Praise the Lord, Where’s the Ammunition?

They can probably blame the procurement process at some level. This story stoked my curiosity so I looked around on teh internets...it's actually surprising how little the price of .45 ACP and .223 Remington (close to the 5.56mm military round) has gone up since I last had reason to check ammo prices ~20 years ago - and yeah, growing up in Maine you do actually concern yourself with such things.

Come to think of it, the military doesn't even use .45 ACP anymore outside of maybe a few special forces guys. I'm surprised there's a run on that.

In some countries, police don't need or carry guns.

How do they shoot people?

BigGuy wrote:

In some countries, police don't need or carry guns.

How do they shoot people?

Livetotravel wrote: And, some countries do not have armed forces

Such as? Ok, I think the Principality of Monaco doesn't have an army as such (it has 3 coastguard boats and a set of guards for the Prince) but even it has defense arrangements with France.

pitu wrote: I don't think it's the particular caliber, but more of a tonnage supply issue of brass and whatever metal goes into whatever they are using.

That may be part of it, but as I said ammo prices in the civilian market have hardly gone up at all in the last 20 or so years when you factor in inflation. And that's with (sometimes dramtically) higher commodities prices across the board. That doesn't really square with the notion of an actual shortage. The problem is likely with the contracts; if, say, the New York State Police are locked in to buying their ammo from Winchester and it happens that that's where the Army is getting their ammo - or a good chunk of it - then, yeah, they're going to be competing with the Army for a piece of Winchester's capacity to produce ammo. Meanwhile, Remington, Federal, CCI et al might easily be able to supply them...but hey, sorry, you're not buying from those guys.

Hopefully they take these difficulies into account when the contract is up...

Most of these no-army countries have some kind of defense arrangements. Iceland is a NATO member and has various kinds of military stuff. You could argue that Panama is a de facto US sattelite, and it has various armed services. Liechtenstein, other European microstates, along with small Pacific islands, aren't especially interesting. Costa Rica on the other hand is an interesting case, and not having an army seems to have served them well. With a population of over 4 million, they're the largest example. Good for them, I say.

My point is that there are large well functioning modern Western democracies in which regular police don't routinely carry firearms, and where some may receive limited or no training in their use. There are a lot more people living in countries where ordinary police don't have guns, than in countries where there are no international defense arrangements.