Brad Kozak
Guns.com
A while back, the American media reported several, often disparate, stories about Federal agencies stocking up on ammo. Now when the Army makes a big ammo purchase, nobody blinks an eye, but when the Social Security Administration, the National Oceanographic and the Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service make big buys, you might want to stop and ask “why”?
Forecasts from the weatherman might be wildly inaccurate, but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of a weatherman needing to arm themselves and ammo up because a resulting downpour ruined somebody’s picnic, though recent tragedies may prove otherwise. Regardless, when the NWS makes major ammo buys, it raises some questions from people who pay attention to such things. Ditto for the Social Security Administration – when’s the last time you heard of a Social Security office under siege by terrorists?
The National Weather Service ordered about 46,000 rounds of .40 S&W JHPs, to be delivered to four locations – offices in Florida, New Jersey, Maine and Massachusetts. Whether or not any of these came in handy during the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, I don’t know, but would be interested to find out. The Social Security Administration put in an order for 174,000 rounds of .357 Sig JHPs, for locations in Baltimore, L.A., Detroit, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Denver, Philly, Pittsburgh and Seattle.
On top of that, the DHS buy order was for about 40,000,000 rounds of .40 S&W JHPs all told. That’s a lot of ammo.