But I could be giving him too much credit there.
In any case, Prison Planet dot com (you can waste your time actually going to the site if you want, but you'll have to take responsibility for doing so yourself ... ) "editor and writer" Paul Joseph Watson demonstrates his capacity as a Pant-Shitting Hysteric as he bemoans the purchase of some pretty spendy ammo by what eventually proves to be NOAA's Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement. Let's look at a few numbers first.
NOAA (mistakenly identified as NWS on the .gov ammo solicitation form apparently) wants to buy 46,000 rounds of .40 S&W JHP ammo - to be distributed amongst several locations.
" A solicitation which appears on the FedBizOpps website asks for 16,000 rounds of .40 S&W jacketed hollow point (JHP) bullets, noted for their strength, to be delivered to locations in Ellsworth, Maine, and New Bedford, Mass. A further 6,000 rounds of S&W JHP will be sent to Wall, New Jersey, with another 24,000 rounds of the same bullets heading to the weather station in St. Petersburg, Florida."
Along with "being noted for their strength", .40 cal is also noted as the issue handgun caliber for the FBI and one supposes many other .gov badge toters as well. It is common practice for large organisations to require component agencys to use the same equipment so as to reduce the unit cost of each piece of gear bought. Like handguns, just for instance. Not too surprisingly one would have thought, this concept would fairly unremarkably extend to include the ammunition those guns use, but apparently not.
As to the quantities, I probably average shooting something in the near neighborhood of 6,000 rounds of all calibers of ammo for the guns I own in an average year. Now, since I'm spending my own money to buy all that, I tend to go for the Winchester White Box or maybe the Sellier & Beloit if I'm financially more flush than is the norm. If I had access to Uncle Sugar's checkbook (and thereby to your pockets too :)), I'd certainly be tempted to practice with the stuff I intend to carry too! But I don't think that's whats going on here.
It seems reasonable to me that there might be as many as 460 individual Fishy LEO's in NOAA's employ (and we can leave for another occasion the question of why NOAA). Should that prove to be the case, then NOAA will be able to issue each of those people with a whole 100 rounds apiece (one presumes for the year). And if it turns out there are only half that many badge toters, that's still only 200 rounds apiece. That's a whole 4 boxes of 50 rounds each, and the damn gun will hold nearly a third of a box at a time too. Throw in a couple spare magazines (common practice - look at any cops' duty belt) and now we see we're actually talking about a perfectly reasonable quantity of issue duty ammunition for a federal law enforcement agency to provide for its people to use (or hopefully not use) during the course of their day.
I especially like this comment:
"As the Business Insider notes, hollow point bullets have been “illegal in international warfare since 1899.”
I wonder what the Business Insider's opinion is on the law regarding domestic law enforcement's use of hollow point bullets during the course of domestic law enforcement actions?
As to the rest of the article's observations, it's pretty clear that DHS is zeroing out it's budget on law enforcement-type goodies - possibly in anticipation of a different occupant of the White House being less forthcoming with the dosh in the near future. None of them can actually SAY that of course, but it seems at least as likely as anything the Excitable Watson can intimate.
I like a good conspiracy theory/rant as much as the next fellow (and given my family history, quite possibly more than most), but Drudge is going to have to work a good deal harder than this to get a rise out of anyone who owns and shoots a gun and has more than three working brain cells to rub together.
* So can most of my .22's, for a given value of "wall".
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