Used Brass

[Vyrone]

Don't know if this is true, but just received this in a e-mail:

PROOF THAT WE HAVE SOME IDIOTS IN WASHINGTON


This is totally crazy and it should make you want to slap the idiots we have in Washington DC .

Georgia Arms is the 5th largest retailer of .223 Ammo in America . They sell 9mm, .45, .223 ammunition. They normally buy spent brass from the US Department of Defense. Spent brass is "one time used" shell cases used by our Military for training purposes.

They buy the brass, recondition it, and then reload the brass for resale to Law Enforcement, Gun Clubs, Gun Shops, and stores like Wal-Mart. They normally buy 30,000 lbs of spent brass at a time.

This week the DoD wrote a letter to the owner of Georgia Arms and informed him that from now on the DoD will be destroying the spent brass, shredding it. It will no longer be available to the ammo makers, unless they buy it in a scrap shredded condition (which they have no use for).

The shredded brass is now going to be sold by the DoD to China as scrap metal, after the DoD pays for it to be shredded. The DoD is selling the brass to China for less money than the ammo makers have been paying, plus the DoD has to pay to have the brass shredded and do the accounting paperwork.

This sure helps the economy now doesn't it? Sell cheaper to China , and do not sell at all to a proven US business. Any hidden agenda working here? Obama going after the Firearms Industry and our ammunition!!
The Georgia Arms owner even related a story that one of his competitors had already purchased a load of brass last week. The DoD contacted him this week and said they were sending someone over to make sure it was destroyed. Shell cases he had already bought!

The brass has no value to the ammo maker if it is destroyed/shredded/melted.
The ammo manufacturer only uses the empty brass cases to reload different calibers, mainly .223 bullets.

The owner of Georgia Arms says that he will have to lay off at least half of his 60 workers, within 2-3 months if the DoD will no longer sell spent brass cases to the industry. Georgia Arms has 2-3 months of inventory to use, by summer they're out.

If the Reloading Industry has to purchase new manufacture brass cases, then the cost of ammunition will double or even triple, plus Obama wants to add a 500% tax on each shell.

You can read the information and see the DoD letter to Georgia Arms here:
The Shootist Site The Shootist: DOD Ends Sale of Expended Military Brass to Remanufacturers

If you're not outraged at what this administration is doing you should be! Be Afraid! Be Very Very Afraid! Get involved! It's Your Freedom and Our Country They're Stealing! If You Fail to Act Now, there may not be a Free United States tomorrow!

I implore you to get involved and forward this to as many people as you can. Contact your legislators and put them on notice, We're fed up with what's going on in the name of stimulating our economy!

[Red Hat]

It was true but they rescinded the order over a year ago. However some Installation Commanders are still requiring surplus brass to be demilled.

Surplus U.S. Military Brass Remains Available — Mutilation Orders Reversed AccurateShooter.com Bulletin

March 18, 2009
Surplus U.S. Military Brass Remains Available — Mutilation Orders Reversed
Filed under: Bullets, Brass, Ammo,News — Tags: Brass, DEMIL, DOD, Surplus — Editor @ 10 am

Over the past few days, there has been a storm of controversy surrounding sales of surplus U.S. military cartridge brass. The concern arose because DOD Surplus, LLC had announced to wholesale brass purchasers that future shipments of spent cartridge cases would have to be “mutilated” and sold as scrap metal. (DOD Surplus, LLC sells surplus brass under a contract with the Department of Defense.)

Shooters nationwide, fearing that surplus U.S. military brass would no longer be available, protested loudly to members of Congress and Department of Defense officials.

We are pleased to report that the “mutilation” requirement has been rescinded, and vendors such as Georgia Arms and GI Brass will continue to sell reloadable surplus cartridge cases obtained from the U.S. military.

[Bighouse Doc]

Old news.

-Doc

[jtg452]

Old news and the order only stayed in effect about 1 business day.

Under the Bush Administration, a new protocol was put into place to tighten up the surplussing of discarded military items in order to keep potentially useful military items out of the hands of potential terrorists. Some bureaucrat at DOD that didn't know any better changed the designation of used brass without knowing the full ramifications of the change (like the fact that most LEO agencies in the US rely on remanufactured ammo based on cheap mil-surplus brass for training and doing away with it would bring training to a stand still). You can probably find him hanging out of a McDonald's drive-thru window considering the firestorm his decision caused.

When it came down to the major regional ammo remanufacturers like GA Arms, they had to cancel all their contracts with the local, state and Federal LEO agencies for practice ammo. Some, like Ga Arms, told them why they couldn't fill that 250,000 round order due to be delivered at the end of the month (a real example, I just don't remember which training facility it was with) and sent them a copy of the fax they received to explain why. The news percolated up the food chain to Washington from various regional offices until it got high enough in the bureaucracies that somebody's boss had somebody high in the DOD food chain on speed dial and used it to raise some hell. In my opinion, there was probably more than one call such as this made since there's so many LEO agencies on so many different levels involved.

At the same time, the civilian market got wind of it (complete with a copy of the fax sent to the ammo suppliers) and got on the phone, internet or in their cars to get in contact with their Senators and Representatives to raise some hell over the decision. The folks over in Montana have 2 VERY pro gun Senators (the senior one is on the Appropriations Committee, if I remember correctly, and may even have a chairmanship of the committee) who BOTH signed a fax raising hell about the decision that was sent to the DOD a little after 5 pm the day the faxes were sent out.

By about 6 pm Eastern, the order was rescinded and everything went back to normal.

[Vyrone]

Thanks for the update. We get all types of things off the internet and we do not know how old or new or true the news is. Thanks to these forums there are knowledgeable people that have the correct info.

[Dr Dave]

Wait, we have some idiots in Washington!? That's even older news than the the DoD/.223 thing :)