Underestimating the difficulty

ATK just won a contract to supply up to 450 million rounds of .40 S&W hollow point ammo to the Department of Homeland Security.

I first heard about this on the Glenn Beck radio show this morning. As Beck said, “That must mean they think that 150 million of us will need to be shot twice.”

If the plan were to shoot nearly everyone in this country they are seriously underestimating the difficulty if they think they will only need 450 million rounds. Hence I have to conclude they don’t have such a plan or if they do it demonstrates a catastrophic failure of their victim selection process.

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9 thoughts on “Underestimating the difficulty

  1. If you divide that by the 50 rounds used in the typical officer involved shooting that’s only enough for 9 Million of us.

  2. If someone expects to be able to shoot 150 million of us, or even 9 million of us, they’re going to need ALL of the ammo– not a puny little 450 million rounds of pistol ammo. They’d need to bring out the really heavy stuff, and those kinds of assets are vulnerable.

  3. @Grendel, If it takes 50 rounds per victim then that means most victims are still functional after the first few shots. And that means that the victims will have time to return fire. Hence a lot of those “50 rounds per” are going to end up in the hands of the intended victims. Hence they won’t have the capacity for 9 million. Which means they have a catastrophic failure of the victim selection process on their hands.

    @Lyle, The 150 number comes from 450 million rounds minus 300 million people in the U.S. Hence the conclusion, by Beck, was that 300 million were to be murdered with one shot and 150 million would take two shots.

  4. Grendel, I love your name! Are you a member at the Grendel 6.5 forum?

    I’d like to see how many rounds the Dept. of Homeland Security has expended since its conception. Is this for FEMA, TSA, Coast Guard, INS, Border Partrol, DHS, Air Marshals, Secret Service, etc.? Does DHS buy for the FBI and CIA in the bid process?

    It would be informative to know the numbers of personnel who carry and qualify every year. DHS has something like 200,000 employees. Are 10% active weapons users? If so, that equates to 22,500 rounds each, over 5 years. Thats less than 5000 rounds/year, which is actually fewer than I shoot myself.

  5. This contract is not that unusual, as far as Federal contracts go. One year, with options for 4 more, for a maximum round count of 450 million over 5 years.
    Will not get to be that many, most likely. DHS provides ammo for all their LE departments and agencies, which personnel number in the tens of thousands, who all must qualify quarterly, and who all presumably get an allowance of practice ammo.

    In short, this contract does not worry me.

  6. I have a Glock in .40 S&W, allegedly for competition, but mainly because that’s what the police here use.

    In the event of a sh*t-storm, I figure the law-breaking badge-wearers will be acting as my unpaid ammo-bearers.

  7. 450KK rounds, eh? That’s a lot of surplus ammo to go on the market when the TSA is dis-armed and disbanded by Executive Order on 012113….ought to bring the price down a bit…who is TDK anyway? Looking through my stuff, I don’t have any of their hulls, and I have plenty of hulls.

  8. Hmm. Let’s do the Math. ATK (which owns Federal) says it’s 450 Million of 180 grain HST. So we know it’s not gonna be Ball for practice. But they could have someone in the Bureaucracy with Brains who says one should practice with the Load that you carry. But that breaks down to an average of 90 million rounds a year. If the majority of Pistols DHS uses are Glock 22s, then that means each DHS person gets 45 rounds (one 15 round magazine in the Pistol w/2 reloads). So, that means they have to initially feed 2 Million Glocks for 1 year, if NO shots are ever fired. But we would have heard that DHS owned 2 Million Glocks. Just for discussion, let’s say DHS has 50,000 Glock 22s. Multiply each Pistol by 45 (for a Duty Load), that means 2,250,000 stays on the Belt. 90 million minus 2,250,000 equals 87,750,000 rounds left over. That means there are 1,755 rounds of Spare Ammo per Glock per year. If they have to qualify every quarter, that leaves 438.75 rounds for practice and quals, per quarter. Then add in 45 rounds per pistol at the end of the year for “Freshness”, the numbers are well within the range of a Good LEO training program. Then the whole thing starts all over every year.

    Granted, that doesn’t count any H+K .40 S+W Submachine Guns DHS may still have, nor does it take into account any “Baby Glocks” (or even those Agencies who may not use Glocks), nor does it take into account if they are stockpiling “Just in Case,” nor those Agencies who are Notorious for saying “Yeah, we Qualified”, but no one’s hit the Range in 5 years, but you get the point. It just looks like someone in the DHS Bureaucracy is trying to upgrade/ensure that FireArms standards are at a “Good” level. Which is unlike a lot of Police Depts. who only fire their weapons once a year, yet who claim they are the “Only Ones” who are “Trained” well enough to have a Pistol.

    Now if DHS announced that all TSA Agents were to be Armed w/o going through FLETC, THEN I’d be worried. But this just sounds like someone is actually doing their Job.

  9. Don’t forget that DHS runs FLETC. It also includes the Coast Guard, and has under its purview the Border Patrol, Secret Service, and Federal Air Marshals; the latter three agencies are not known for skimping on their training ammo budgets.

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