The big gaping hole in the Politifact story, your source for this "debunking" is with the numbers and how they are juggled to provide a supposed logical explanation for this ammunition purchase.
- Where the story at Politifact really loses credibility (and I'm not talking about the fact that you can't comment on the story, a standard Politifact method to prevent any opposing info to their claims) is with how it avoids asking the question about "practice" rounds versus live fire or live use rounds.
Is there any actual evidence that they would not use standard ammo in training? What exactly would they use instead?
Those are good questions and they are answered previously -- showing that bid solcitiations specify or differentiate between Training Ammunition and Duty Ammunition, and then also the bid solicitation that has a dedicated shipment to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
The contract is not for 450 million. That's just the upper end of the availability. The actual amount ordered is likely to be much lower.
But as I already pointed out, in order for ATK to perform on the contract, ATK has to manufacture 450 Million rounds. I don't profess to be knowledgeable in the manufacture of ammunition, but I dare say it takes more than a day to make 1 Million rounds, or 500,000 rounds.
Since 1913 the U.S. Dollar has lost 95% to 98% of it's purchasing power the real decline didnt begin until the end of the bretton woods agreement and Nixons finally removing all pegging of the dollar to Gold. It's coming to it's natural end.
I fail to see how that is even remotely relevant to this discussion here.
If you mean the British Pound yes it's 317 years old and you view it as a success, but success is relative, The British pound was defined as 12 ounces of silver, so it's worth less than 1/200 or 0.5% of its original value. In other words, the most successful long standing currency in existence has lost 99.5% of its value, it too will need to be replaced.
It would be grossly unfair if I did not mention that one of my undergraduate degrees is a BA in Economics.
In the 18 year period 1984-2002, the value of the British Pound Sterling declined 49%.
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/c...3/rp03-082.pdf
Accordingly, I'm not really sure why anyone would be fawning over Britain's federal reserve, oh, sorry, I mean central bank.
If history has taught us anything is that Human are capable of a wide range of behaviors.
Indeed, but to expound on that, during any time of civil strife para-military units are more likely to commit atrocities against civilians than military units.
And local law enforcement and DHS and its subordinate agencies are para-military units.
You can look at Chris Browning's Ordinary Men: Police Battalion 101 about civilian police in Hamburg (Germany) who were also military reservists that were called up to active duty during WW II. They were sent to the Central Government -- the agency that administered controlled territories in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and parts of Belarus. They committed numerous atrocities not only against Jews, but also against local civilian populations -- atrocities that regular German army units would not commit. You can also look at the former Yugoslavia, South Africa and any number of other countries that have had some form of strife in the last 60-70 years or so for examples. Romania is another, where the army refused to fire on crowds of civilians, but the para-military secret police had no qualms whatsoever -- and did gun down civilian demonstrators.
I'm also a disabled veteran. I don't fear the military or national guard, but I do fear para-military organizations, like the local police, and like DHS and its subordinates, precisely because of the history of para-military action.