Morality of shooting Russian ammo?

[justin_247]

Ammunition manufacturers are not nationalised. Why should you discriminate towards them based on their country of residence? Sure, the factories employ Russians. They pay tax to the Russian government. But if you're going to trace where the money goes that far you can barely buy a single thing.

Well, most of the surplus ammo was in fact manufactured by nationalized companies in the old USSR. And much of the contemporary equipment is marketed by a Russian state-owned company, Rosoboronexport.

What about the Chicoms? How much Made in China isn't there on the shelves.

Admittedly, a lot of people on this site and others rail against Chinese manufactured goods on a regular basis. I would like to try their 5.8x42mm ammo.

The US Government has bought millions of rounds of Russian 7.62x39mm for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for training purposes.

True, and helicopters, too. I don't see this continuing for much longer, though.

I shot Chinese and Yugo ammo in the 80's, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, former DDR ammo in the 90's, and have shot a whole lot of Russian and Serbian ammo in the past decade.

I shoot a lot of Serbian ammo (Prvi Partizan), too, but I haven't tried any Russian stuff. I haven't even shot Wolf, although I'm buying a few hundreds rounds when I get back to see how I like it.

Not something to get overly torqued over.

Just looking for opinions, that's all. This post wasn't actually generated by my own dislike of it, but rather seeing people railing against it on a regular basis.

On a personal note, if I was on Active Duty, I would prefer to use there resources to build my firearms skills, in order to use said skills, against a possible enemy in the future, on the cheap.

This is actually my primary line of thinking, but, like I said in my comment immediately above, I was curious as to other people's opinions.

And now that many of the Islamic militants are converting to AK-74s, the more surplus 5.45 we take off the market, the more they will have to pay.

[Marcus L.]

The US Government has bought millions of rounds of Russian 7.62x39mm for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for training purposes.

I shot Chinese and Yugo ammo in the 80's, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, former DDR ammo in the 90's, and have shot a whole lot of Russian and Serbian ammo in the past decade.

Not something to get overly torqued over.

Exactly. The US military has purchased "enemy" equipment before in order to maximize supply and logistics in hostile areas. Buying Russian small arms ammunition at $.05-$.50 a cartridge won't exactly pay off their debt and give everyone a bottle of vodka.

[ToddG]

Just don't discuss matters of national security around your Russian ammo and you should be fine.

Seriously, if sometime in the next couple of decades we will be in conflict with Russia, I'd rather their practice ammo get consumed by US citizens than Russian citizens. That's just me, though...

[justin_247]

Just don't discuss matters of national security around your Russian ammo and you should be fine.

Seriously, if sometime in the next couple of decades we will be in conflict with Russia, I'd rather their practice ammo get consumed by US citizens than Russian citizens. That's just me, though...

I've believed for a long time that the biggest threat from Russia isn't Russia, but the arms that they sell to our enemies. In this case, they don't seem to mind selling them to us, either.

[Robb Jensen]

As the old saying goes "buy it cheap and stack it deep".

[Jay Cunningham]

I'd rather their practice ammo get consumed by US citizens than Russian citizens.

Ha! Why shoot up all the good stuff when you can use up the Russkie stuff!! lol!!1 awesome

[Marcus L.]

Ha! Why shoot up all the good stuff when you can use up the Russkie stuff!! lol!!1 awesome

This is likely a KGB plan to disable all the civilian owned weapons in the US. If they can encourage enough people to keep shooting steel cased, laquer coated ammo it will damage their extractors and gum up their chambers enough to render their weapons inert. This was actually part of the plot in Red Dawn, but they had to cut out some of the scenes to deal with time constraints.

[mike_f]

Here's another possible way to look at it.

It appears that most (if not all) of the surplus 5.45 ammo (made during the time of the USSR) is being sold by an entity in Ukraine. The Soviets had an ammo plant in what is now their separate country.

A significant portion of the the people in Ukraine want to side with the "West" and some even want to join NATO. Russia wants to bring Ukraine back under its complete domination.

I assume that the money for this surplus ammo goes to a Ukrainian company and/or government entity. So if we buy this surplus ammo from Ukraine then the money we spend would be helping Ukrainians.

From that perspective buying the surplus Soviet/Russian 5.45 may actually be helping a current potential ally (Ukraine) and frustrate the current intentions of Russia. Granted we'd have to buy a LOT of Ukrainian ammo to have any practical impact, but morally we would presumably be benefiting the Ukrainians and frustrating the Russians.

[Jay Cunningham]

This is likely a KGB plan to disable all the civilian owned weapons in the US. If they can encourage enough people to keep shooting steel cased, laquer coated ammo it will damage their extractors and gum up their chambers enough to render their weapons inert. This was actually part of the plot in Red Dawn, but they had to cut out some of the scenes to deal with time constraints.

You're right!

[John_Wayne777]

We live in a world where half of what we buy is made in China or any number of other countries with interests hostile to ours, drive cars powered by oil from nations who sponsor terrorism and our government function is largely financed by a bunch of people most of us wouldn't walk across the street to piss on.

...so using Russian ammo is probably the least of our worries.