Basically, ATK/Alliant Techsystems, a private company with huge government munitions contracts, offers military installation commanders the option of selling the used cartridge cases directly to ATK, allowing ATK to destroy the brass right on-site, using portable shredders. The shredded brass is, as mentioned earlier, worth only about a quarter the value of intact, once-fired cartridge cases. The reason installation commanders accept the deal anyway, despite it being such a ripoff to taxpayers, is that the proceeds go directly to that military installation's discretionary fund, rather than into the DoD budget.That's today's St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner. Worth a read, I hope.
Particularly offensive is the fact that in brochures making the sales pitch to base commanders (here's an overview of the program, and here's one specifically for Ft. Irwin, CA--both pdf files), one of the selling points used in advocating this approach is the very fact that the used cartridge cases will never be available on the civilian market. [More]
Stumble it!
3 comments:
What makes this even worse is that ATK is the parent company for Black Cloud, Blazer, CCI, Estate Cartridge, Federal Premium, Fusion, and Speer. Sounds to me like they want us buying their new factory ammo rather than reloading.
Maybe it's time for shooters to contact ATK directly and boycott their brands.
The boycott idea is worth considering, but the problem is the huge number of gun owners who aren't politically motivated enough to send a lousy email. Getting them to stop buying their favorite brand of ammo will probably be tough.
If the congressional option doesn't work out, that will probably be the next thing to try, but I'd like to see if we can get Congress to act first.
Hecate, I've updated the St. Louis GRE column--ATK is claiming it's all a misunderstanding. We'll see.
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