I don’t know about you, but the news of continuing DHS purchases of ammo continue to disturb me. While my local dealers have seen a few AR rifles trickle in over recent months, they are purchased in minutes. Meanwhile, ammunition is virtually unavailable as we hear about DHS purchasing 1.6 billion rounds.
DHS employs 240,000 employees according to their website and they even provide a handy Org Chart to see for yourself who is included:
- Border Patrol / Customs
- Citizenship / Immigration
- Coast Guard
- FEMA
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- Secret Service
- TSA
That’s a serious list, and I didn’t include the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
So did you do the math?
If every single DHS employee is a sworn and armed federal officer (and they’re not), that’s 6,600 rounds for every single employee.
Meanwhile none of the rest of us can get ammo.
[Added:] The NRA disagrees with me:
“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.”
I have two problems with the NRA’s non-response. First, when I was a LEO, ammo was very carefully distributed for range activity. We received 50 rounds twice a year, and we weren’t allowed to use duty ammo (JHP), we used wadcutters. And second, if the volume of ammo is an “invented threat”, simply prove it: How much ammo did DHS purchase annually over, say, the last decade? Are they buying the same amount this year as they did last year, and the year before, and the year before?
I can appreciate the NRA’s sensitivity to the scarcity of firearms and attacks on the second amendment. But brushing off very real perceptions with seemingly uninterested non-answers suggesting invented threats is disgraceful and insulting.