Homeland Security rationing ammo to agents in field

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it possesses a “limited amount” of 9mm bullets for agents in the field as well as for training purposes, and it is rationing its ammunition based on internal requests until it can award a new contract. It is one of several federal law-enforcement agencies that say they are reaching a “critical stage”: Their 9mm ammunition is being depleted and tens of thousands of service handguns are approaching the end of their life-cycle, too. The apparent role poor planning, or another agenda, played in the issue came to light when ICE said it would have run out of 9mm ammo by June 2017 in the absence of a modified contract with its supplier, Vista Outdoor Inc. So, the agency last month approved a $363,307 ceiling increase to contract No. HSCEMS-11-D-00002. The ICE Office of Firearms and Technical Programs, or OFTP, then ordered more ammunition in March, according to a Justification and Approval, or J&A, document that WND located through routine database research...CBP separately is scrambling to replace “52,000 handguns currently in service,” the majority which “are nearing the end of the expected life span for a handgun,” the agency said in a recently updated Request for Information, or RFI, via Solicitation no. 20094778. CBP’s Law Enforcement Safety and Compliance Directorate, however, “has no available contract to replace or replenish these aging handguns.” The agency said it recently began performing market research in order to formulate the best approach to acquiring new weapons. This assessment of “potential handgun technologies and production capacity of U.S. handgun manufacturers” has been taking place since Jan. 31, which it established as the deadline for responses to the official RFI, initially released in December...more