Last year, when the state of Illinois attempted to follow New Jersey by making it difficult and more expensive to acquire ammunition, we warned that new government initiatives would be used to try and circumvent the Second Amendment. Rather than targeting firearms directly, lawmakers and government security officials began looking to ammunition as a sure-fire way to disarm Americans.

While it may have been hard to believe then, given the current shortages of ammunition throughout the United States, one can’t ignore the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has been actively pursuing such a strategy.

“The Department of Homeland Security’s huge ammo purchases were an attempt to dry up supplies as part of an end run around the second amendment,” writes Paul Joseph Watson of the 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition purchased by the Department of Homeland Security.

A US-based weapons manufacturer and defense contractor recently confirmed that this is, in fact, part of a broader gun control plan when he shared his insider knowledge with well known talk radio show host Michael Savage:

What Homeland Security is doing here is they’re issuing a contract to buy up to that amount of ammo if they want it…

It’s a way to control the amount of market that’s available on the commercial market at any time.

If they go to the ammo manufacturers and say give me 50 million rounds, give me another 30 million rounds… if they periodically do this in increments, they’re going to control how much ammo is available on the commercial market.

As part of their contract it stipulates in there that when the government calls and says give us another quantity, that everything they make has to go to the government priority one before any of it goes to the commercial market.

So, if  they get nervous, all they have to do is use that contract that they have in place… and they just say ‘give us some more.’

…

In the contracting world it’s called an IDIQ contract… Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity… By issuing these contracts the government gets priority. All they have to do is call up…

Video: Michael Savage interviews weapons manufacturer (via Infowars):

High demand for firearms (and thus ammunition) resulting from threats of a nationwide Congressional gun grab, coupled with tens of millions of rounds ordered every month by non-military domestic security agencies has driven prices for some types of ammunition up over 100% in just the last six months.

But it doesn’t stop there, as the government is also reportedly trying to restrict access in other ways:

In fact, the ATF and the State Department, they’re kind of jerking around with the importation of it too, so they’re making it difficult for it to come in from overseas.

Right now, all the domestic manufacturers are running at full speed. They’re running three shifts, they’re cranking it out as fast as they can.

Supply cannot keep up with demand. 

For the time being, demand is making it difficult to acquire ammunition at a reasonable price, but it is still available if you’re willing to pay for it.

Should DHS and other Federal Agencies continue to pursue this strategy, however, they could very well monopolize all domestically produced ammunition.

With budgets in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the government can easily utilize taxpayer funds to continue purchasing ammunition in an effort to keep it out of the hands of the American people.

And if that doesn’t work, any domestic emergency, temporary or long-term, would give government agencies confiscatory powers over this industry altogether, as authorized by the Doomsday Executive Order recently signed by President Obama.

Perhaps it’s time ammunition manufacturers follow the lead of firearms producers and simply refuse to sell to government agencies.