Ammo Day

I was surfing over at Smallest Minority, as I am wont to do, and Kevin reminds me that National Ammo Day approaches. November 19th. Mark your calendar. I plan to go into Wal-Mart and buy .45 ACP bulk packs and/or .30-30 (170 gr Rem Core-Lokt).

While surfing there, I see this quote reporting on a drug dealers ammo purchase and how the police used it to track the criminal.

Who bought 1,000 rounds of 9 mm ammo?
Mary Jo Denton
Herald-Citizen Staff

November 05, 2002

When someone bought 1,000 rounds of 9 mm ammunition at a Cookeville store recently, clerks became suspicious.

So did police after they received information about the purchase.

The ammo appeared to be headed for use in drug related crimes, according to Capt. Nathan Honeycutt of the Cookeville Police Department.

That was last week, and investigation into the matter continues today, with one man under arrest so far, but not for having the large quantity of powerful bullets.

A thousand rounds? That made someone suspicious? I probably have that much ammo on my bench right now. I don't know where Cookeville is, but it isn't in Louisiana. I was in Wal-Mart last night, and they have ammo by the case stacked in the aisles. I guess it is for sale. Oh, and the remark about a "large quantity of powerful bullets"? I didn't know 9mm was considered powerful. It makes for a nice ladies pistol, but I never use it. Troops in Iraq consider it underpowered.

Last Friday, federal, regional, and local officers executed a search warrant and arrested Vernon Thomas Mendoza, 25, of Buffalo Valley Road, Cookeville.

He is facing "a variety of federal charges, including possession of a handgun by a convicted felon and possession of methamphetamine for resale," Capt. Honeycutt said.

Which leads me to wonder how they tracked such a piddling ammo purchase. Around here, ammo is a cash transaction. You get it off the shelf, you put it in your buggy, you pay cash at the register. I'm glad they got a drug-dealing, gun-toting, convicted felon off the streets, though.

When my sons and I are shooting pistol, we can go through a box of .45 ACP in about five minutes. That is fifty rounds. Twenty boxes of fifty rounds makes a thousand rounds, and picking up the brass is a real chore. But, we can shoot that much in an afternoon, no sweat. The hardest part is sorting the brass, because you know we are going to have some .38 Special and .357 Magnum mixed in the brass piles. I am currently teaching the grandsons how to sort brass. Next, we'll teach them to deprime brass.

Go read Kevin's take on the whole thing. He does a better job at it than I do.