Tuesday, May 8, 2012

DHS Rumor Control

Regular readers should know that I trust the Gov't about as far as I could throw the Nat'l Debt stacked in pennies but I like to keep things factual. When I hear/read a rumor, I like to track down it's source and get to the bottom of it. The latest rumor-mongering has been about the DHS militarizing. Something I don't doubt is happening but...

 There are the reports of the DHS buying up to 450m rounds of ammo. As far as I can tell this is true and it's all .40 cal.  Are DHS agents such monumentally bad shots they need this much training ammo? Just what is the DHS ammo budget anyway?  I consider this pretty low on the 'hostile gov't' scale because there isn't going to be a nat'l takeover using .40 cal handguns. Now had it been (ed. almost all) .223 or .308 (or somesuch) I might get more twitchy.

The second rumor is about the DHS buying 2717 surplus MRAP's.  These are mine resistant vehicles designed for use in Iraq.  This one is a bit harder to track down.  There are going to be thousands of surplus MRAP's but most will stay sitting in mothballs over in the Gulf.  Digging deeper into it, the 2717 number comes from an upgrade that left that many chassis extra.  I've found lots of sites w/ that number and some photos of a huge honking truck labeled DHS.  Mostly the same photos. None an MRAP.  If you notice, the highest number on any pictured vehicle is 10.  Blogger 'Badtux' did quite a bit of research into procurement and found jack. 

So just like the 'guns on your tax forms' and 'Soros owns Cerberus', focus on the real threats people, we don't need made up ones.

Unorganized Militia Gear Unorganized Militia Gear
Follow TrailerDays on Twitter
Unorganized Militia Gear

7 comments:

Old NFO said...

Not trying to rain on your parade, but the 450M rounds is partially .40 cal and partially .223/5.56

Sigivald said...

I recall reading that the ammunition buy is a 5-year contract, and the ammo count is a maximum.

And that DHS includes the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

So the informed consensus is that there's no there there; even at the maximum buy, that's 90M rounds a year, for thousands Federal Law Enforcement employees and - as one of the ar15.com people pointed out - also the Coast Guard and all their .40 sidearms.

They do a lot of qualification and practice shooting, after all.

Anonymous said...

It has been reported the DHS has also contracted for 175 million rounds of 5.56, and another 200 million rounds of .40 in addition to the 450 million.

Critter said...

since the feds train and qualify witht he same ammo they are issued and since this is a five year contract the amount is not unreasonable. the FB1 buys more than this every year.

Anonymous said...

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/atk-civil-ammunition-business-to-supply-dhs-with-high-performance-ammunition-53299932.html

Anonymous said...

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-immigration-agents-are-loading-up-on-as-many-as-450-million-new-rounds-of-ammo-2012-3#ixzz1qzk5VDtw

Drang said...

You want panicky rumors? I gotcher panicky rumors right here: The planned re-election of Obama, revolutionary style