Last week, the AP came out with a report that police departments around the country are facing an ammunition shortage due to the billion or sound rounds of similar ammunition that U.S. troops are using per year around the world. Here’s a link to a search on Google News that shows how regional papers picked up the story and gave it a local flair. Shortages, it seemed, were everywhere.

There was a common theme in all of these different articles, however. Police departments really weren’t short ammunition, they just had to plan ahead to make sure they had product on hand. An excerpt from the well fed writers at the Seattle Times:

While police across Western Washington say they haven’t resorted to canceling training courses, they have experienced significant ammunition-delivery delays.
Federal Way police spokeswoman Stacy Flores said bullets ordered more than seven months ago still haven’t been delivered.
Last year, it would take about two months for an ammunition delivery, she said.
“We are having to provide the folks we get our ammunition from greater lead times,” said Everett police Sgt. Robert Goetz. “Historically we’ve given them 30 to 90 days, and now it’s three to six months.”

Quickly a shortage became a delay. Not the same thing. Blogger Confederate Yankee did some of his own reporting on the story and found an entirely different explanation than the AP’s for the shortage. An excerpt:

Let me make that crystal clear.
According to two spokesmen for the world’s largest ammunition manufacturer, which runs the military’s ammunition manufacturing plant and separately, is a major supplier of law enforcement ammunition, it is a massive and unexpected increase in law enforcement ammunition demand that is causing delays in law enforcement ammunition delays, not the war.
Once again, a media organization with target fixation seems to have widely missed the mark.