Silence of the Homelands: Why is DHS stockpiling guns and ammunition?

Published time: March 23, 2013 09:01

The Department of Homeland Security has plans to buy enough ammunition to fight the equivalent of a 24-year Iraq War – on US territory – and even US congressmen don’t understand why.

Smack in the middle of the smoking gun-control debate, and despite deep spending cuts across the American heartland, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants to buy 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next five years.

Reports began surfacing in April, 2012 that the DHS, a government agency created in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, had begun arming itself to the teeth. Now, several US congressmen are attempting to get some answers, but so far they have been greeted by a deafening silence.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), Congressman Timothy Huelscamp said the DHS has refused to answer questions from “multiple” members of Congress regarding the plans.

“They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer that,” Huelscamp told Infowars and We Are Change reporter Luke Rudkowski on Friday.

Huelscamp then questioned the stockpiling of bullets at a time when government offices around the country have been forced to tighten their belts as part of the so-called sequestration.

“It comes down to during the budget process, during the appropriations process, are we willing to hold DHS’s feet to the fire,” the Republican asked. “We’re going to find out… I say we don’t fund them until we get an answer.”

Recently, Californian Congressman Doug LaMalfa and 14 other House members wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, in which they suggest that the bullet hoarding is designed to create a shortage of ammunition in the country.

“The extraordinary level of ammunition purchases made by Homeland Security seems to have, in states such as my own, created an extreme shortage of ammunition to the point where many gun owners are unable to purchase any,” LaMalfa wrote.

The congressman asked if the purchases are being conducted in a manner that “strategically denies the American people access to ammunition.”

Peggy Dixon, spokesperson for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, attempted to tamp down the suspicions, telling the Associated Press that training facilities overseen by Homeland Security use as many as 15 million rounds annually, mostly on target practice and training exercises.

Yet everybody from critics to congressmen to conspiracy theorists say the numbers, as well as the government agencies lining up for the ammunition, just don’t make sense.

For example, much of the 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition will go to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal government's second-biggest crime investigative department. Incidentally, ICE is now releasing detained criminal illegal aliens onto US streets due to the wave of budget cuts.

FULL STORY: http://rt.com/usa/us-homeland-security-bullets-congress-703/