I fully accept that I may end up on a no-fly list due to this comic. …
I hope you’re getting mad about this, because I am.
After some more reading on the topic, I’ll admit that my original rant was off course. So, woops, you’re right, I’m wrong.
Still leaving the comic up because I think it’s funny.
DHS employees are taking it home like pens and paperclips. Its just a bunch of empty boxes in the armory storage.
I will admit DHS is not like Congress, we get a lot of CON for our dollar from Congress.
Yeah, this stinks in ways that would make Surstömming feel shamed.
Who says DHS is using the bullets?
DHS is using bullets, it is the Longbows to shoot them they are having problems with. 😉
So, what took you so long to get bent?
Just asking. . .
You might want to get some reality in this’n – here’s Breitbart’s recap of the issue: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/04/The-Great-DHS-Ammunition-Stockpile-Myth.
Paying attention to the Fox propaganda channel is a good way to get less intelligent – people who don’t watch TV news, pay attention to radio news or read a newspaper are all better informed on normal-world events than people who get their “news” from Fox News.
Am I the only one struck by the irony of using a Breitbart link to counter Fox News?
I shall counter this with an Infowars link.
I can’t decide if that’s better or worse than a Gateway Pundit link.
Forget the ceiling; they’re shooting at a banana hammock ad. That’s got to hurt, unless of course the garments are actually bullet resistant. 😀
Let’s just hope it’s not a bullet proof banana hammock, gotta watch for ricochets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7P6tYRzxI
Some info I got from a good forum.
—-
This is training ammo for the agencies that fall under DHS. Period. And these agencies train often. Trust me.
Here is a partial list………………..
Federal Air Marshal Service
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (2nd biggest federal law enforcement agency)
United States Secret Service
United States Coast Guard
Customs and Border Protection (former Border Patrol)
and, oh yeah……
FLETC – Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
They have a couple ranges at the various FLETC locations. They do a little shooting.
Consider: ICE/HSI’s web page says roughly 6,700 armed agents. 6700 agents, say 150 rounds of 9mm or .40 per agent to qualify, 4x per year.
That’s just over 4 million rounds per year–not even including specialized teams, academy classes, etc.
Also doesn’t include ERO, FPS, and CBP–all of whom appeared to be included in the solicitation.
A little flesh-out of the number of gun-toters, I’ll use the previous 150rds/quarter number as a base.
This is just PISTOL QUALS and will not include rounds for rifles, shotguns, SMGs.
CBP-USBP (green uniforms, between border ports) 12,000 strength or 1,800,000 rds annually
CBP-OFO (blue uniforms, at the border ports and inland international airports and coastal seaports) 10,000 or 1,500,000 rds annually
CBO-AMO, (tan flight suits and shorts and polos- a bit of petty jealousy) 1,000 or 5,000 rds annually
ICE-HSI, Plain clothes investigators, 6,000, 900,000 rds annually
ICE-ERO, (blue uniforms, deportation guys) 4,500 or 675,000 rds annually
Various DHS OIGs, ICE OPR, etc, 1,000 or 150,000 rds annually
FAMS (I won’t say but they shoot a lot, let’s call them 10,000 for the ammo numbers) 10,000 or 1,500,000rds annually
Secret Service, 4,400 or 660,000 rds annually
USCG, Wiki says 40,000 and 30,000 reservists, I think calling 10% gun-toters is close to the mark, 7,000 or 1,050,000 rds annually
FLETC, three academies, average 3,500 rds a trainee, let’s for the sake of argument call it 3,000 trainees a year. 10,500,000 rds/annually
I get 18.7 million rds a year. That’s a rough estimate.
———–
So not so odd afterall.
The DHS is not necessarily using bullets, just keeping them off the market. Government logic (traditional oxymoron!) states that the more ammo the feds have, the less the people have, therefore, the less can end up in the hands of terrorists. So, in their tiny minds, they’re preventing terrorism.
Wow, what an informed opinion!
[deleted bullshit from a psycho stalker]
I could see something like that happening some day, but the day isn’t now. Here are two cases in which that might actually make sense (assuming a nefarious government plot):
1) Laws go into effect that makes certain kinds of ammunition restricted or illegal to produce. Nefarious Government Agency then buys up existing stocks of that ammunition (and possibly future production). Those types of ammunition are now off the market and “safely” in NGA hands.
2) Something being passed is likely to incite armed rebellion. A short-term decrease in amount of available ammunition would hamper that rebellion. NGA buys up everything they can in an attempt to limit the amount of ammo that rebels will have while simultaneously increasing their own stocks, allowing them to put down that rebellion.
To the extent of my knowledge, neither of those is happening in the near future. In the case of the second, it wouldn’t even be all that effective, for a number of reasons that I’ll leave to the imagination of the reader.
Training takes bullets. So do emergency stocks. I don’t know how many soldiers/officers/employees/whatever on active and reserve duty are in service of the DHS, but assuming you allocate around 100 bullets per year per person, not including extensive training exercises and taking ammo loss and corrosion into account, a million bullets a year doesn’t seem like that much to me.
Addendum:
A quick check with WikiAnswers gives a ballpark figure of 160,000 armed DHS agents. While it may be off by even a few tens of thousands, we’re still probably talking something along the scale of a hundred thousand people.
You’ve stated you use around 100 rounds per day at the range, and shooting is a hobby of yours.
According to these figures, DHS agents use around 100 rounds per year.
Frankly, I’m surprised it’s ONLY a million bullets a year.
ayup….that was my question….why are they practicing so effing LITTLE. I know that many police officers say they fire less than 50 round a year… just the minimum they need to qualify. SCARY. Idiots suggest that only trained people should have guns. Most gun owners I know train a LOT more than most police officers.
PPS:
After reading the Fox News article itself, I’d like to correct some figures.
According to the article, DHS is going through 116 million bullets per year, not just 1 million as stated in your note. Also according to the article, there are 70,000 armed agents (still around 100,000, but let’s use Fox News’ figures, just to see what the stated figures mean. We can later correct these figures to see which have been under-counted and which have been overblown).
116 million bullets per 70,000 people means 1657 bullets per person per year.
Assuming they, like you, use around 100 bullets each time they go to the range, that means 16.5 shooting range days per person, per year.
These are people who use their firearms in their profession. You are a hobbyist. This means they go to the range roughly the same amount of times as an avid gun enthusiast does. Just to compare, during my training in the army, when we were getting familiar with our rifles, there was a period of several weeks in which we attended shooting practice every day, going well over 100 bullets per person each day. After training we usually attended the range once every two to three weeks.
On average, it seems DHS agents are actually probably not getting enough gun practice according to these figures. They’re getting even less gun practice if the figures are closer to the 160,000 agents quoted in WikiAnswers than the 70,000 agents quoted in Fox.
As for the comparison to the much lower number cited for military use of 9 mm bullets – well, of course the military will use less. Most military shooting is done with 5.56 mm bullets, or higher calibres, depending on the type of firearm used. Handguns will, naturally, get much less training time and resources allotted.
So all in all, even if the figures quoted by Fox are correct, I still don’t understand what all the commotion is about.
[deleted bullshit from a psychotic asshole arsonist stalker]
[edit]
I have edited my comment. Not because of the hilarious “legal threat”, but because you know what? I don’t want to have anything to do with you. And now we’re done.
*sputter*
“Pyrodice” didn’t even bother to change his username?
What a joik.
Say..Tavares has to be on parole, since his seven-year sentence would not have been up until July 2014.
It is very likely that one of the conditions of said parole would be abstaining from online commentary, or in fact being online at all, particularly given the nature of his offense.
Who his parole officer is, should be a matter of public record.
Said parole officer might be verrrry interested in “pyrodice”s revisiting of his own past behavior patterns…
I’m just sayin.
Is there any way to screen
malodorous cuntpyrodice’s comments from public reading here, while keeping it available, as evidence?[deleted]
Please don’t post any of his personal info here.
K
[Deleted]
Well, a Congressman is quoted in the linked article as saying when dividing out it was over a thousand per officer. But that’s not exactly an expert or unbiased opinion; waste is quite possible, but so is a calculation error.
In addition to ICE, CBP, Coast Guard, TSA, and the Secret Service, DHS also houses the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, which trains about 70,000 people from other law enforcement agencies a year.
(And most of the agencies under DHS’s umbrella are not about terrorism at their core but the more nebulous “security”.)
Yeah, not surprising.
Not being an American myself I’m less familiar with the ins and outs of the DHS infrastructure, but really, millions of bullets a year sounds like a sane number to me, all things considered.
I asked Carl Sagan and he said billions, not millions.
😛
*ducks*
I think we’ve probably got to assume there’s some oversight in place, meaning these officers are only allowed to use a certain number of government-purchased bullets per week/month/etc. I imagine many of these officers practice on their own.
That being said, I’m way more pissed off about the military development projects that have billions of dollars poured into them without any real results i.e. the Joint Strike Fighter F-35. If that airplane doesn’t represent the military’s inability to recognize the changing face of war, nothing does.
I can only speak to the Agency I was involved with, the Coast Guard. I carried at 2 of my 4 duty stations. 150 rounds per person per year is a little light. It’s about twice that and that doesn’t include the many classes of Boot Camp every year where they teach gun safety and basic marksmanship. It is also just pistol quals, that doesn’t include M4 or shotgun or any other weapon.
“I hope you’re getting mad about this, because I am.”
I’m not. As others have said above me there’s nothing to be mad about. A little fact checking and taking into consideration just what the DHS actually is makes this a non-issue.
This reminds me a of discussion I had back when I was a history grad student; I was in a class talking about the establishment of the Irish Free State and the purchase of military supplies. The professor made some point about how much .303 ammunition had been purchased and most of the class agreed that they felt it was an unusually large amount (I forget the number discussed). But myself and someone whose father was a lifelong military man point out just where all of those rounds could go (training, stock pile, rifles, machine guns) and when you did the math it was actually a very small amount being purchased by a very poor country.
The only thing I’m mad about is that I can’t find damn ammo to go shoot with!
My issue isn’t so much with the amount, but with the timing.
“Hmm, ammo prices have gone through the roof. People are buying ammo like crazy. I know, let’s order a *billion* rounds.”
Now, taking into account the idiocy at that level of Govt, it’s entirely possible that they just did their annual ammo buy and it coincided with the Obamascare.
How’s the expression go? “Never chalk up to malice what can be explained by incompetence”? My guess is that the people in charge said “buy this ammo now” and didn’t even notice the prices.
I agree about the amount not being a big deal, though. It’s just the governmental version of “OMG the shooter had THREE THOUSAND rounds of ammunition at his house!” It’s a number that’s daunting at first blush, but not unreasonable upon closer examination.
If we assume a lot of this goes for practice, I have to assume this will make DHS agencies better shots than the LAPD. Hopefully they’re also better at knowing the difference between two Hispanic women in a blue Toyota and one African-American man in a black Nissan. (Yes, I did have to go there.)
you’d think, with the economy being what it is and all, they’d you know, cut back a bit on the training? find a cheaper way? practice with FMJ’s instead of flying ashtrays? everyone else is cutting back, and there are a lot of other ways to train and keep up on your skills that are cheaper. hell, we’re all finding them, aren’t we?
“OMG allen they’d get rusty! are you calling for SWAT cops to get bad on their skills and die?”
umm..no. I’m saying maybe we have WAY too many SWAT-type groups. maybe we have WAY too many government agencies that carry guns for no good reason. like why does the department of education have SWAT teams? supposedly to collect on overdue loans? really? they collect enough back on overdue college loans to justify paying, equipping, and arming even a single SWAT team?
Even North Korea feeds it’s armies first.
Nah, it’s just that the DOE OIG needs some FMJ and some JHP, ASAP AFAIK.
While most everyone here covered the reasons why DHS bought so much ammo I’m going to point out the other reason why the ammo was bought. The “re-selection” of Obama as a second term president and the high chance of domestic terrorist attacks by “militia members and other right wing radicals. They have openly suggested they would “commit” acts of sedition and treason, this made a lot of people nervous at DHS and even the Secret Service. So is it really any surprise that the group that handles “domestic terrorism” would be arming up and training right before the elections of 2012 over these concerns.
Recently, Talking Points Memo posted the numbers of the chance of a “civil war”. While the numbers average out to 29%; notice that 44% of the GOP of the think that an armed rebellion is inevitable in some point in the next few years. However, these numbers seem slanted to sharply biased that the GOP madness is mainstream, rather than the fringe. As for the research group, I’m also questioning their “veracity” as well since these numbers are so small (863). I’d be more happy with an oversampling and broader spectrum of ages/gender numbers at least 3,000 to 5,000 makes a better data pool to work with. The broader pool gives a lot better depth of this paranoia vs. such a small number of less than 1000. It doesn’t give a good impression and makes it seem that the madness is normal in the GOP.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/05/armed-rebellion-poll.php?ref=fpb
I’ll point out for reference that TPM is liberal-biased. (Fo’ realz, not in the “OMG teh media is liberal-biased” sense.) I’m not disputing their numbers or methodology here (I haven’t looked at the polling method and designing polls for statistical rigor is far from my strong suit anyway); I merely want to note that making it “seem that the madness is normal in the GOP” is probably not an impression TPM is reluctant to give.