Your tax dollars at work...Updated

On or about March 12th of 2009, the DRMS (the DOD's surplus liquidation arm) has ruled that the DOD will no longer sell once-fired military brass cartridges without requiring that they are "demilled" or mutilated to the point that they can no longer be reloaded.
This will have an immediate and expensive result. Reloading military surplus brass is a major source of civilian ammunition. By requiring the destruction of this brass, the DOD is effectively removing at least a third or more of the available inventory from the market. Secondly this is reducing the value of the brass by about 80%. So not only is the cost of ammo about to go up and the availability to go down, but the value to the taxpayer is being decimated as well.

This ammunition is not suitable for use by most of our enemies since they use Russian derived weapons which cannot chamber and fire most of these calibers (9mm Parabellum being the lone exception). Therefore the only logical reason for this decision is to squeeze civilian ammunition supplies.

Just wait until Obama makes the civilan purchase and ownership of primers illegal. That is after all the critical path item. You can cast your own bullets from fishing or tire weights or even old car batteries, you can reload your own brass, or even machine new brass from barstock if needed. You can make your own black powder if smokeless powder becomes unavailable, but you probably will have a hard time making a substitute for commercial berdan primers.

Be prepared. That day is coming. Mark my words.

UPDATE 3-18-09
The revolution has been postponed! The DLA has recinded the decision. The explanation apparently is that some noob at the DoD saw the broad "National Security" designation on demil class B (which once fired brass falls under but it had an exception) and recinded all exceptions to Demil class B items to CYA. Brass is now classified Demil class Q which means it only has to be mutilated if sold to a foreign country.

H/T Clayton Cramer