Oregon National Guard crushing used brass for scrap

PBinWA · Mar 30, 2013

Interesting article . . .

<broken link removed>

It looks like the Oregon National Guard has found away to destroy brass instead of letting it be re-manufactured. "Apparently", they are doing this in some form of scheme to return more funds back to their general coffers.

Perhaps you Oregon voters may want to contact your state legislators.

Norm0931 · Mar 30, 2013

Why should we contact or legislators? Our taxes fund the Oregon National Guard. If they are using the brass to have less of a foot print on the state budget I'm in favor of it. Not really seeing what the problem here is other than you don't like how they are getting rid of their brass. They are going with the most profitable disposal method. To me that's just smart business.

3MTA3 · Mar 30, 2013

What we should contact our legislators about is why they are forced to sell their brass through a program that only returns a percentage of the auction amount. This in turn effectively forces them to sell the brass for scrap. They would be negligent to do otherwise given the situation.

oknow · Mar 30, 2013

Norm0931 said:
Why should we contact or legislators? Our taxes fund the Oregon National Guard. If they are using the brass to have less of a foot print on the state budget I'm in favor of it. Not really seeing what the problem here is other than you don't like how they are getting rid of their brass. They are going with the most profitable disposal method. To me that's just smart business.

shredded over reloadable is the most profitable:huh:

Norm0931 · Mar 30, 2013

The actual metal is worth more than the amount gained by selling it to ammo manufacturers for reloading.

Uberdillo · Mar 30, 2013

The actual metal is worth more than the amount gained by selling it to ammo manufacturers for reloading.

Isn't that precisely what's at stake though? They're arbitrarily confined such that the least economical option is the only one available to them. Release the goods to the free market and let them make OUR money back. I just bought a surplus issued backpack for $60 that the US Governemnt buys for $600. It can't be more than a year or two old. What sense does that make? I guess I payed for it, but so did you, and Sally, and Bill, but they didn't pay for me to have a nice backpack, they paid for our soldiers to have nice things, which it appears they're forced to give away for pennies on the dollar.

Estimate 1000 .223/5.56 weighs ~13.6#. Brass value for fantastic clean, yellow brass $2.20/#, ~$30/1000
Once fired 5.56 goes for what? 10 to 25 cents or more per case so....$100-$250/1000

I admit I'm tired, how far afield am I?

ma96782 · Mar 31, 2013

The actual metal is worth more than the amount gained by selling it to ammo manufacturers for reloading.

I believe.............

The brass goes to the highest bidder. That bidder could be a ammo re-manufacturer or a person or a company just looking for brass (in whatever form).

IMHO, the military shouldn't be spending time or resources to crush the cases.

Just sell it, "as is/where is."

Aloha, Mark

Norm0931 · Mar 31, 2013

They can't sell the brass as anything but spent ammo to an ammo manufacturer unless they crunch it.

Flopsweat · Apr 1, 2013

Norm0931 said:
Why should we contact or legislators? Our taxes fund the Oregon National Guard. If they are using the brass to have less of a foot print on the state budget I'm in favor of it. Not really seeing what the problem here is other than you don't like how they are getting rid of their brass. They are going with the most profitable disposal method. To me that's just smart business.

Because they are breaking the law and not being held accountable. Human nature being what it is, sooner or later they will break more laws, assuming that they are not already.

3MTA3 · Apr 1, 2013

Flopsweat said:
Because they are breaking the law and not being held accountable. Human nature being what it is, sooner or later they will break more laws, assuming that they are not already.

What law are they breaking?

Silver Fox · Apr 1, 2013

Three things....

1. Where is this brass being scrapped at?

2. Are you sure it isn't blank 5.56? Blank 5.56 is slightly smaller diameter than ball ammo

3. Any proceeds from any sale go back to the states general fund and not the Military General Fund or 'coffers'

SF-

Flopsweat · Apr 2, 2013

3MTA3 said:
What law are they breaking?

You're right - it wasn't a law, it was a rescinded regulation.

Thinking that compliance issues over unauthorized destruction rather than resale of brass had been resolved back in 2009 (<broken link removed>) and again in 2010 (http://www.nraila.org/media/PDFs/Mil_Brass4110.pdf), tips that the practice was ongoing and continuing resulted in a special Gun Rights Examiner investigative report in January about reports of destruction at Fort Drum in New York, but not in clarification from responsible authorities.

1stklass · Apr 2, 2013

Norm, i'm not sure you know what you are talking about. All spent brass gets sold BY WEIGHT regardless of whether it is crunched or not. Crunched brass will bring slightly less than spot on the metals market, while every lot of reloadable brass i have seen sold by the military recently went for 2 to 4 times the spot price for brass