“The U.S. Military is actively considering shutting down the sale [of] M855/SS109 ammo from Lake City to the commercial market.”
Yeah, if you can’t ban the guns, strangle the ammo supply — the rationale behind National Ammo Day was never more appropriate than today.
You all know what to do. Me, I’m going to lay in some more 7.62x39mm, because we AK guys are even more vulnerable.
Just bought myself a birthday present of 1000 rounds of 5.56. Yeah I know its commie steel case but it goes bang and puts holes in things. If I could find some small rifle primers I could build another thousand of good brass case rounds..
I’m channeling Schrodinger’s Cat on this one …
I may or may not have recently acquired another 1000 rounds of “it will blow the lungs lungs out of your chest” ammo …
Here in West Oz we have a Minister for Police who wants to (a) place a limit on the number of rounds you can have in your possession to that “reasonably required”. (Who decides? Him? The police?) and (b) require people to have a manufacturer’s licence to reload their own ammo or even to mount a scope or drop in a new trigger. He also has stated there are “too many guns” in civilian ownership in Western Australia and he will have to do something to reduce them, because more guns = more danger to the public.
And unfortunately, there is no-one, no-one, to counter any of this BS. The government holds an absolute majority in both houses of parliament and is thus unassailable.
Gun owners over 70 are also being asked to justify why they should be allowed to keep their licences and firearms. And don’t forget, in Australia “self-defence” is actually excluded by legislation for being a reason to own a firearm.
Shouldn’t the US Army stockpile ammo rather than supply it to the civilian market in direct competition to private industry?
Jwenting,
The ammunition manufacturing facility at Lake City might be owned by the Department of Defense but it is operated under contract by a civilian company. For several years it was run by Federal and in the last two years or so it has been operated by Olin Corporation. The civilian contractor has to produce a certain amount of ammunition in a set period and often produces more than necessary. The surplus amount is sold on the civilian market.
Someone might have more information on this arrangement than I do. There used to be numerous plants during ww2 but I think most were closed down and we are left with Lake City.
JQ
Under the Lake City operation contract, whatever contractor is running LC is allowed to use any production capacity in excess of what’s needed to fulfill DoD orders for the contractors own production. This allows the LC plant to be run at full capacity almost all the time, making it economical to maintain staff for full production whether or not the DoD needs it at the moment – and allowing the production to be immediately switched to DoD when needed.
Without the ability to level out production, the contractor is going to have to either try to match their staffing to predicted DoD orders or move the cost of the overstaffing to the DoD ammo orders if they don’t use 100% of the plant capacity. Removing the contractor’s ability to utilize the full production will make the plant either slow to respond to military demand changes or make the military ammo more expensive. My guess would be both would happen. In any case, doing this will require the contract to be modified. That would be an interesting contract negotiation to listen in on as the contractor tries to explain to the administration why water won’t run uphill.
That’s a rather good approach. That way if the government demand goes up, the company operating LC can just divert shipments from civilian to government. This would keep the military supplied without much of a delay. Unfortunately that would come at the cost of the civilian sales side of things.
If you end the civilian sales of things, you lose that buffer and create delays in production. Unfortunately government isn’t bright enough to realize that the current system is the better system.
JQ
“The better system” depends on whether the politicians are more frightened of foreign military forces or their own armed citizens.
Locally I figure to use the euro pellet a lot more at first. My two Storm carbines are 9mm chambered.
So I did my part, just ordered 2k of reloadable brass 126gr fmj.