While President Obama and many of his Democratic allies in Congress seek to impose strict limitations on civilian firearm sales, the Department of Homeland Security has solicited a bid for 26.1 million rounds of ammunition, adding to the 1.6 billion bullets it has already purchased over the past 10 months alone. Posted on the website FedBid, the agency’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Arteia, New Mexico, has commenced an auction for the training ammunition through competitive bids, which have to be a minimum of $10.
Here’s a breakdown of what the DHS is seeking:
• Commercial Leading Training Ammo (CLTA) pistol cartridge .40 caliber 165 Grain, jacketed Hollow point(JHP) pp/n P4OHSTS3G OR EQUAL. BRASS CASING 100,000 ROUNDS PRICE PER 1000 ROUNDS WILL INCLUDE DELIVERY.
• Commercial Leading Training Ammo (CLTA) 9MM 115 GRAIN JACKETED HOLLOW POINT P/N 9BP-115 GRAIN JHP OR EQUAL BRASS CASING 100,000 ROUNDS PRICE PER 1000 ROUNDS WILL INCLUDE DELIVERY.
• Commercial Leading Training Ammo (CLTA) PISTOL CARTRIDGE 9MM BALL 124 GRAIN P/N AE9AP OR EQUAL BRASS CASING 40,000 ROUNDS PRICE PER 1000 ROUNDS WILL INCLUDE DELIVERY
FedBid is an online marketplace where businesses and federal, state, and local governments can purchase products and services. According to a Washington Business Journal profile of Ali Saadat, the founder of FedBid, the website administered $1.4 billion in federal transactions last year.
Saadat says the concept of his website has altered the methods people use in the industry to search and respond to business, which often includes requesting proposals and submitting requests for quotes. “That time is gone,” Saadat told the Washington Business Journal. “It all happens on the Internet and in a transparent way.”
The FLETC in New Mexico includes programs for Indian Affairs, Border Patrol, and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), while more specialized programs such as Defense Tactics Instructor Training Program and Firearms Instructor Training Program are also administered at the Artesia location. Specifically, officials at the Artesia Training Division, according to its website, are “responsible for designing, developing, coordinating, and administering advanced and specialized training programs for the United States Border Patrol, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Transportation Security Administration, and other partnering organizations.”
The following are examples of ammunition purchases the DHS has solicited with bids ending February 11:
• In 2012, defense contractor AKT was awarded a five-year contract to provide 450 million rounds (max) to DHS.
• The government sought 175 million rounds of .223 caliber rifle ammo in 2012 as well.
• Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III said in 2004 testimony to the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee of the Committee on Arms Services that soldiers used 72 million rounds in Iraq in 2003 and that their expenditure at the time was 5.5 million rounds per month.
To put the 1.6 billion rounds in ammunition — which, note, the agency purchased in the last 10 months — in perspective, during the peak of active battle operations in Iraq, U.S. armed forces used approximately 5.5 million bullets a month. “Extrapolating the figures,” InfoWars.com reports, “the DHS has purchased enough bullets over the last 10 months to wage a full scale war for almost 30 years.”
These monstrous sums of ammunition purchases have prompted concerns that the DHS is preparing for some form of domestic unrest. In 2011, DHS chief Janet Napolitano commanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement to put strategies in place for a mass influx of immigrants into the United States, requesting a plan to deal with the “shelter” and “processing” of a vast population of people.
“The federal agency’s primary concern is now centered around thwarting ‘homegrown terrorism,’” InfoWars further reports. “But information produced and used by the DHS to train its personnel routinely equates conservative political ideology with domestic extremism.”
Moreover, a DHS study leaked in 2012 targets Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists. And last August, the agency shielded information regarding the amount of ammunition purchased on behalf of Immigration & Customs Enforcement, citing an “unusual and compelling urgency” to stockpile bullets and noting a shortage of bullets which is threatening a position that could spur “substantial safety issues for the government.”
Honing in on the U.S. government’s assault on the Second Amendment, InfoWars explains the hypocrisy in Washington’s intent to regulate civilian weapons and ammunition, while providing itself with fully automatic assault rifles and massive stockpiles of bullets:
While Americans are being browbeaten with rhetoric about the necessity to give up semi-automatic firearms in the name of preventing school shootings, the federal government is arming itself to the teeth with both ammunition and guns. Last September, the DHS purchased no less than 7,000 fully automatic assault rifles, labeling them “Personal Defense Weapons.”
Photo: Three thirty eight cartridges that have been lit from underneath via Shutterstock
