Butch Napolitano: 'There's something wrong with DHS purchasing 1.6B rounds of ammo?'

By Correctamundo

If an average citizen was stockpiling ammo, the DHS, ATF, DOJ, and any other federal acronym you could think of would be all over that like Obama on dog meat. But Big Sis doesn't see a problem purchasing 1.6B in ammo - it's just part of the normal inventory.

The Department of Homeland Security responded Friday to questions from Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., about why the agency was allegedly planning to buy some 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next five years.

DHS told Whispers it regularly fills all of its goods and services requirements at one time because it's cheaper for the agency, and that the 1.6 billion number was misleading because the language of DHS's purchase said it would need "up to" a certain amount.

Ahhhh....another catch-phrase: 'up to'.  Unfortunately, Butch, we're not buying it as easily as you're buying bullets. You see, all the 'up to's' add up to the 1.6B. It's just easy math. Throwing in big college words and agency lingo doesn't work on the American people. Some of us can actually do math.

Questions over DHS's big ammunition purchases have been bouncing around the right-wing blogosphere for months. But the story came to a head Friday after a video was posted to the website Infowars of Rep. Huelskamp saying at CPAC that he had expressed concerns to DHS over the purchase but received no response.In the letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, Huelskamp wrote that it had "become clear" that DHS was "purchasing vast quantities of ammunition" and that "estimates show that this ... would be enough for 24 Iraq wars." The Kansas congressman also said the timing of the purchase was "of great interest" because of gun control legislation currently being pushed by the Obama administration.

Ding, ding, ding - we have a winner.  And since they've been found out, here's what Butch's 'official' explanation is via her spokesdummy - get out your college dictionaries and How to Write Official BS Responses for Dummies book. 

"DHS routinely establishes strategic sourcing contracts that combine the requirements of all its components for commonly purchased goods and services such as ammunition," a DHS legislative affairs person wrote to Coburn. "These strategic sourcing contracts help leverage the purchasing power of DHS to efficiently procure equipment and supplies at significantly lower costs," the department told Coburn.

Basically, what he's trying to get you to believe is that government is efficient (lie #1) by buying everything at once at a discounted price to save you money (lie #2).  Is that why there's over $125B in fraud, waste, and abuse?

So hey, here's another interesting tidbit and more koolaid being circulated about these much-needed consolidating-all-DHS-agency-requirements-to-save-you-money bullet purchases:

Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga., told the Associated Press that the training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises.

A good portion of the 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition are being purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal government's second-largest criminal investigative agency. Yes that's the same ICE that is releasing detained criminal illegal aliens onto our streets because of sequestration cuts.

Jonathan Lasher, the Social Security Administration's assistant inspector general for external relations, explained the purchase of 174,000 hollow-point bullets by saying they were for the Social Security inspector general's office, which has about 295 agents who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes.

Man - social security fraud has become an all-out war so to speak. DHS stockpiling enough ammo for 24 Iraq Wars, the SSA stocking up on hollow-point bullets to investigate Nana Gertrude's social security checks. And then there's the mysterious, undefined 'other crimes', which is really what we should be worried about.

But there is one US Marine that's not buying these explanations either - 'buying' is a bad choice of words, I know...

However, as former Marine Richard Mason told reporters with WHPTV News in Pennsylvania recently, hollow-point bullets (which make up the majority of the DHS purchases) are not used for training because they are more expensive than standard firing range rounds .

"We never trained with hollow points, we didn't even see hollow points my entire 4-1/2 years in the Marine Corps," Mason said.

Say whuuuuuut? As Arte Johnson used to say on Laugh In - 'Veeeeery interesting'. So we're saving the taxpayer money buy purchasing in bulk, but unfortunately, what we're purchasing is more expensive than what we need but we're still saving you because we're buying the expensive stuff we don't need in bulk.

Here's a very simple explanation for all this mumbo jumbo, as posed by Freshman California Republican Doug LaMalfa.

LaMalfa offers one theory that's less sinister than some: The federal government is simply trying to corner the market on ammo and restrict what's available to the American people as part of its gun control efforts.

From the mouth of congressional babes.  Give that man a raise...but only after the sequester.