Ammo rationing at Wal-Mart as panic buying sweeps US

[Bfatz]

Ammo rationing at Wal-Mart as panic buying sweeps US

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/24/ammo_hoarding_sweeps_us/

Note: Four Seasons seems well stocked this weekend. But prices have gone up big time.

"Used to be gold, but now lead is the most expensive metal," one gun enthusiast told AP. "And worth every penny." ®

( Sorry if dupe )

 

[ochmude]

A) Holy crap, how can anyone portray this as news still.
B) Did you read the footnote?

*Most kinds of .45 have unexceptional muzzle energy and are big and fat, giving fairly poor performance even against light, flexible body armour. It was the standard US military pistol round for a long time and many diehards still swear by it, but people who carry guns for a living - cops, soldiers, criminals - are mostly using other calibres these days. (Some spec-ops troops still use .45, as the bullet is subsonic and thus can be effectively silenced.)

Who came up with that garbage, lol.

 

[hminsky]

Yah, apparently conservative "Middle America" buys .45, whereas criminals who are in the know buy 'other calibers'. Sort of like upstanding citizens buying slacks at Sears as opposed to people who buy baggy pants that hang off your ass?

 

[Larry Legend]

Yah, apparently conservative "Middle America" buys .45, whereas criminals who are in the know buy 'other calibers'. Sort of like upstanding citizens buying slacks at Sears as opposed to people who buy baggy pants that hang off your ass?

If I were a criminal, I would buy whatever is cheapest and still makes a respectable sized hole (9mm).

 

[Mattitude]

I didn't know that criminals carried handguns for a living...I always thought it was a crack pipe or something like that.

 

[Big_Red]

Gun fanciers, fearing a Democrat crackdown on every American's right to pack heat, are clearing shelves at ammo shops and hoarding cartridges.

I didn't know I was a gun fancier packing heat. I thought I was a law abiding gun owner who carries a tool for personal protection.

What a load of crap.

 

[ShadeWPI]

Last time I checked, 9mm was the test round for modern ballistic body armor, with automatic pistol velocities being the NIJ-II standard and Sub-Machinegun velocities (FMJ @ 1400fps) for the NIJ-IIIA standard.

.45 ACP isn't necessarily any more or less effective than 9mm against body armor. Criminals tend to buy 9mm ammunition because it's cheap, its "popular" and it's reasonably effective and there are smaller & cheaper weapons that fire it than .45 ACP.

If criminals were "in-the-know" and selecting weapons that defeated soft-body armor, they'd start picking up FN Five-seveNs or other more exotic rounds that are more capable of cutting through ballistic cloth, but these guns are expensive, making them less available to the criminal element.

 

[Mattitude]

Keep in mind that the article was written in England and most of those people just don't have a clue. Read the comments to get an idea how some Brits think of us "Yanks".

 

[Larry Legend]

I didn't know I was a gun fancier packing heat. I thought I was a law abiding gun owner who carries a tool for personal protection.

What a load of crap.

Pretty much all news outlets have a great way of subtly steering the reader to a conclusion by altering the wording of the report. The content of that report can most likely be kept identical, but by changing a few keywords the author can change how the reader interprets the information.


It's why I try to gather all my news from a large variety of sources (right and left). Hell I'll even read a conspiracy theory every once in a blue moon.

 

[Speedway]

Criminals carry whatever caliber handgun they were able to steal.......

 

[Bob P]

Gun Fancier - How's that for a magazine title?

 

[ochmude]

Criminals carry whatever caliber handgun they were able to steal.......

Exactly. No further thought goes into it.

 

[drgrant]

This is just a little.... old. It's so old at this point that the shortages are not nearly as bad as they once were.

I have noted, though, that .38 SPL and .380 auto are still a bitch to find, and often stupidly expensive when it is found. I got a box of .38 the other day and it was like $22!!! In the past I paid less than that for .357 magnum!

Thank god I know how to reload. Otherwise I'd go broke.

-Mike

 

[vicpinto]

Dupe?

 

[jdubois]

Yah, apparently conservative "Middle America" buys .45, whereas criminals who are in the know buy 'other calibers'. Sort of like upstanding citizens buying slacks at Sears as opposed to people who buy baggy pants that hang off your ass?

9mm, the baggy caliber that hangs off your ass