Ammunition Shortage Squeezes Police

From the AP via the Huffington Post courtesy of AlterNet:

Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.

An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff's departments found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition. And the shortages are resulting in prices as much as double what departments were paying just a year ago.

"There were warehouses full of it. Now, that isn't the case," said Al Aden, police chief in Pierre, S.D.

Click here for the rest.

See, it's okay because we're fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them here, which means fewer bullets for cops isn't that big of a deal. Right?

But seriously, this is pretty disturbing. Crime has increased nationwide these last few years, most likely due to Draconian Republican economic policies which have fucked the poor hardest--sociologists have long known that there is a definite correlation between poverty and crime. All those people who voted for Bush in '04 naively believing that he made them "safer" were obviously dead wrong. Not only has the President single handedly created conditions which make crime much more likely, but he has also handicapped the police who protect us by fighting a pointless war in Iraq.

And I'm living in the Big Easy, where violent crime is very stylish these days. The really sad thing is that Bush is too fucking stupid to know how awful he is.

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