Should U.S. military firearms be 100% U.S.?

[otcconan]

You would be suprised by how much of our military equipment is made overseas. The government bought a bunch of Chinese Kevlar last year and Sen. Webb and Sen. Warner urged the appropriate committees to buy American (Dupont makes Kevlar in Richmond, VA). A lot of our computer stuff is made overseas and the new tanker plane was supposed to be made by a French company. Welcome to the global marketplace.

You must be referring to the Airbus contract.

Well, more Boeings crash than Airbuses.

I'd like to think that the brave men flying that tin can full of jet fuel are flying a safer plane.

 

[bigalexe]

ABSOLUTELY UNEQUIVOCALLY YES!

Anything bought and/or used by the United States Government in any branch whether it is Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, FBI, CIA, Department of Housing & Urban Development, Civilian Conservation Corp (If we still have it), or anything else needs to be 100% United States. That means United States raw materials which were processed and procured by American Workers, manufactured on United States soil in plants owned by United States based companies.

The ONLY Exception I draw is when the job calls for something to be specifically Not American, such as if the CIA is supplying covert agents in Nigeria then handing them S&W Revolvers and Remington Shotguns may be out of place.

The United States Government is a Democracy BY and FOR the people, this means when the government does something it should be BY and FOR the people!

... I should note that I am biased by being in the manufacturing trades.

 

[Slamfire]

Should U.S. military firearms be 100% U.S.?

Not only have we off shored our manufacturing, but foreign countries own a lot of our Treasury Securities. As of Dec 09, Japan holds 768 Billion, and China holds 755 Billion. These are the leaders out of a total of 3.6 Trillion in debt total that we owe to foreign countries.

http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

With that sort of debt obligations, how can we refuse to buy foreign weapons?

 

[heron]

Yes, I don't think you pay royalties to someone you are trying to kill.

"Um, sorry about your royalty check, but we spent that on ammunition. Would you care to receive some bullets? We can air-mail them . . . "

 

[C-grunt]

Our weapon plants might be owned by foreign companies, but they are run by Americans. If Beretta decided it was going to take back all of the machines during a war with Italy, Id think the US government would probably say no.

If we lose the sourse for the machining, Im sure we could reverse engineer it or make our own versions.

We buy a lot of overseas stuff because its cheaper, not because we cant do it ourselves. My grandfather worked for Haliburton for many years until he retired a while back. He always said the reason we use Arab oil is because it was cheaper. The US still has tons of oil in our borders.

The same could be said about many of our other materials.

 

[ozarkhillbilly]

If we would just reform our tax codes we could get back a large portion of our manufacturing base. If you look around there are lots of foreign manufactures here in the U.S. The American worker is the most productive in the world, it would not take us long to get this sector up and running. On the plus side is right now and for the foreseeable future there is not a military on the face of the earth that could face us in a full blown shooting war.