Ammo Shortage May Affect Law Enforcement

[7.62 NATO]

Ammo Shortage May Affect
Law Enforcement

* Tony Thomas Tony Thomas
* Edited By: Leigha Baugham | myfoxatlanta.com

ATLANTA (MyFOX ATLANTA) - An issue that could soon be affecting some Metro Atlanta police departments is a shortage of ammunition. A local ammunition reseller said Wednesday that demand for reloaded ammunition has been so high that it could affect law enforcement training in the coming months.

A Carroll County company, Georgia Arms, said it had a six month backlog for ammunition because of an increase in demand.

Company owners said some police departments in the metro area may soon be short ammunition for their training.

Georgia Arms employees reload and then resell two million spent casings a week, but the demand has been for so much more.

"If I didn't have another order beyond today, it would take me six months to catch up," said Larry Haynie, owner of Georgia Arms.

Haynie said the demands of the war effort and increased demands by civilians who say that they are worried about possible changes in national gun policies are some for the reasons for the increase in ammunitions sales.

Haynie said the boom in sales is starting to affect local lawmen.

Many law agencies use reloaded ammo on the shooting range, and that training is being adjusted or trimmed because of the tight ammo supply.

"The impact on law enforcement is tremendous. The ammo is hard to come by and expensive, in some areas it's twice as expensive as it was 24 months ago," said Haynie.

Some local police and sheriff's agencies said they buy enough ammunition in advance and haven't yet felt the ammo squeeze. Other departments said they were watching the situation, aware that a problem looms in the future.

Commanders at the Douglas County Sheriff's Department said they use as much as 200,000 rounds of ammunition every year, but because of supply and budget concerns they've cut that in half and now train only twice a year.

"My advice is order early because it's going to take some time," suggested Haynie.

The ammunition reloads are used for training in most cases. Police patrolling the streets use new ammunition.

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[Faulkner]

There is no "may" effect law enforcement, it already has at my department. We have a substantial stockpile of duty ammunition, but we have curtailed live fire training and qualifications because we have eaten into our supply of practice ammo and our normal replinishment orders are running behind just like with anyone else buying ammo. We have not stopped our training, we have just altered it so that we utilize less ammo per session.