peacebutready
Member
There's a video stating the irs bought 5 million rounds of ammo. What kind of pistol ammo did they buy?
Ammo purchases by gov agency?
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CoalCrackerAl
Member
Don't believe everything you see in these videos.
Chuck R.
Member
Get a number divide it by the number of armed agents they're authorized, then factory in training, and at least one annual qualification.
Then stop loosing sleep over chit like this.
According to this, they have a little over 2000 armed agents and spend about $675K annually on ammo:
That comes to about $375 per agent annually...
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but my screwing around ammo budget dwarfs that amount.
Then stop loosing sleep over chit like this.
According to this, they have a little over 2000 armed agents and spend about $675K annually on ammo:
No need to panic: The IRS buys guns and ammo every year for criminal investigations
It has recently been reported in the news that the IRS spent $725,000 on ammunition this year. It has resulted in a lot of speculation by our political leaders and
www.therogersvillereview.com
That comes to about $375 per agent annually...
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but my screwing around ammo budget dwarfs that amount.
I know that government agencies are different from the US military. But I will use an example of US Army brigades. The average Army brigade consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops. The Army did semi-annual weapons qualifications when I was in for all troops. Some units will spend more time on the ranges than other units.
For a brigade that only shoots twice a year that is between 240,000 and 400,000 rounds per year if everyone in the brigade shoots/qualifies with the M16 or M4. Everyone shoots 40 round during each qualification with the M16/M4.
For pistols each solder fires 30 round per qualification, which is 60 rounds per year per soldier times the number of soldiers issued a pistol.
I don't know what the IRS qualification requirements are. But let's say they are required to qualify twice a year and are also required to shoot 30 round per qualification. For 2,000 agents, that comes out to 120,000 rounds fired just for biannual qualifications and doesn't count practice sessions or the amount of ammo used/carried on a daily basis. Let's say that each agent carries three 15 round magazines daily, that is another 90,000 rounds.
For a brigade that only shoots twice a year that is between 240,000 and 400,000 rounds per year if everyone in the brigade shoots/qualifies with the M16 or M4. Everyone shoots 40 round during each qualification with the M16/M4.
For pistols each solder fires 30 round per qualification, which is 60 rounds per year per soldier times the number of soldiers issued a pistol.
I don't know what the IRS qualification requirements are. But let's say they are required to qualify twice a year and are also required to shoot 30 round per qualification. For 2,000 agents, that comes out to 120,000 rounds fired just for biannual qualifications and doesn't count practice sessions or the amount of ammo used/carried on a daily basis. Let's say that each agent carries three 15 round magazines daily, that is another 90,000 rounds.
A shooting bud of mine was a Security Guard at Oak Ridge National Lab. He mentioned shooting fully automatic M4's for practice with Federal Gold Medal match 223 ammunition. All the Guards were put through these shooting classes/practice to keep their proficiency up.
He also saw an out of battery slamfire in a M4 with this factory ammunition. Maybe more than one. When the bolt is out of battery, the firing pin cannot touch the primer. When the bolt goes into battery, the firing pin is free to rebound off the primer, and you can verify that by examining the dent on your primer. How the weapon slamfires out of battery is the firing pin rebounds off the primer when the bolt is in battery. Primer ignition is delayed a little bit, and in that period the carrier rebounds, unlocking the bolt. Out of battery slamfires are very rare in AR's, much rarer than Garands, M1a's, M1 carbines, or Ruger mini 14's, but they do happen.
And when you have a squad of guys burning thousands of round each, per day, sometimes rare things happen.
He also saw an out of battery slamfire in a M4 with this factory ammunition. Maybe more than one. When the bolt is out of battery, the firing pin cannot touch the primer. When the bolt goes into battery, the firing pin is free to rebound off the primer, and you can verify that by examining the dent on your primer. How the weapon slamfires out of battery is the firing pin rebounds off the primer when the bolt is in battery. Primer ignition is delayed a little bit, and in that period the carrier rebounds, unlocking the bolt. Out of battery slamfires are very rare in AR's, much rarer than Garands, M1a's, M1 carbines, or Ruger mini 14's, but they do happen.
And when you have a squad of guys burning thousands of round each, per day, sometimes rare things happen.
Jim Watson
Member
With Federal primed Federal ammunition, you bet.
peacebutready
Member
I wonder if they practice with the same ammo they carry. That would be mostly wasteful.
Old Dog
Member
The Hanford Nuclear Site up here has guards that get to shoot a lot. They have their own competition team and typically place pretty high in a lot of the state/regional shoots, they're practically paid to do nothing but shoot. Other than those guys that guard nuke sites, one suspects the rest of the federal agencies are super-cheap when it comes to buying ammo.
I saw one of the original articles expressing outrage about how much ammo the IRS was buying and pretty much laughed. They don't seem to shoot that much, so for 2,000 armed personnel, that ammo budget is in no way out of line.
In most law enforcement agencies, it's not just the rounds per qual course, as some departments have different courses of fire and actually afford their officers some warm up rounds and typically a few drills before getting to the required qual course. For example, our handgun qual was 50 rounds, but we typically ran a fifty-round warm up and then several drills using at least 50 rounds each prior to the qual. I always planned on at least 300 rounds per student for the pistol (124 grain FMJ such as American Eagle, duty round was 124 +P Gold Dot),100 rounds for the carbine (55 grain 5.56 FMJ, American Eagle or equivalent, even though the duty round was 62 grain Federal) and 25 for the shotgun (used 7 1/2 shot cheap stuff, duty was Federal LE 00). Semi-annual quals, typically at least three/four classes per month of 10-12 personnel for nine months out of the year (no classes during weeks with holiday weekends).
Highly doubtful. I don't know of any LE agency that does this, way too costly. One suspects the fed bean-counters are even more budget-conscious than most state/local departments. Usually once a year, in my last agency, we'd rotate our department's stock of duty ammo in the armories (only because we had to justify buying our ammo for the next fiscal year, it's not like the ammo goes bad) and have an in-service qual class shoot up the oldest boxes of JHP on hand; every now and then we'd do an instructor update and re-cert and shoot up some of the old stuff as well.
I was the primary firearms instructor for an office of about 200 agents (at the end of my career) for my last 10 years. Quarterly qualifications and training for an agent that carried only one handgun was about 1000 rds a year. Agents were also authorized 100 rds a month for practice. Not everyone took advantage of this. So an agent with one gun was entitled to 2200 rds a year. So that was 440,000 rds for the office to qualify and train 200 agents.
Add to that agents who qualified with 2 guns, shotgun qualifications and training, sub gun quals and training, rifle quals and training that easily exceeds over 500,000 rds a year for 200 agents. The agency I worked for has over 5000 agents now. That becomes a lot of ammo for an agency. Add to that instructor courses, courses to become qualified with a sub gun or rifle and it easily becomes maybe 15 million rds for one agency.
My agency was big on firearms training. Other agencies might do as much.
We had very few people that had problems qualifying.
That depends. I know of federal, state and local agencies that require use of service ammo all the time. I know of agencies that authorize use of service equivalent ammo.
When I was running a firearms program it depended on what the rules were at the time. At times I was allowed so many rounds per agent. Other times I was given a dollar figure. I found I could order 3 cases of 9mm NATO for 2 cases of service ammo. I'd order the 9mm NATO so I can have more ammo for training.
My wife and I are part of a group that volunteer with our Sheriff's Department. Normally we are added manpower when searching for missing persons or during natural disasters such as tornadoes and floods. We don't carry guns nor have arrest powers although the Sheriff does have the authority to give us those powers in an emergency. I don't ever see that happening.
Sometimes they ask us to help with other things. Last week they were doing a hostage rescue training exercise and needed people to role play the hostages. I along with 5 others volunteered for that. They had two 6-man teams and 2 other officers playing the role of the hostage takers for a total of 14 officers. They went through 15,000 rounds of training ammo in 2 days. That was a little over 1000 rounds each.
I'd never seen this before, but this stuff has to be more expensive than live ammo. This had to be an expensive drill. They had to use special training pistols to fire the 9mm ammo. They had to replace the bolts in AR's to fire it. It was basically a paintball round. And as you can see I got hit by one of the good guys during one of the drills.
Sometimes they ask us to help with other things. Last week they were doing a hostage rescue training exercise and needed people to role play the hostages. I along with 5 others volunteered for that. They had two 6-man teams and 2 other officers playing the role of the hostage takers for a total of 14 officers. They went through 15,000 rounds of training ammo in 2 days. That was a little over 1000 rounds each.
I'd never seen this before, but this stuff has to be more expensive than live ammo. This had to be an expensive drill. They had to use special training pistols to fire the 9mm ammo. They had to replace the bolts in AR's to fire it. It was basically a paintball round. And as you can see I got hit by one of the good guys during one of the drills.
That is simunition training ammo that is non lethal. This type of ammo is generically called simunition even though there are more companies that make it besides Simunition. And yes that stuff is definitely more expensive and will also require adapters depending on the firearm they are used in. This stuff works quite well when you need to make training as realistic as possible without using lethal ammo. Though the blue bullets still hurt when you get hit though.
Chuck R.
Member
I've used it in force on force training. It has a does have a "sting" and adds a level of realism to the training.
I have used it too and it definitely stings more than good quality airsoft guns. And it does add a level of realism not available with blanks.
Carl N. Brown
Member
I would hope at least some of the practice would be with carry ammo.
Just in case there is a difference in weapon peformance, POI especially.
I would prefer that all practice be with the same ammo issued for carry.
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That is not always financially feasible, especially for small agencies. FMJ training ammo is normally cheaper that duty ammo.
theotherwaldo
Member
I'm more concerned with which bureaucrats are being armed (and why) than how much ammo is issued to them... .
I remembered a time when Federal was going to offer mil spec sensitivity (that is less sensitive) rifle primers. Never saw one.
Slamfires still happen with mil spec primers, they are just less frequent.
We used guns chambered specifically for simulation ammo. You couldn't chamber a live round in them.
We used adaptors when I was in the Army for simunition.
It's been some time since I was in National Guard and Reserves but training costs were a big issue. There were minimum requirements but there was flexibility in scheduling what type of training was needed by a unit. One unit might spend some of these flexible dollars into small arms training. Another unit might spend more on mortar training.
There were times those training dollars could save a lot of money. Need a new bridge on a military installation call out the engineers. They get trained and the bridge only cost materials.
IIRC NYNG Engineers built a training facility for NYPD at the range at Rodman's Neck.
Army Reserve and National Guard units are different when compared to Active duty units when it comes to training and budgets. And yes it will also depend on the type of unit too. Combat Engineer and Infantry units will spend more time on the ranges than Armor, Field Artillery or supports units will.
The very first unit I was assigned to was the only rail road battalion in the entire US Military. My company did nothing but track repair/maintenance of way work. My platoon was all engineers (combat and construction) and we provided engineer support for the entire Army Reserve transportation brigade that we were part of. My platoon got more range time that the rest of the brigade.
Even after I reclassed from an engineer to machinist, I was still assigned mostly to engineer battalions. And every person from the line troops to motor pool and clerks all spent quite a bit of time on the ranges. My last unit was the 557th Main. Co., NTC Support Bn at Fort Irwin/NTC. Being third shop we only went to the range 2-4 times a year, twice for qualifications.
The very first unit I was assigned to was the only rail road battalion in the entire US Military. My company did nothing but track repair/maintenance of way work. My platoon was all engineers (combat and construction) and we provided engineer support for the entire Army Reserve transportation brigade that we were part of. My platoon got more range time that the rest of the brigade.
Even after I reclassed from an engineer to machinist, I was still assigned mostly to engineer battalions. And every person from the line troops to motor pool and clerks all spent quite a bit of time on the ranges. My last unit was the 557th Main. Co., NTC Support Bn at Fort Irwin/NTC. Being third shop we only went to the range 2-4 times a year, twice for qualifications.
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