Damn Good Question

Gummint

Over at American Thinker, a good point has been raised:

Where are all the guns and ammo purchased under Obama?

During the last two years of the Obama administration, some unusual purchases were made. Large quantities of ammunition were purchased, as were firearms, mostly for somewhat obscure agencies or agencies with no real need for such weaponry. Estimates are that over 1 billion rounds of ammunition were ordered, which resulted in making ammunition scarce for the normal civilian market.

And the catalog of who got all these guns is really interesting:

  • The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, 7.62mm caliber rifles, night-vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote-control helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal infrared scopes and more.
  • The Small Business Administration [!] loaded up their arsenals with Glock pistols.
  • The Fish [and Wildlife] folks spent approximately $410,000 on their Glocks and rifles and modified their Glocks with silencers.
  • The Department of Health and Human Services was outfitted with sophisticated weaponry normally carried by Special Forces, stored at an undisclosed location.
    Others include:
  • Department of Energy: approximately $50,000 worth of M-16 fully automatic rifles
  • General Services Administration: approximately $16,000 in shotguns and Glocks
  • Bureau of Reclamations: approximately $697,000 for firearms and ammunition
  • EPA: almost $70,000 for ammunition
  • Smithsonian [!]: approximately $42,500 for ammunition
  • Social Security: approximately $61,000 for ammunition
  • $426,268 on hollow-point bullets, including orders from the Forest Service, National Park Service, Office of Inspector General, Bureau of Fiscal Service, as well as Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The latter three, sure, but the Forest Service, National Park Service, and Inspector General’s Office?
  • Bureau of Engraving and printing: approximately $100,000 on firearms
  • U.S. Mint: almost $180,000 for ammunition
  • Bureau of Fiscal Services [!]: approximately $672,000 on ammunition and firearms
  • Department of Agriculture: $1.1 million for weapons and ammunition

Read the whole thing, because one of his conclusions is more scary than your imaginations can conjure up.

15 comments

  1. So where is all this stuff? Where is it stored? Who holds it or controls it? Have the weapons been distributed? Have the various departments and organizations taken the time to read the instructions or practice so they know enough to keep from shooting themselves in the foot or plowing themselves up?

    Or (as is more likely,) have the weapons and ammunition found their ways to the black market and into the hands of foreign nations or private “don’t ask, don’t tell” customers who pay cash and congratulate themselves that they were lucky enough to know somebody who knew somebody who could hook them up.

  2. A lot of those do look strange, but some of them make sense. The Department of Energy, for example, guards nuclear plants and nuclear material being transported, so I’m OK with them having some decent rifles. Fish and Wildlife probably need some weapons, because they’ll be dealing with hunters, who are pretty much all armed. I’m sure the Smithsonian has armed guards.

    Still, the totals seem pretty high, and you have to wonder about some of them.

    It wouldn’t hurt for the EPA, for example, to explain what they did with $70,000 in ammo. It was, after all, “the most transparent administration in history.” (Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little.)

      1. General Services Admin. is responsible for securing virtually every Federal building; SBA and HHS are on their own.

  3. While the numbers do seem high, remember under government purchasing, a million dollars may reflect a half-dozen AR-15s, a dozen magazines and 10K rounds for each. Plus shipping and handling of course.

    To balance it out, how many firearms were purchased by American citizens during the Obama administration? Antifa has won the toss and elected to receive.

  4. Without divulging too much, I grew up on a ranch and we had many dealings with the USFS and BLM (The .gov one). When I was a boy you never saw any ranger (or whatever they called themselves) armed. Then when I hit about 16 you started to see “law enforcement” agency vehicles, and an increasing amount of agency personnel running around strapped. The people they were dealing with hadn’t changed. What had changed is that the agencies decided they were going to throw their weight around and prove who was running the place (BTW this kept increasing under EVERY administration in the WH). I tend to think this is extrapolated across every federal agency.

    Notice as well the calls for “Defunding the police” never land on the EPA, or the IRS, or BATFE, just the poor bastards who work for the county.

    1. And yet, the BLM got faced down by a “bunch of yahoos” at the Bundy Ranch in NV.

      1. It was only because the cameras were on. Not because they didn’t want to

  5. Or some where some accountant is setting up his own country. There are a bunch of third world nations that could taken over by a special forces team and a good weekend

    I tend to think idiots are running things and if they want to “rule”, an iron fist is the limit of there imagination

  7. Much more concerned with the Swat Teams many of these bureaucracies have. I can understand the Rapid Reaction Teams for the DOE or the Department of Education (gotta keep the little bastards in line), but many of the others, like GOA and the EPA? What could possibly be the reason for this Federal army?

    Oh… yeah….

    1. It’s fashionable for anything like a law enforcement organization to set up an assault team. Gives them a chance to play with cool toys.

      Of course, they should not HAVE the cool toys. I’m firmly of the opinion that no law enforcement organization has any business with arms or accoutrements that are denied to the general public. And we KNOW that assault teams get used when they are not needed, just to justify keeping them.

  8. A Reminder:
    Every year on the opening day of Deer Season, the State of Pennsylvania sees the largest armed land army in the world take the field – no government forces involved. This is repeated to certain degrees in many other states.
    Now, recent history has shown us that all the high-tech, whiz-bang, mil.stuff in the world has a difficult time overcoming a determined opponent when that opponent can bring to bear even the most rudimentary of technology, which is what the British Empire faced in the late 1700’s difficulties in North America. So, we have seen this before, and we should have learned from it. But, we seem to be faced with an opponent that believes history began yesterday; or as George Santayana said: He who has not learned from history is fated to repeat it.

    1. On the other hand, the Colonials rapidly turned the conflict into a war between properly constituted armies. The American “Revolution” wasn’t – it was a war of secession, with the British Parliment on one side and the Colonial Legislatures on the other.

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