do you you need to fire >1,100 bullets a year to be properly trained?
As a semi-related issue, do we really need 70,000 people carrying guns for an organization that didn’t even exist prior to 2002?”
lojasmo
@Sayne:
.38. I’m an idiot.
Cassidy
@Mandalay: I don’t think they’re going to burn them up all in one year.
Yutsano
@Cassidy: They not only think this, most of them think it will be easy. It’s not like the US military doesn’t train all the damn time and drills certain action to the point of near instinct. Teh delusion is strong with them.
scav
Department of Homeland Security, yeah, why would the Border Patrol, Secret Service, Coast Guard and others of the Homeland securitizing bent need anything other than jelly beans in their bangy sticks. Clearly a a cunning plan by Inhofe and Lucas to keep the Border Porous!
Maude
OT
SCOTUS refused the Alabama immigration law. The block on the law stays.
jon
From what I was led to believe, there is also training provided for other agencies that coordinate their efforts with DHS: local police and sheriffs, tribal police agencies, and other groups that often have financial problems when they need to get some shooting training done.
I used to work for the Department of Corrections in my state, and many certification classes were postponed because there weren’t enough bullets to keep everyone’s weapons cards up to date. Not every officer in a prison carries a gun on a daily basis, but everyone should be able to do so on those rare occasions when it’s necessary. And when it’s hard to find an available officer who can accompany an inmate who needs to get to the hospital quickly… there are other concerns as well.
Ben Franklin
@Mandalay:
Cops are required to ‘qualify’ on the range from 2-4 x per year. A 50-round box each time?
roc
The government is also buying up all the paper and pens so that the citizens can’t get their hands on any! And all the staples! And all the healthcare!
Mandalay
@Cassidy:
But isn’t that exactly the point that the Republicans are making: that the DHS is stockpiling bullets?
These are the numbers:
Now if they really do need >1,100 bullets per gun carrying DHS employee for training then I guess it makes sense. Not that I give a shit about wingnut concerns, but otherwise I am all for asking Janet Mapolitano to explain why DHS needs to buy over 100 million bullets each year.
Mandalay
@Ben Franklin:
OK. So that would be ~200 bullets per year for ongoing training for a cop. So why do DHS employees with guns need >1,100 bullets per year for ongoing training?
Patricia Kayden
“Anyway, both sides do it, remember all the crazy thing anonymous Daily Kos commenters said about Bush?”
Was this meant to be a joke?
Omnes Omnibus
@Ben Franklin: In the army, qualifying with an M-16 required 40 rounds. That does not include practice. That does not include calibrating sights. That doesn’t include retries for those who fail.
Ben Franklin
@Mandalay:
If you can’t do anything about gunz, and you wanted to stem the massive incidence of gun violence, you might consider controlling ammo, wouldn’t you?
See Chris Rock video on 5-thousand dollar bullets.
catclub
2001-2009 hmmm, some golden age that must be used as the reference for all time.
Obama’s ICE has arrested and deported far more than were under the Bush misrule.
The border is far more secure than under said misrule.
Yet Imhofe wants to go back to the good old days of 2001-2009.
catclub
@Mandalay: “1,100 bullets per year for ongoing training?”
Have you ever fired a full-auto submachine gun? I haven’t. But sure could be fun to do it and be paid to do it as ‘training’.
Ben Franklin
@Mandalay:
So why do DHS employees with guns need >1,100 bullets per year for ongoing training?
They need lots of practice.
Seanly
@Cassidy:
NM my original post.
Wasn’t there a stink (ie, paranoid email chain) about the number of bullets that either the postal service or social security administration purchased? And when they laid out the numbers it didn’t sound so sinister?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Walker: Yes.
Mandalay
@Ben Franklin:
I certainly would. I guess I’m a bit slow.
Cassidy
@Mandalay: Well, I don’ think “stockpiling” is entirely accurate in the sense that gun nuts stockpile large amounts of ammo just in case they ahve to commit treason. So I guess I don’t consider short term storage the same, but that’s semantics.
Just thinking out loud, your applying an average per Agent/ Officer. I would imagine that everyone qualifies at least twice a year on their issued weapon. I beleive FAMs do it every quarter. The specuial response/ tactical teams probably do live fires training at least twice a year if not more, plus additional qualification on rifles, etc. Then you have the school training. FAM Candidates burn through lots of ammo at FLETC. I can see it happenning.
Anecdotally, the Ranger battalions fired off more ammo in one year than the rest of the Army combined. It’s easy to burn ammo.
Ben Franklin
@Cassidy:
It’s easy to burn ammo.
Don’t I know it, especially if it had no cost to me.
Cassidy
@Seanly: I honestly don’t know, but that would make sense to me. And yeah, the SSA has approx. 70 armed LEO’s, I recall anyway, and they’ve been outfitted with hollow-point bullets and blah, blah, blah, why do they need them, FMJ is cheaper, etc.
It’s all part of the same conspiracy theory.
White Trash Liberal
Dual pistol rifle qual in the Marine Corps uses around 1500 bullets.
I am assuming a good portion of DHS employees are trained annually in shotgun, pistol, and rifle.
And DHS is also likely subsidizing the arms industry.
belieber
“Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe…”
If you started out with that it would have saved me from reading the rest.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mandalay:
20 rounds once a week on a shooting range for practice seems like a low number, not high. 1000 bullets only sounds like a lot. I’d assume they’re firing much more than a round a minute during any practice.
@gene108:
They won’t, because they really do see evidence all around them. Their way of life (or what they imagine it to be) has been disappearing baby step by baby step for decades. Hell, a black man was elected president, and then reelected. No, nobody ever comes for their guns, but there’s always that little bit more pressure to confirm to them that the world is turning against them and their paranoia is justified.
EDIT – Thinking about the math, assuming an officer practicing fires 10 bullets per minute – once every six seconds, NOT blazing away by any stretch of the imagination – that gives him only ten practice sessions per year that are ten minutes long each on the government dime. This is starting to sound like our police are pathetically undertrained.
Kent
Of course the NRA is opposed to this legislation.
The NRA is ultimately nothing more than a lobby for the firearms industry. They want to sell as much ammo as they can. All the paranoia and hording simply inflates the profits of the firearms industry. It’s all good.
JGabriel
I honestly don’t know why Republicans are so sure they won’t be the first against the wall when the poor, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed revolt against the GOPs corporate funders.
Mandalay
@Cassidy: OK. Separate question: do bullets have a limited life (i.e. a “use-by” date?)
If I fire a bullet that is (say) 20 years old, is it just as good as the day I bought it?
The Moar You Know
@cvstoner: They absolutely do. And they get foaming at the mouth pissed when you inform them otherwise.
artem1s
@gene108:
OMHO it is this particular disconnect that bothers me most about the gunnutz. They cannot seem to grasp the concept that in the event of the zombie apocalypse no one in their right mind would turn to them for protection and/or to run things. Pretty much since the 80s I have been far more worried about the militias’ and survivalists’ threats to my freedom and security than anything I can imagine the government actually trying.
and regardless of everything that hasn’t happened to fuel their paranoia, they still have Waco and the ATF to kvetch about. As if David Koresh and his looney lieutenants wouldn’t have eventually pulled a Jones Town all on their own.
jon
@Mandalay: There is some decay, depending on storage, components, ingredients, and time. WWI bombs are still dangerous and get defused now and then, WWII bombs and shells are also an issue, but plastic-encased landmines may or may not last as long, for better and worse. Old bullets may not be as good as newer ones, but how good do they have to be?
@Ben Franklin: Some need more than others. Secret Service guys probably have to qualify for more than one weapon, doubling or tripling or more those requirements.
And in the end, all the unused bullets go on the surplus market. So your local police agencies can save money, your taxes remain low, and never mind the complaints about Federal pork when bacon tastes sooooo good.
The Moar You Know
@Mandalay: No. There is no specified date, and people have successfully fired 50, 60, 70-year old ammo, but I wouldn’t try it. Shells swell with moisture (make it more likely to jam/failure to eject) primers get more likely to not ignite with age (dud/slow fire). I rotate mine out every few years. Shotgun I try to go through every two years max, it absorbs moisture much more easily.
MikeJ
@The Moar You Know: Proper storage can help, but you should never rely on something having been done correctly in the past.
Cassidy
@Mandalay: Yes and no. I know there comes a point where “old” ammo can be dangerous to use, but I think that has to do with it absorbing moisture over time and then not predictably firing. I don’t know what that time period is, though, or anything about powder mixes, etc. Theoretically, if it has been stored properly, you can fire it after 20 years, but I think the odds of bad storage conditions are a lot more likely.
For short term storage, you can store ammo for a several years with no issue whatsoever as long as you keep it dry and stored properly. If they are buying ammo in bulk for the next few years, then it’s not going to go bad.
MattR
@Mandalay: Any idea what the numbers were prior to 2012? Was there some massive jump the past couple years or has it been a steady trend upwards or has it been pretty consistent but nobody complained when the Bush DHS was purchasing 100 million rounds a year?
Chris
@artem1s:
You’d be surprised how desperate people get in apocalyptic conditions. It’s what made the Afghans eventually turn to the Taliban.
gopher2b
@Mandalay:
DHS is largely border protection (formerly INS, Customs, Border Patrol, etc). The great irony here is these are the same people that want the government to shoot illegals as they cross the border.
cckids
@handsmile:
Why is it always “or”? Both, the answer is. BOTH. See Bush, Duhbya.
Mandalay
@MattR: I am only assuming from the proposed legislation (“a bill that would prohibit every government agency — except the military — from buying more ammunition each month, than the monthly average it purchased from 2001 to 2009”) that recent purchases have been higher than in the past.
Tying current purchases to those in 2001 seems pretty dubious of course, especially for DHS which did not exist in 2001.
MikeJ
@artem1s:
Some would say that firing on the federal officers that showed up to serve a warrant was pretty much that.
scav
@Mandalay: DHS may not have but you continue to elide that the groups and functions the DHS covers existed before the reorg. Or does a reorg mean everything below is entirely and suddenly new and extra to task? 22 pre-existing fed department and agencies have no needs worth meeting. got it.
MattR
@Mandalay: Thanks. Makes sense. Would still be curious to see the historical numbers to see how it has been trending (and perhaps compare it to the entire budget for the department).
(EDIT: A quick google shows the DHS budget was 36 billion in 2004 and 59 billion in 2012)
The Moar You Know
@Chris: And I would turn to the pros. Not the fatass up the street who’s white, fat, fifty, flying a Gadsen flag and flirting with a heart attack. He’ll be the first one dead if the shit hits the fan. I’ll turn to the dealers, the gang kids I grew up with, the MS13 guys – people who know how to kill.
artem1s
@Chris:
seems that was more a result of us arming the Taliban to the teeth in order to keep the evil commies from taking over. Certainly the women and the Kurds didn’t ‘turn’ to the Taliban for protection or leadership. Paranoids and gunnutz using violence to amass power isn’t the same as choosing them to lead or protect.
Kip the Wonder Rat
@Mandalay: Variability from round to round goes up with age. I know people who will not use ammo that is older than a year because over time the energy from charge to charge changes – even among bullets stored together. These folks are serious match shooters and make their own ammo with great precision. However, the aging issue is known by most serious gun handling people, which would include many LEOs. If I were a LEO, I would not want old ammo. I wouldn’t want to wonder whether all 11 of the rounds in my S&W .40 will fire off correctly in a firefight. And since a LEO doesn’t know if he or she will be in a firefight on any given watch, then I’d want ammo that is as new as possible, from a batch that I’ve personally tested, in my gun at all times.
Cassidy
@The Moar You Know: Nah, you just go take his shit and then you’ve got stuff to barter with.
Cassidy
@The Moar You Know: An anecdote I tried to post earlier…I got into a spirited conversation with a gentleman who was convinced that the good American Patriots would rise up and could fight a successful guerilla insurgency against the US Military. By this time we had moved beyond the military helping them out and I had semi-succeeded in convincing him they would not. Anyway, when he said this, I started laughing. I didn’t say anything, but I think he got the point as he was “healthy” and had not wanted for a calorie at any time in his adult life. I felt bad, because I don’t make fun of heavy people, but it just slipped out. He found something else to do after that and the conversation ended.
RaflW
Have the laws of supply and demand been suspended? Are bullet manufacturers unhappy that supply is (maybe, perhaps) tighter, so that prices for bullets might rise?
What a load of utter horse shit. And I bet the police fraternal organizations are loving this particularly numb-nuts idea.
Sheesh, the stupid, it radiates in burning waves of pain.
Robert Sneddon
@Mandalay: In the mid-80s our gun club got hold of a 500-round “brick” of .303 ammo dating from WWII which we shot off one afternoon using three or four Lee-Enfields. I don’t recall any misfires or problems with the ammo but it was in an airtight sealed metal can with the ten fifty-round cardboard boxes wrapped in tinfoil, the real stuff not aluminium foil. Modern over-the-counter ammo packaging probably isn’t up to that standard as it’s expected the ammo will be used up within a year or two of purchase at the worst.
The Moar You Know
@Cassidy: Yeah, I’ve been to plenty of gun shows. I’ve never been to one where I could have rounded up five people capable of a fifteen-minute mile, never mind anything of actual physical difficulty.
Cassidy
@Robert Sneddon: Loved my Lee-Enfield. I had to let it go when I was making decisions on what to sell to by groceries.
RaflW
@roc:
The looming shortage of staples is particularly alarming. How will I attach flyers about paranoiac community meetings to telephone polls? How?!?
gene108
@roc:
Do not mock that which is sublime beyond your comprehension. A shortage of staples and paper clips will cripple our economy.
The number of reports, files, bank deposits, etc. that could not be easily bound would destroy office cohesion and productivity.
Every office would then have to drop money on a three whole punch and binders, just for someone to keep a print out on his desk for a few days.
The costs would cripple our way of life.
Arclite
@Mandalay:
If you go to live fire training once per month, that’s less than 100 bullets per session. It’s pretty easy to burn through 100 bullets in an hour of training. 1,100 actually sounds too low.
Arclite
@Ben Franklin: Right, and I know a couple of cops and they train at the range more than 2-4x per year.
Mandalay
@gopher2b:
Not so sure about that. This link (table 1) states that 48% of the 2011 DHS budget was to “Prevent and disrupt terrorist attacks”, costing $32.9 billion.
Also: “By 2011, homeland security spending reached $69.1 billion, nearly twice as high as spending in 2001 after taking inflation into account“.
Mandalay
@Arclite:
Yes, apparently so. Several other posters who know a lot more than me about this stuff have made the same point.
johnny aquitard
@gbear: Legitimate hunters can find ammunition because the shortages affect almost exclusively the types of ammunition that are fired in semi-automatic weapons, i.e., AR-15s. The shortages hit semiautomatic rounds the most: .223 (NATO’s 5.56mm), .308 (NATO’s 7.62mm), .22 Long Rifle, 9mm, and any other semi-automatic pistol cartridge.
These rounds are used by the Black Rifle Boys in their AR’s. There’s been a huge aftermarket accessorizing of their toys since the shortages of 2008 with swap-in uppers to shoot other calibers other than .223. So now any round that is generally military and/or designed to feed well in a semi-auto (read rimless) are unpossible to find because the BRBs have been buying and hoarding it. (There is also a lot of speculative buying going on too.) This frenzy includes the 22 Long rifle rimfire because it was also a popular and cheap alternative to full-blown 5.56mm ammo, and the BRB loves to shoot themselevs hundreds of rounds at one sitting. It was a cheap way to go for them.
A hunter only needs a box (20 rounds) at the most for a season. And one can find typical hunting rounds available, though the cost has gone up by a buck or two a box but for hunting, one can still do it.
Not incoincidentally, the gun companies have been pushing new shooting games where a high round count and rapid-firing is built into the course of fire. For example, the Ruger Rimfire Challenge involves shooting rapid fire at steel plate targets. Each course of fire requires 10 rounds, rapid fire. There are multiple courses of fire in a game. It also requires shooting those course of fire with both a rifle and a pistol. So naturally semi-automatic rifles (like the .22LR versions of the AR) and pistols with high magazine capacities are necessary for the participants to acquire in order to play. Plus lots of extra magazines. All this ends up requiring at least 400 rounds PER competition.
It’s centrifugal bumblepuppy for gun nuts.
Arclite
@johnny aquitard:
Well, they probably shoot more than that at the range during the season to keep their accuracy up. But yeah, they probably don’t use more than 20 rounds while hunting.
johnny aquitard
Minute-of-deer accuracy is easy with modern rifles, modern optics, modern ammunition. Very few hunting rifles out of the box will shoot outside a 6-inch circle at 100 yards.
You need a box or two to sight a new rifle and zero the scope, then a box each season to re-check the zero. I wouldn’t want to fire more than 20 rounds of hunting ammunition at one sitting anyways. The recoil is not fun.
I have no idea how a deer hunter can ethically or legitimately use 20 rounds hunting. Zero to 3 rounds typically covers it. More than that at a deer and you know the hunter was just blasting away at the rump end of the fleeing deer.
For the non-trigger happy hunters, just how many animals can the hunter shoot in one season? For whitetail deer it’s usually just one.
Glocksman
Back when I collected C&R guns, I had a couple of 7.62 Tokarev pistols that I regularly shot Polish 50’s era surplus ammo through without a single misfire.
It’s been a while, but IIRC if the ammo is properly stored, the problem isn’t the powder decaying over the years so much as it is the primer.
As far as Inhofe goes, I’m frankly surprised he can walk and breathe at the same time and I’m not shocked to see that he’s repeating the squawking that’s been going on among the more paranoid right for a while now.
Glocksman
@johnny aquitard:
Most rifles I’ve shot shoot far more accurately than this rifleman can.
That said, I could keep 5 shots in a pie plate at 100 yards with my C&R Nagant M38 carbine.
Deadeye Dick I wasn’t. :)
lojasmo
@Frankensteinbeck:
Cassidy
@lojasmo: The problem with that premise is that there is not a lot of middle gorund. You’re either not adequately trained or you are. The latter involves military level of training and shooting and live fire scenarios, and money, gobs of cash. No one here like the militarization of our police forces, but if you want them to be competant marksman, then that’s what will happen.