With Friends Like These

Who needs enemies?

ATK is the parent company of such popular commercial ammunition brands as Black Cloud, Blazer, CCI, Estate Cartridge, Federal Premium, Fusion, and Speer. They also own the famous Lake City Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri, where they manufacture military ammunition under a variety of hugely-lucrative government contracts.

Now, as Kurt Hofmann points out here, ATK is promoting destruction of once-fired military brass rather than allowing it to be sold to the reloading market. They actually claim that allowing once-fired brass to be used for reloading by civilians is illegal:

"One problem that has become more and more evident, is the public response to the purchase of spent brass. Public sales are readily available via the internet. This type of sale allows military grade cases to be reloaded and sold on the commercial market. This practice with Gov't issued ammunitions is strictly against the specs of the demilitarization Manual.

"DOD4160.21M1 states that all small caliber ammunition must be deformed or burned prior to public sale."

Yes, the document referenced, DoD 4160.21M1, does say ammunition must be deformed or burned. But spent brass is classified as DEMIL Code E and fully allowable for sale as-is under the same waiver it qualified for prior to the DoD effort a year or so ago to classify it DEMIL Code B and ineligible for the waiver.

The worst part of ATK's misleading campaign to military organizations is the attitude they display in their literature:

"To PREVENT anyone from using your scrap ammunition components for non-military purposes."

and

"Currently handling brass scrap for ATK Lake City -- for sole purpose of recycling material and preventing any reloading of spent cases by the public with military grade brass."

Sounds like more of that "Only Ones" mentality to me.

ATK claims the demilled cases will be melted down and made into new cases for military use only. The unintended consequence will be the loss to the civilian ammunition market of huge quantites of quality, affordable, reloadable brass.

Or is it an unintended consequence? ATK's civilian-market subsidiaries sell factory loaded ammunition for the most part, and loss of reloading components will force more people to buy factory ammo rather than reloading in any useful volume. It will also drive the cost of factory ammo up even more than the current astronomical level. "Cheap" practice hardball in .45 ACP has doubled in price since Obama was elected -- if you can find any.

Hmm, it now looks like the weight of public opinion has been felt by ATK. We can't afford to let up the pressure. Those who would profit from creating scarcity (where have we heard that before?) need to be on notice that we're paying attention and will not tolerate such behavior.

And please remember November is coming. The Evil Democratic Party stranglehold on the legislative process must be dismantled. The Stupid Republican Party needs to field some real candidates that aren't just RINOs. Pay attention, get involved, and VOTE.