Police ammo prices soar due to war-caused shortage

Source: MN Post-Bulletin

Police ammunition is projected to double in price next year -- a development that has the Rochester Police chief joking that he'll use a "Barney Fife" strategy for cost-containment.

"Everybody gets one (bullet)," said Chief Roger Peterson.

Gallows humor, apparently, is how Peterson has decided to bite the bullet on the skyrocketing cost of what is arguably his department's most important supply.

Demand from two U.S. wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus generally rising metal prices are to blame, officials said.

The police department shoots more than 100,000 rounds per year, mostly in training.

Next year's ammunition budget is about $60,000, up from about $32,000 in 2007.

Read more: http://news.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=2&a=319661

Less chance of dying, but still a chance!!!

I'd hope it was 99.99999% in training.

The NYPD has had some incidents of spectacularly poor marksmanship.

:sarcasm:

In any gun thread you can guarantee some people, likely on the anti side, will draw the distinction between "trained professionals" like cops having guns and "regular folks".

Rochester has 130 sworn FT officers. I don;t know if the non-sworn guys get training or not, so let's be generous and say those 130 do all the training shooting. Let's also be generous and assume ALL the rounds fired are in training.

100,000 rounds - 130 FT sworn officers.

= <800 rounds A YEAR in training each.

Ask any even vanguely interested shooter hobbyist how many they fire. For me that was about two week's worth when I was practicing a lot, and no more than a month during down times. And I'm not that great or dedicated by the standards of many shooters.

isn't there a different objective with police when they shoot their guns and when a hobbyist shoots theirs?

It would seem, to me anyway, that when a policeman shoots his gun, he's aiming for any part of the body that will disable someone - the head, chest, or anything convenient.

A hobbyist would seem to want to hit a specific target, dead center, just to build up their accuracy.

It would make sense that hobbyists would shoot more, they want to be more precise. A cop just has to hit the target, pretty much anywhere.

It depends on my intended use of the weapon. I don't often fire my Ruger target .22 at human shapes, nor my .45 caliber M1911-A1 at roundels.

and I'd say your guess is mostly correct. There are many different kinds of hobbyist and many different things they each try to improve, but on the whole I'd say they are looking for precision yes. However most of the shooters I know who are even vaguely concerned with self defense shooting (whioch is pretty much any of them except the very specialized high end bullseye shooting folks with tricked out specialty guns) do plenty of quick/panic drill center of mass practice as well. Nobody sane is going to approach an imminent deadly threat with the desire to take a perfect stance, control breathing, sight very carefully and aim for a 1" target. It's just nice to know you CAN do that.

The main point though is that shooting is harder than it looks and an awful lot of it is muscle memory which is ingrained with a great deal of practice. Any slight misalignment of a barrel usually betwen 3 and 5" is going to mean you miss by a wide margin anything not right in front of you. It's important therefore to know exactly how the gun should feel and have your hands and wrist trained to get that alignment spot on under stressful conditions. I would imagine it's hard to do that on 800 rounds a year, unless you have had plenty of 20,000 round years before that. Some cops of course ARE practiced shooters as well. I'm just a bit worried about teh ones who aren't.

about a security guard at courthouse who hated guns. He hated them so much he told people he wasn't keeping any bullets in his gun because he didn't want an accident to happen.

well, one day the courthouse some lunatic breaks in, starts shooting at anyone in a suit (ie, lawyers) and the guard approaches him, holds his gun up and says 'freeze or I'll shoot' - and then pulls the trigger *click, click*

I never heard the end of the story. I wonder what happened with that guard.

but in that case I'm not too disappointed. Anyone who hates guns that much is unlikely to be a danger to only the attacker in the event he had been loaded.

Unfortuantely the decreasing prevalence of guns as a normal way of life for law abiding folks especially in urban settings has given us a generation of young cops who may not be that different from this guy.

Honestly anyone who goes to a range where cops practice or qualify (only the big departments have their own ranges as a rule) will be able to verify this when I tell you that it's not all that confidence inspiring to see.

put out more money

I could stretch my present ammunition stock to last about five years.

besides if they are paying $60K for 100,000 rounds even of typical LEO Ranger SXT (the successor to the infamous "Black Talon" which simply changed the case color and actually improved power a bit when they dropped the silly name to stop scaring the squeamish) then they need some purchasing help.

Assuming most cops are using 9mm it's easy to pick up Gold Dot +P, a very comparable round, for about half that.

I should have enough for a year or more at normal rates. Generally any shooter is likely to buy in bulk of at least 1000rd cases, and can usually find deals if you shop around.

Other issues too - not a huge amount of practice shooting beyond familiarization is using SD ammo like the hollowpoints the cops use. Ball ammo is much cheaper and ia 90%+ of most hobbyists' parcticing, And a huge number of shooters also reload their own, which is far cheaper still.

In other words the "gun nuts" seem to have more commercial sense than the LEO departments as well as more practice.

Our friends in the bank robbing business will have fewer "occupational hazards"...

care about anything else?

Also the tin foil covers from wine bottles.

primers, the government has an 18 month order,their taking them all. We meaning the US gov. was buying from Taiwan because domestic manufacturers couldn't meet demand for 556 Nato round. Anything with brass has pretty much doubled in price,and powder just keeps going up.Back before this fiasco started it cost about 9/10 cents a round now can't do it for under 20 cents a round.

I don't know about primers, and I no longer own a gun myself. But I know that in target practice there are such things as "bullet traps" that collect the spent bullets. And the cases are left in the weapon or ejected on the ground. So all that needs to be replaced is the primer and the powder.

Melting and re-casting the bullets is something an individual can do, and reloading is a simple process. And if the US government can get foreigners to provide primers, why can't police departments get together joint orders and get some primers from the Chinese? If they're good enough for Wal-Mart...and if the date rape drugs on the primers aren't ingested...

Sorry for the sarcastic turn, but this might be a real solution for th epolice.

melting and recasting bullets isn't like melting snow and making ice cubes, it takes a HOT fire to melt lead and special molds etc. and maybe you didn't read all my post the government is buying up everything!As for powder My SO showed me a can he bought at the beginning of this year $18 for a pound then the same he bought recently $27 for the exact same thing IF you can find it.So while it may sound simple it's not really.