I think it’s fun that the tinfoil hat brigades of the internet have gotten up in arms about federal agencies purchasing “large” amounts of ammunition. It’s especially fun when they define 147,000 rounds as “large” amounts. Let’s face it, many of us know individual citizens with at least that much ammo stored in their basement, hideout, bunker, or other secure, undisclosed location where they plan to wait out the end of the world. When you have an quarterly firearms training requirement for a couple hundred people, +/- 200,000 rounds just isn’t going to last that long. And it’s definitely not going to be enough to wage a shadow war against our fellow citizens. It’s cute that some people are just that paranoid, though.

Let’s ponder this for a moment… If the United States Government were really planning to wage war in the streets against its own citizens, don’t you think that maybe, just maybe they’d have ordered the ammo on some kind of “secret” contract instead of by posting it right there on the internet for every contractor in the country to see? For the record, they would have probably ordered more than 100 sets of riot gear, too, but I’m trying to stay just a little focused.

Look, a little paranoia isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s healthy to ask questions in a constitutional republic, but it’s not healthy to see a conspiracy that includes millions of run of the mill working stiffs at every turn. At that point, you start making the shift from concerned citizen to crazy coot and that’s never pretty. Like TMZ, sure it’s good for entertainment value, but it’s not exactly what I’m going to consider hard news. Yeah, I’m looking at you here, Infowars.

P.S. And before someone raises the question of the millions of rounds ordered by Homeland Security, go ahead and do the math on the number of armed guards they have who are also required to do quarterly firearms training and you’ll find that the per capita number of rounds ordered isn’t particularly alarming either, but hey, thanks for playing.