Social Security Administration orders thousands of rounds of hollow point bullets

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Published time: August 15, 2012 19:10
Edited time: August 15, 2012 23:10

The mission statement of the US Social Security Administration is to deliver services that meet the changing needs of the public. They are doing that by placing an order for 174,000 rounds of hollow point bullets.

The SSA has published a solicitation on the FedBizOpps website specifically asking for ammo manufactures to provide them with a quote for a massive order of hollow point bullets. The administration is on the lookout for the most affordable lot of 174,000 .357 Duty Carry Sig 125 grain bonded JHP hollow point bullet ammunition, according to a synopsis that accompanies their solicitation for quotes, although the mission statement of the federal agency offers no indication of why they are wanting any ammo, let alone tens of thousands of rounds.

According to Chuck Hawks, who runs a guns and shooting website, these bullets are among the best available in terms of being a stop a person dead in their tracks.

“[A]125 grain JHP from a .357 in the lungs will put the bad guy away pronto, and if you miss the lungs and hit the shoulder, the 125 grain JHP will dump up to 580 ft. lbs. of destructive energy into his body, instead of the maximum 236 ft. lbs. of the 200 grain .38 Spec. load,” Hawk writes on his website. He adds that the JHP rounds being requested by the Social Security Administration is accurate in stopping someone  upwards of 97 percent of the time.

Online retailer UnderwoodAmmo.com adds that the hollow point bullets are “Built to the tightest tolerances for peak performance rivaling and sometimes surpassing handloads in many guns” and that the ammunition was “designed to meet stringent law enforcement standards for dependability and performance” and makes for “a great personal defense bullet.”

For an agency that specializes in servicing the needy, though, the requirement of such firepower is raising a lot of questions. It doesn’t make things less suspicious another federal agency, the US Department of Homeland Security, recently posted a solicitation on FedBizOpps as well for 750 million rounds of high-power ammo.

Among the acknowledged capacities of the SSA are providing assistance to the retired and disabled through Medicare and other benefit programs.

“The SSA touches more lives than any other Federal agency,” the office’s Inspector General writes in a 2008 document available on SSA.Gov. “SSA delivers cash benefits to almost 50 million beneficiaries each month,” the document continues, adding, “SSA’s program account for more than 25 percent of all Federal dollars disbursed and almost 30 percent of all dollars collected.”

They also release annually a list of the most popular baby names for US children each calendar year.

According to the documents included with the SSA’s online request for quotes, a large number of the ammo will be sent to an office in Baltimore, Maryland, where the administration’s Criminal Investigation Division is headquartered. That section of the SSA is responsible for serving as a liaison with other law enforcement agencies, among other duties.