Why are the feds loading up on so much ammo?
By Andrew Malcolm at Investors Business Daily
Posted 02/08/2013 09:02 AM ET
In a puzzling, unexplained development, the Obama administration has been buying and storing vast amounts of ammunition in recent months, with the Department of Homeland Security just placing another order for an additional 21.6 million rounds.
Several other agencies of the federal government also began buying large quantities of bullets last year. The Social Security Administration, for instance, not normally considered on the frontlines of anything but dealing with seniors, explained that its purchase of millions of rounds was for special agents' required quarterly weapons qualifications. They must be pretty poor shots.
But DHS has been silent about its need for numerous orders of bullets in the multiple millions. Indeed, Examiner writer Ryan Keller points out Janet Napolitano's agency illegally redacted information from some ammunition solicitation forms following media inquiries.
According to one estimate, just since last spring DHS has stockpiled more than 1.6 billion bullets, mainly .40 caliber and 9mm. That's sufficient firepower to shoot every American about five times. Including illegal immigrants.
To provide some perspective, experts estimate that at the peak of the Iraq war American troops were firing around 5.5 million rounds per month. At that rate, DHS is armed now for a 24-year Iraq war.
The perceived need for so much ammunition in federal custody is especially strange given Obama's double-barreled emphasis in his inaugural address on the approaching end in Afghanistan "of a decade of war." And he also noted, "We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war."
The lack of a credible official explanation for such awesome ammunition acquisitions is feeding all sorts of conspiracy theories, mainly centered on federal anticipation of some kind of domestic insurrection. Napolitano has at times alluded to threats from the extreme right-wing.
Other conspiracists harken back to an Obama Colorado campaign speech in July, 2008. That day he deviated from his prepared text to say:
"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Writing at American Thinker, Lee Cary noted at the time that the speech context seemed to involve expanded opportunities for community service. But as still happens when Obama goes off-teleprompter, his non-fortuitous word choice on the fly such as "national security force" prompted numerous writers to speculate since about some kind of national Obama para-military force.
And as great as Obama's unlikely, newly-revealed passion for skeet-shooting might be, that involves shotguns, not handguns over-heated from blasting off millions of rounds.
Additionally, Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, is widely expected to seek the 2016 Democrat presidential nomination. But you wouldn't think she'd need that much ammo for such a bid.
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