Can someone explain this...

[draco664]

...without using the words 'expecting', 'civil' and 'unrest'?

Link

Summary: The department of Social Security has placed a request for a quote to purchase 174 thousand rounds of hollow point ammunition to be delivered to 40-odd locations around the country.

[bara]

Sure, marksmanship is a wonderful past time for retirees.

[crashhelmet]

My best guess is the DHS either signed a new contract with Sig Sauer and the ammo is a result of it, or the purchase is due to an already existing contract.

Sig Sauer was awarded a huge contract back in 2004 to equip DHS with 65k handguns. Later contracts were agreed to for their DAK (Dual Action Kellerman) Trigger system. In the last 2 years, Sig Sauer was awarded contracts to equip the Air Marshalls with the P250, in .357 form. NCIS signed a new contract to replace their old P228s with P229s and P239s. Navy Seals have and will continue to carry the P226.

Police departments around the country have signed similar contracts with them.

As I said though, this is probably a new contract, which hasn't been publicized yet, or the result of an existing contract. Alex Jones and his cronies like to make mountains out of molehills, so this could be just that.

[Nekojin]

174 thousand rounds, divided between 40-odd locations, would be somewhere around 4k rounds per location. Private hobbyist shooters frequently buy their ammo in 1000+ round purchases just for target shooting. This doesn't appear to be anything to be particularly concerned about.

[Rapscallion]

174 thousand rounds, divided between 40-odd locations, would be somewhere around 4k rounds per location. Private hobbyist shooters frequently buy their ammo in 1000+ round purchases just for target shooting. This doesn't appear to be anything to be particularly concerned about.

If the report is accurate, these are hollow point rounds that are desinged to kill more effectively than a standard bullet. However, if you are shooting at a paper target, do you really need such powerful ammunition?

Also, this isn't a hobby shootist. It's a government department whose mandate is to shuffle paper and make sure they err when paying old people.

However, what struck me looking at that site is full of conspiracy theorists. The first advert to catch my eye was for their internal shop with a DVD about chemtrails. For the uninitiated, that's basically code for 'I am a fucking lunatic and will tell you about my paranoid delusions'.

Rapscallion

[Nekojin]

If the report is accurate, these are hollow point rounds that are desinged to kill more effectively than a standard bullet. However, if you are shooting at a paper target, do you really need such powerful ammunition?

Strictly speaking, hollow-point bullets are designed to stop people more effectively. Their design causes the bullet to "mushroom" when it hits, delivering the full kinetic force of the bullet to the target, while having a lower chance of a blow-through that could cause collateral damage on people behind the target. Let's face it - if you're shooting a gun at someone, you're already committing to the fact that you might kill them, and you've judged that lethal force is appropriate to the task at hand. It doesn't really matter if the bullets make them deader.

Also, this isn't a hobby shootist. It's a government department whose mandate is to shuffle paper and make sure they err when paying old people.

Sure, but when you're talking about "74 thousand rounds of ammo" and breaking it out by number of sites without any mention of how many people each site has, you're already setting up a strawman (not you personally, just the people foaming about it). If each site has 100 people, that's only 40 rounds per person. That sounds like a reasonable amount for someone to carry - a pistol-full, plus a few reload magazines.

I used the example of hobbyist shooters as a comparison, even though it's not a terribly apt comparison.

It's the power of Big Scary Numbers, devoid of context.

[Rapscallion]

Strictly speaking, hollow-point bullets are designed to stop people more effectively. Their design causes the bullet to "mushroom" when it hits, delivering the full kinetic force of the bullet to the target, while having a lower chance of a blow-through that could cause collateral damage on people behind the target. Let's face it - if you're shooting a gun at someone, you're already committing to the fact that you might kill them, and you've judged that lethal force is appropriate to the task at hand. It doesn't really matter if the bullets make them deader.

I think the point I was trying to make was that if you're target shooting, your ammo is likely to be cheaper than the swishest ammo out there. After all, paper targets don't need that much stopping.

I used the example of hobbyist shooters as a comparison, even though it's not a terribly apt comparison.

It's the power of Big Scary Numbers, devoid of context.

Not really. It's missing what the two groups do. What the hell does a bureaucracy need with ammunition in the first place? A hobbyist plugging targets at a range is going to need ammunition. A beancounter - not so much.

Rapscallion

[wolfie]

Sure, but when you're talking about "74 thousand rounds of ammo" and breaking out out by number of sites without any mention of how many people each site has, you're already setting up a strawman (not you personally, just the people foaming about it). If each site has 100 people, that's only 40 rounds per person. That sounds like a reasonable amount for someone to carry - a pistol-full, plus a few reload magazines.

Especially since police and military 9mm pistols frequently use 13 round magazines - that 40 rounds per person works out to 3 magazines (one in the pistol, 2 spares - a common "basic load") with 1 round left over.

40 locations (i.e. not even 1 depot per state) for DHS (how did Social Security get into this?) - it would not be unreasonable to have 100 officers served out of each location (Customs agents are DHS - at the border crossing I use most frequently, they have around a dozen booths. Assuming full manning for 1 shift, and half manning for the other 2, that's 24 officers for the preliminary inspection booths at ONE border crossing - pretty much a quarter of your assumed number of officers served by the depot, and since this is for New York there's another major land border crossing with Canada, 4 or 5 minor land crossings, plus the international airports (2 in NYC alone - Newark doesn't count since that would be served out of the NJ depot). If anything, your assumption about the number of officers served out of (don't necessarily need to be based at) each depot is on the small side (although NY would presumably have more officers than ND, so the rounds wouldn't be divided equally). Still, that many rounds works out to around 1 basic load each for around 4460k officers - DHS probably has at least that many officers, and with regular requalification on the range (probably use up at least 1 magazine per year, and using regular service cartridges in practice is both a recommended procedure for defensive rounds and eliminates the logistic issue of stocking both "practice" and "duty" ammunition), it sounds like they're buying a couple years worth at once.

Several years ago, on another (now-defunct) board I asked other users for info about how many rounds a standard box held for various types (typical shotgun, typical handgun, typical center-fire rifle, .22 rimfire), because there was a rash of stories in the media about "the following guns and X rounds of ammunition seized", and I wanted to be able to judge for myself whether it was "that works out to about 1 box for each caliber of gun" or "that's enough to have equipped a platoon hitting the beaches on D-Day".

[Andara Bledin]

Wow. A simple search with the terms "social security administration" and "ammunition" and Snopes pops up as the second response, below some blog and two steps above the Infowars post. They covered this three days ago, two days after the Infowars post went up.

The truth of the matter is that the ammunition is for standard use, and it's something that is done pretty much regularly. But obviously the people over at Infowars aren't going to let something like their purchasing history get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

Basically, the SSA has their own fraud investigation and enforcement arm. And, as with any investigation team of such a nature, they go out armed.

It's also worth noting that the hollow point is standard base ammunition for all enforcement agencies that go into the field armed, and that it is standard operating procedure for them to practice and be tested using the ammo that they will be using the field, so they do use hollow point ammo for target practice, as well as for use in qualifications testing.

^-.-^

[draco664]

Basically, the SSA has their own fraud investigation and enforcement arm. And, as with any investigation team of such a nature, they go out armed.

Thanks for that. I had no idea Social Security Administration had their own armed personnel. I had a mental image of seat-polishing beancounters. Well, live and learn.

Still... Is it really necessary for fraud investigators to be armed?

[daleduke17]

Thanks for that. I had no idea Social Security Administration had their own armed personnel. I had a mental image of seat-polishing beancounters. Well, live and learn.

Still... Is it really necessary for fraud investigators to be armed?

YES! Very yes. People on Social Security, mainly the ones defrauding it, generally don't like investigators.

[Andara Bledin]

Exactly.

Criminals tend to be less than nice when you're trying to take away their cushy little scams.

^-.-^

[daleduke17]

Exactly.

Criminals tend to be less than nice when you're trying to take away their cushy little scams.

^-.-^

Definitely why Agriculture Department agents are armed as well (or they get police assistance) when they validate measuring equipment (gas pumps, scales, etc).

[wolfie]

Read the Snopes article, and it looks like there's one thing fishy about the purchase - it's for .357 ammunition. I was under the impression that U.S. law enforcement had switched from .38 revolvers to 9mm autoloaders, neither of which can safely chamber and fire .357 ammunition.

Other than that, it looks like the "practice with what you'll carry" crowd got it right.

[crashhelmet]

Read the Snopes article, and it looks like there's one thing fishy about the purchase - it's for .357 ammunition. I was under the impression that U.S. law enforcement had switched from .38 revolvers to 9mm autoloaders, neither of which can safely chamber and fire .357 ammunition.

Other than that, it looks like the "practice with what you'll carry" crowd got it right.

They were using 9mm across the board until recently. The Air Marshalls switched to SIG .357 and the others have been following suit.