Article – An AR-15 ammunition factory built to supply the military shifted to commercial sales and is now tied to more than a dozen mass shootings

Posted on by

While The Times found that the “vast majority” of rounds sold from Lake City to retailers end up in the hands of law-abiding citizens, they have also shown up in a number of mass shootings.

Rounds from Lake City have been tied to at least a dozen mass shootings, including the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting, the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, and the 2017 Las Vegas Strip mass shooting, the deadliest in US history, the report says.

Gotta boil that water nice and slow so the frog doesn’t notice.

Its not enough to keep banging the drum about ‘assault weapons’ being bad. You have to keep that idea at the front of the public’s mind or you lose the narrative. So the media (or the people controlling them) keep the beat going….AR-15’s bad, AR-15 magazines bad, and now, AR-15 ammo bad. Do it long enough and hard enough and even the Fudds will start in with their ‘no one needs an AR15’ spiel. (Jim Zumbo has entered the chat.) [Sidenote: we now have .35 and .40 caliber rifle cartridges for using the AR as a hunting platform…so the notion of ‘not suitable for hunting’ has kinda evaporated. Although, honestly, an AR-10 has always been just fine for hunting.]

This is just more coordinated media manipulation to keep the fire burning that we need a 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: The Next Generation. As always, while you may not be able to prevent a ban you can be prepared for it. All it takes is resolute will and some money. Skip the jet skit, put off the new 72″ TV till next year, drive the clunker for another year…..take the money and buy what you need and what you think you’ll need.

Did LC ammo show up at ‘mass shootings’? Maybe. So what? LC probably cranks out millions and millions of rounds per year. The percentage of that ammo used in crimes? A fraction of a fraction of a percentage….just like ‘assault weapons’ themselves.

Go buy another AR. Go buy another dozen mags. Go buy another case of ammo. Even if they never ban them again you’ll still be ahead of the game just in terms of beating inflation and future price hikes.

20 thoughts on “Article – An AR-15 ammunition factory built to supply the military shifted to commercial sales and is now tied to more than a dozen mass shootings”

  2. Automobiles are involved in hundreds of thousands deaths – do we ban vehicles? Medical doctors have killed, murdered and harmed millions of patients through negligence and government ‘mandates’ – do we ban MDs?

  3. I can see it now, the next time someone runs over a bunch of protesters blocking the road the media will blame Goodyear for making the tires.

    • Surely it’s a mere coincidence that Warren’s bill and this pearl-clutching silliness about Lake City ammunition appeared at the same time?

  5. Sage commentary on that operation mockingbird news piece. Also good pep talk to the folks to deflect those distractions into tangible results actions to counter or mitigate any .gov tomfoolery with your 2A right. My crates and crates amounts of LC products are behaving themselves in their job positions without any negative attributes. Stellar product performances in all categories, highly recommended, hit that “BUY NOW” button and click up the quantity order button a few more notches as well. Bird in the hand, versus a bird in the bush analogy and all. Stay focused, stay super stocked, and stay frosty.

  6. Shocking that the Times unearthed that there is an economy of scale for ammunition production. I’m sure the military would prefer handcrafted rounds produced by artisans in tiny shops.

    I’m waiting for the story about how much greenhouse gasses are produced each year because of guns and ammo. A ban would slow global warming, for goodness sakes!

  8. Yeah, after it was proven that the Cadillac the drunk driver used to run over a pedestrian had a fresh tank of Exxon gasoline in it, a bill was thrown together to ban purchases of Exxon gasoline in excess of three gallons.

    UhHuhh! They did, Too!!

    • I will be very surprised if these weapons ever are fielded in any numbers. Especially with the ongoing issues with logistics and US/NATO support to Ukraine. We’re already having problems with producing sufficient amounts of “dumb” 155mm munitions for our artillery, for example, and are a couple of years out from a new plant going on line for basic HE projectiles, let alone increasing the production of precision 155mm projectiles like Excalibur.

      We had a serious issue with producing enough 5.56mm ammunition to deal with fairly low-intensity operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and were buying training ammunition from all around the globe (US commercial manufacturers, Israel, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, etc), eliminating the use of “combat packaging” (ammo cans, bandoleers and stripper clips, etc) on much of domestic production and we were still having problems delivering adequate ammunition to the combat users.

      We were even digging out, delinking and issuing 1944-production .50 BMG at one point for use in Barrett M107 rifles. And then being surprised (since the switchover had occurred before any of the senior leaders were even born) that there were problems with weapons rusting due to the ammo being loaded with corrosive primers that no one had been trained to clean properly after using.

      Just where all of this 6.8mm ammunition will be coming from is a question that has yet to be answered. Lake City will still need to be producing 5.56mm and 7.62mm for the majority of users in the armed forces, and there is simply not enough production capacity there to set up a 6.8mm line capable of producing enough ammo for both operational and training needs, never mind for a strategic reserve as well.

      And the multiple mothballed Army Ammunition Plants? They’ve all been scrapped long since, the facilities knocked down, the machinery scrapped or sold, and the sites sold off (usually at a huge loss) to private developers. We’re in much the same shape we were in 1937 or so, but without the industrial base to rapidly expand our arms industry the way that the US did in the early 1940s.

      If you use 5.56mm, stock up now as best you can, and look into training alternatives (.22LR conversions/trainers) and reloading to retain proficiency while saving the “combat-grade” stuff for a rainy day.

    • 3rd Man:
      You have to remember that it takes administrators (in uniform or not) at least fifty years to admit they messed up and move on.
      They have to wait until the corrupt individuals have retired and been replaced (with equally corrupt), or someone might get jail time!
      How long before they admit 6.8 isn’t much better? We’ll be long dead…

      Ceejay

      • I was just pointing out the irony of the US military saying the 5.56 is insufficient as military round, nothing more. Remember the “AR is weapon of war” according to the left, well maybe not so much anymore according to the US military. It will just be a civilian caliber in common use now, lol!!!

  10. One thing a lot of politicians do not realize is that it takes time to ramp up production, It is better to have a “warm” production line that can be sped up quickly rather than having a cold, mothballed facility where you have to inspect, repair, and rehabilitate equipment, It also lets you start with a core of trained and experienced workers rather than having to hire and train a new production force, That has been the problem with a lot of the desired increases in ammunition production.

    • Wer don’t even have the mothballed AAPs around any longer. They were all scrapped, torn-down and sold for ‘Peaceful uses” with zero thought given to the chance of future need. Nor do we have the industrial capability to rapidly build new ones.

      That there is slightly more civilian ammunition manufacturing capacity today than there was in 2000 or so is one of the few good things to come out of the Democrats war on gun ownership. The ammo famines under Obama did prompt some expansion of the manufacturing base.

      Likewise the attempts to ban the A15: suddenly every machine shop with idle machinery was getting into the AR business. Many of them quickly got out of the business as the market was soon glutted, especially after Trump was elected, but the tooling and machinists were usually still there and capable of getting back into production on short notice.

      Lower receiver forgings were the chokepoint — then and now — but “billet” lowers were and are a workaround there. I still regret not listening to the little voice in my head that said “0% lower receiver forgings for $10 each [in quantities of 10 or more I think it was]? I should buy a few hundred for a rainy day, I’ll always be able to sell them for at least that much or just barter with a small manufacturer: I give him 4 0% forgings in return for 1 100% finished lower.”

  11. buy what you think YOU need, then buy MORE for all the yahoos that didn’t. for every one of us there are thousands that have one loaded mag on hand. you can deride them for not having ammo later, after we win. make sure trusted people know so when you go down the ammo doesn’t go to waste or get captured by the regime.

Comments are closed.