Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Hoarding Ammunition

Tip o’ the hat to Wizbang for pointing out this post from Paco Enterprises.

The Department of Homeland Security has placed an order for 200 million rounds of pistol ammunition (.40 caliber, hollow-point) over the next five years for use by its Immigration, Customs and Enforcement division.

Let’s see now, ICE has approximately 15,000 employees. Not all of them are licensed to carry firearms, but just to keep the math simple, we’ll divide the whole shebang into 200 million. That works out to a little over 13,000 rounds per employee over five years, or approximately 2,600 per employee per year.

Now, in case the entire population of Mexico tries to cross the border over the next five years, this would be enough to shoot everybody twice; however, this event seems unlikely, and would represent a pretty harsh response, anyway.

(11) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1727 hrs
Firearms + Politics + Politics - General

  1. Somebody at the ICE has been watching too many zombie movies.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2009 at 1834 hrs


  2. Let’s make some different assumptions.  Let’s assume that half of those 15,000 need to be trained and rated every year.  That’s 7500 people.

    Let’s assume that half of the ammo is for a reserve.  It’s only prudent to keep a reserve and, if you’re buying in a bulk contract, it makes perfect sense to have some left over at the end.  Assuming that ammo costs will go down in five years would be foolish.

    Divide 200 million in half.  Divide that 100 million by five years.  Divide that 20 million by 7500 people.  Divide that by an arbitrary 20 events a year (practice, live-fire training, new-hire range time) and you come down to about 130 rounds per event. 

    That’s just a tad on the high side but it doesn’t take into account any operational discharge.  Of course, there may be more or fewer rated employees; they may shoot more or less often but there’s really nothing to indicate anything nearing a description anything like hoarding.

    We have seen hoarding by the silly people, of course, but that has little to do with what you’ve posted here.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2009 at 1846 hrs


  3. The contract is for a maximum of 200 million rounds.  It’s amazing how quickly key phrases like “up to” and “maximum of” seem to disappear in the minds of right-wing conspiracy theorists.

    Posted by Recess Supervisor on December 29, 2009 at 2024 hrs


  4. why anyone would use hollow point for paper targets I would never understand… Geesh!

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2009 at 2147 hrs


  5. Anyone here heard of training and practice? Geez. And of course if they had to place some kind of emergency order due to dwindling supplies at a higher price y’all would scream about Obama’s bad procurement policies or something.

    yawn

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 29, 2009 at 2331 hrs


  6. I guess hoarding would make sense, if they knew about a shortage we don’t know about.  Or a new tax or increase in Price.  Makes me wonder if I should set up the reloader this weekend and head for Midwest.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 30, 2009 at 0837 hrs


  7. Hang on…. somebody is gonna have to make all this ammo….maybe this is another fine example of an Obama jobs creation program.  Check and see if they are using some stimulus $$ for this.  Buy ammo = create jobs.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 30, 2009 at 0851 hrs


  8. Anyone here heard of training and practice? Geez.

    Yes…TomInGrMI, the guy with the post right above yours, about two hours prior.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 30, 2009 at 1630 hrs


  9. Adamski why would one read the comments prior huh?ta

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 30, 2009 at 1639 hrs


  10. First off, Grumpy thinks ICE will keep HALF of that ammo “in reserve”?  That’s nuts.  Maybe 20%.

    So let’s re-do the math…200MM less 40MM is 160MM.  Divide by 5, you have 30+MM rounds/year.  Divide that by 7500 gun-users at ICE, you have 4200+ rounds/year/person.

    Take 200 rounds/month for target practice, you still have 1800 or so rounds/person/year left.  20 events at 90 rounds/event?

    They need even more target practice.

    Posted by dad29 on December 30, 2009 at 2114 hrs


  11. Does ICE really use Hallow points for target practice? I think I found somewhere we can make a cut! good lord!

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 31, 2009 at 0838 hrs


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