Author Topic: A different take on the government ammo purchases  (Read 725 times)

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Offline AlanS

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A different take on the government ammo purchases
« on: January 21, 2014, 11:23:54 AM »
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342161/great-ammunition-myth-charles-c-w-cooke?pg=1

Quote
Last year, the Social Security Administration put out a procurement request for 174,000 rounds of “.357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point pistol ammunition,” prompting a few on the Internet to work themselves up into something of a frenzy. “It’s not outlandish,” claimed Paul Joseph Wilson, one of a team of professional paranoiacs on the Infowars website, “to suggest that the Social Security Administration is purchasing the bullets as part of preparations for civil unrest.” “Something strange is going on,” harmonized Breitbart’s William Bigelow. Even Mark Levin was concerned. “I know why the government’s arming up,” he deduced. “It’s not because there’s going to be an insurrection; it’s because our society is unraveling.”

The Social Security Administration’s purchase was by no means an anomaly. A year earlier, the unlikely pair of the Department of Agriculture (320,000 rounds) and the National Weather Service (46,000 rounds) had both put out tenders for ammunition. And slightly less odd, but still staggering, were the FBI’s professed intention to purchase up to 100 million “hollow point” rounds and the Department of Homeland Security’s concurrent request for 450 million rounds. The Department of Education got in on the weapons-supplying spree, too, purchasing “27 Remington Brand Model 870 police 12-gauge shotguns.”

The first question: “Why?” The second: “Should we be worried?”

The appeal of this story is obvious, and that some citizens keep track of such things shows an admirable vigilance. But while a healthy suspicion of government serves these United States better than critics presume, facts remain the stubborn things that they always have been, and skepticism is no virtue at all when it proves impervious to reason. Those who are vexed that the state is stocking up on ammunition — and troubled by fears that this might be a step toward D.C.’s assault on the citizens for whom it works — can relax for now. Whatever the federal government has become, it is not yet plotting violence against the people.

Nonetheless, one could reasonably ask why the Social Security Administration would need any ammunition at all. Are the elderly especially unruly these days? Jonathan L. Lasher, in the SSA’s external-relations department, explained to the Huffington Post that the ammunition is “for the 295 agents” in the outfit’s office of inspector general “who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes.” Divide the rounds by the number of agents, and you get about 590 per agent; in a given year, that’s about ten rounds a week. “Most will be expended on the firing range,” Lasher continued.

Okay. And why does the USDA need 320,000 rounds? Because it runs the Forest Service, which covers “155 national forests” and “20 national grasslands” on a total of “193 million acres of land.” As well as agents in the field, the outfit has a law-enforcement unit based in Washington, D.C., whose responsibility it is to enforce federal laws and regulations. In context, those 320,000 rounds look a lot less threatening: If the U.S. Forest Service were to distribute ammunition at the same rate as the Social Security Administration, they would have enough for just 542 agents — not bad for an organization that covers an area the size of Pakistan (or twice the size of Japan or Germany).

It’s all about scale. Forty-six thousand rounds also sound like a lot for the National Weather Service. (Actually, the ammo was requested by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, which is overseen by the same department.) In reality, it’s not that much. The service has only 63 armed personnel, which brings the purchase out at around 730 rounds per officer. This, suffice it to say, does not present a great threat to the Republic. As the NRA has noted, “more than a few NRA members would use that much ammunition in a weekend shooting class or plinking session.” There are enough risks to the right to bear arms and to American liberty in general, the NRA continued, without “inventing threats.”

More at the link.
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Offline Glock32

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Re: A different take on the government ammo purchases
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2014, 11:40:59 AM »
I think the issue isn't this or that agency getting 100-200k rounds. That is a plausible number for their training requirements. I think what tingled some people's Spidey Sense were the much larger figures, millions of rounds, which altogether exceeded a billion rounds. I know there is a concerted effort from the milquetoast Right (i.e. National Review) to deem this all a big nothingburger, just the fevered imaginations of the tinfoil hat crowd. I guess my question is, do these purchases fit previously established patterns?  If we go back 10 years, would we see the Social Security Administration and NOAA buying roughly the same amount? If the answer is no, then that means there is something novel about the recent purchases, and that rightly brings the "Why?" into it.

Even if there is nothing sinister afoot, it is troubling that we have so many alphabet soup agencies that seem to think they need armed agents. Isn't there a generalized Federal enforcement agency for that? Do we really need an organic SWAT capability in the Department of Education and the National Weather Service? Are these agencies really fielding that many armed agents, or could they be convenient ways to compartmentalize massive ammo purchases that are actually for a much more general purpose?

My default position is that anything the government does is likely nefarious, until proven otherwise. That's how it should be. Our system of jurisprudence is supposed to assume innocence on the part of an accused citizen, and likewise we citizens should assume guilt on the part of the government.
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Offline Libertas

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Re: A different take on the government ammo purchases
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2014, 11:57:43 AM »
Yeah...either the SSA is about to cut off bennies and expects a bunch of got-nuthin'-to-lose geriatrics to storm their offices and kill them...unlikely but it would be an interesting start to a rebellion...or this is just the Fedcoats spreading around the purchases that go to the more usual suspects we expect to lead the fascist put down of upitty citizens jealously guarding what's left of their rights and demanding resotration of what has been illegally taken...usual suspects like DHS, FBI, ATF etc.

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Online Pandora

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Re: A different take on the government ammo purchases
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2014, 03:25:46 PM »
Quote
I think the issue isn't this or that agency getting 100-200k rounds.

Or breaking it down into rounds-per-agent, which, if true, begs the question of why so many agents are "needed".  There are far too many armed agents of the State, both Fed and local.
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Offline warpmine

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Re: A different take on the government ammo purchases
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2014, 08:19:36 PM »
Think of of terms of Obama which is to say he can't outlaw ammunition but he can do everything in his power via government ABC agencies to keep it from being owned by those that most likely will use it to train and possibly rebel with. Just last month, the last lead smelter was to be shut down due to EPA regs that stink on ice.

What in hell does the SSA need with armed agents? What are they expecting and armed granny rebellion? Horsesh*t!
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Offline Glock32

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Re: A different take on the government ammo purchases
« Reply #5 on: January 21, 2014, 09:58:12 PM »
I think it's a multitude of things. I think on the one hand it's a way of disguising just how much of a police state we've become, by spreading the number of armed agents out across numerous agencies. Many of them are innocuous sounding agencies that people wouldn't even think to have armed agents. When Obama promised to build that security apparatus "just as powerful, just as well funded as the military" I think he was referring to the enforcement capability of the Federal bureaucracy. Sticking them in some obscure agency makes it less obvious what the total strength is across the entire "Federal family".

And yeah, I would not doubt that there is some deliberate economic manipulation in these purchases too. If that's the intent though, they're way too slow off the mark. That ship has sailed. The American public is already sitting on trillions of rounds of ammo, and millions of firearms to use it.
"The Fourth Estate is less honorable than the First Profession."

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