United States Government Accountability Office Report to Congressional Requesters January 2014 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Ammunition Purchases Have Declined since 2009 GAO-14-119 January 2014 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Ammunition Purchases Have Declined since 2009 Highlights of GAO-14-119, a report to congressional requesters Why GAO Did This Study What GAO Found DHS and its components have The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) annual ammunition purchases homeland security and law have declined since fiscal year 2009 and are comparable in number to the enforcement missions that require Department of Justice’s (DOJ) ammunition purchases. In fiscal year 2013, DHS agents and officers to carry and be purchased 84 million rounds of ammunition, which is less than DHS’s proficient in the use of firearms. DHS ammunition purchases over the past 5 fiscal years, as shown in the figure below. has more than 70,000 firearm-carrying DHS component officials said the decline in ammunition purchases in fiscal year personnel—the most of any 2013 was primarily a result of budget constraints, which meant reducing the department. DOJ has the next largest number of training classes, and drawing on their ammunition inventories. From with approximately 69,000 firearm- fiscal years 2008 through 2013, DHS purchased an average of 109 million carrying personnel. GAO was asked to rounds of ammunition for training, qualification, and operational needs, according examine DHS’s ammunition purchases to DHS data. DHS’s ammunition purchases over the 6-year period equates to an and management of ammunition and average of 1,200 rounds purchased per firearm-carrying agent or officer per year. firearms. Over the past 3 fiscal years (2011-2013), DHS purchased an average of 1,000 rounds per firearm-carrying agent or officer and selected DOJ components This report addresses trends in DHS’s purchased 1,300 rounds per firearm-carrying agent or officer. ammunition purchases since fiscal year 2008, how DHS’s purchases Total Department of Homeland Security Ammunition Purchases for Fiscal compare with DOJ’s, and what factors Years 2008 through 2013 affect DHS’s purchase decisions. GAO analyzed data from six DHS and three DOJ components that have law enforcement missions, require agents and officers to carry firearms, and purchase ammunition themselves or through their respective departments. Specifically, GAO analyzed data on ammunition purchases, usage, costs, and inventories, among other things, for fiscal years 2008 through 2013 for DHS, and for fiscal years 2011 through 2013 for DOJ. GAO assessed the reliability of these data and found them sufficiently reliable. Data on DOJ ammunition purchases prior to fiscal year 2011 were not readily available; therefore, GAO excluded them, as discussed in the report. DHS ammunition purchases are driven primarily by firearm training and qualification requirements. Most DHS firearm-carrying personnel are required to qualify four times per year, though requirements vary by component, as do the number of rounds of ammunition typically used for training and qualification. DHS What GAO Recommends components also reported considering other factors when making ammunition GAO is not making any purchase decisions, such as changes in firearms, usage rates, and ammunition recommendations. inventories. DHS components maintain inventories of ammunition to help ensure they have sufficient ammunition for the training and operational needs of their officers, as there can be months-long delays between placing an order for ammunition and receiving it. As of October 2013, DHS estimates it had approximately 159 million rounds in inventory, enough to last about 22 months to View GAO-14-119. For more information, contact David Maurer at (202) 512-9627 or meet the training and operational needs of its firearm-carrying personnel. [email protected]. Ammunition inventory data provided by DOJ components indicated that inventory ranged from about 13 months’ worth to about 20 months’ worth. United States Government Accountability Office Contents Letter 1 Background 5 DHS’s Ammunition Purchases Have Declined in Recent Years and Vary Based on Numerous Factors; Annual Ammunition Purchases are Comparable to DOJ’s 10 DHS Has Policies and Guidance for Firearms and Ammunition Inventory Management 24 Agency Comments 29 Appendix I Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 31 Appendix II Commonly Used Ammunition and Issued Firearms at DHS 38 Appendix III Department of Homeland Security Ammunition Contracts, as of October 1, 2013 40 Appendix IV Comments from the Department of Homeland Security 43 Appendix V GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 45 Tables Table 1: Law Enforcement Missions of Selected Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) Components and Number of Personnel Authorized to Carry Firearms in Fiscal Year 2013 6 Table 2: Annual Average Number of Rounds of Ammunition Purchased, per Firearm-Carrying Agent or Officer, by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Law Enforcement Component in Our Review, Fiscal Years 2008-2013 14 Table 3: Selected Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Components’ Estimated Ammunition Inventory by Total Page i GAO-14-119 DHS Ammunition and Firearms Rounds and by the Number of Months’ Supply at Three Points in Time Over 1 Year 22 Table 4: Approximate Number of Rounds of Ammunition Purchased per Agent or Officer for the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice Components in Our Review for Fiscal Years 2011 through 2013 23 Figures Figure 1: Members and Goals of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Weapons and Ammunition Commodity Council 9 Figure 2: Total Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Ammunition Purchases for Components in Our Review from Fiscal Years 2008 through 2013 12 Figure 3: Number of Rounds of Ammunition Purchased, by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Component in Our Review, from Fiscal Years 2008 through 2013 13 Figure 4: Estimated Ammunition Used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Components in Our Review from Fiscal Years 2008 through 2013 20 Figure 5: Ammunition Commonly Purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 38 Figure 6: Firearms Commonly Issued by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Components 39 Page ii GAO-14-119 DHS Ammunition and Firearms Abbreviations ATF Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives CBP U.S. Customs and Border Protection DEA Drug Enforcement Administration DHS Department of Homeland Security DOJ Department of Justice FACTS Firearms, Armor, and Credentials Tracking System FAMS Federal Air Marshal Service FAR Federal Acquisition Regulations FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency FFDO federal flight deck officer FLETC Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers FPDS Federal Procurement Data System FPS Federal Protective Service HSAR Homeland Security Acquisition Regulation HSAM Homeland Security Acquisition Manual ICE U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement IDIQ indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity mm millimeter NFTTU National Firearms Tactical and Training Unit NPPD National Protection and Programs Directorate TSA Transportation Security Administration USSS U.S. Secret Service WACC Weapons and Ammunition Commodity Council This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. The published product may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately. Page iii GAO-14-119 DHS Ammunition and Firearms 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 January 13, 2014 The Honorable Tom A. Coburn, M.D. Ranking Member Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs United States Senate The Honorable Michael T. McCaul Chairman Committee on Homeland Security House of Representatives The Honorable Jeff Duncan Chairman Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency Committee on Homeland Security House of Representatives The Honorable Richard Hudson Chairman Subcommittee on Transportation Security Committee on Homeland Security House of Representatives The Honorable John L. Mica Member House of Representatives The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and five of its components—U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), National Protection and Programs Directorate/Federal Protective Service (FPS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the U.S. Secret Service (USSS)— have homeland security and law enforcement responsibilities and missions that require law enforcement agents and officers to carry and be proficient in the use of firearms and ammunition.1 DHS employs more 1DHS defines a firearm as any weapon (excluding flare and starter guns) that will, or that is designed to, or may be readily converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive to include the frame or receiver of any such weapon or any sound suppression device. DHS classifies a firearm as a “Dangerous and Hazardous Sensitive Asset.” Page 1 GAO-14-119 DHS Ammunition and Firearms firearm-carrying law enforcement personnel than any other department— more than 70,000, according to DHS data, and DHS components purchase ammunition for these personnel.2 Firearm-carrying personnel at DHS include Border Patrol agents, federal air marshals, and Secret Service agents, among others. In addition, another DHS component—the four interagency training sites that constitute the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC)—also purchases ammunition. FLETC trains an average of over 66,000 federal, state, local, tribal, and international law enforcement personnel every year, according to DHS officials. Ammunition purchased by FLETC is utilized by all students who train on firearms at its facilities. For comparison, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and its components—including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); U.S. Marshals Service; Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); and the Federal Bureau of Prisons—have the second largest number of federal personnel authorized to carry firearms, with approximately 69,000 agents and officers authorized to carry firearms as of October 2013, according to DOJ data. At both DHS and DOJ, federal law enforcement agents and officers are authorized to carry firearms, and are required to train in their use and pass certain firearms qualification standards. Firearms proficiency is a key component of an officer’s ability to successfully fulfill the component’s mission and protect life and public safety. To help ensure the firearms proficiency of their firearm-carrying workforce, these agencies purchase a variety of types of ammunition for training, qualifications, and operational purposes. Because DHS’s law enforcement missions require the department, through its components, to purchase ammunition and manage various types of firearms, effective management and oversight of ammunition and firearms is an important aspect of DHS’s overall mission. It is incumbent 2The number presented here—more than 70,000—represents the number of DHS personnel required to carry a firearm, according to data provided by DHS, as of October 2013. The specific number of DHS personnel required to carry a firearm is considered sensitive security information and therefore is not included in this report. This is because the specific number of DHS personnel would include the number of TSA firearm-carrying personnel, such as federal air marshals and federal flight deck officers—and those numbers are considered sensitive security information. In addition to these more than 70,000 civilian DHS law enforcement officers, the U.S. Coast Guard—a DHS component—has over 41,000 uniformed members of the military who also train with and carry firearms in the performance of their duties. Page 2 GAO-14-119 DHS Ammunition and Firearms upon agencies to ensure the effective and efficient management of ammunition and firearms as stewards of taxpayer resources. You asked us to examine DHS’s ammunition purchases and its management of both ammunition and firearms. This report addresses the following questions: 1. What are the trends in DHS’s ammunition purchases since fiscal year 2008, what factors affect its purchase decisions, and how do DHS’s purchases compare with DOJ’s? 2. What policies and guidance does DHS have for managing firearms and ammunition inventories? To address our first question, we obtained available data from DHS and DOJ law enforcement components with firearm-carrying personnel regarding their ammunition purchases, costs, usage, inventory, and the size of the authorized firearm-carrying workforce. We also obtained data on DHS planned ammunition purchases for fiscal year 2014. Specifically, we selected all DHS law enforcement components with firearm-carrying personnel—CBP, ICE, TSA, USSS, FPS, as well as FLETC.3 We excluded the U.S. Coast Guard—a DHS component with firearm-carrying personnel—because the U.S. Coast Guard does not procure ammunition through DHS; rather, the U.S. Coast Guard procures its ammunition through Department of Defense contracts. Similarly, we selected all DOJ law enforcement components with firearm-carrying personnel. However, the Federal Bureau of Prisons could not provide ammunition purchase data comparable to that of the other components based on its method of record keeping and data retention policy. We determined that data from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) were not sufficiently reliable for our purposes, because DEA could only provide estimates of purchases. Therefore, the DOJ components included in our review are ATF, FBI, and U.S. Marshals Service. We included these DOJ law enforcement agencies in our review to provide context to help understand DHS’s ammunition purchases relative to those of other federal law enforcement agencies. 3While other DHS components, such as the Office of the Inspector General and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, may have a small number of personnel authorized to carry firearms for whom they purchase ammunition, these components are not law enforcement components, and thus we did not include them in our review. The number of TSA firearm-carrying personnel is considered sensitive security information. Accordingly, some information on TSA ammunition purchases and usage that could identify the number of TSA firearm-carrying personnel was excluded from this report. Page 3 GAO-14-119 DHS Ammunition and Firearms We selected fiscal year 2008 as the starting point for our analysis because data on DHS ammunition purchases, cost, and usage were not readily available or reliable prior to 2008, according to DHS officials. Nevertheless, obtaining data going back 5 fiscal years provides historical perspective on DHS’s ammunition purchases and use over time, and allows for comparisons with purchases in fiscal year 2013 and planned purchases for fiscal year 2014. We analyzed the data to identify any changes in the amount of ammunition purchased or used year to year and interviewed knowledgeable agency officials to understand the reasons why changes occurred. For each fiscal year, we calculated the amount of ammunition purchased per agent and officer authorized to carry firearms at each DHS and DOJ component in our review, using component-provided data on the amount of ammunition purchased and the number of firearm-carrying personnel. We calculated the average number of rounds purchased per agent or officer per year for fiscal years 2008 through 2013 at DHS, excluding FLETC, by determining the average amount of ammunition purchased across DHS law enforcement components in each fiscal year and dividing that by the average number of agents or officers at DHS for each fiscal year. We determined that ammunition purchase data for DOJ components were not sufficiently reliable prior to 2011 for all components, so we used data from fiscal years 2011 through 2013 to do the same calculation. We analyzed the amount of ammunition purchased per agent or officer authorized to carry firearms to account for the varying sizes of the different departments and components. We selected ammunition purchases by DOJ to provide a comparison with DHS’s ammunition purchases as DOJ has the second largest number of personnel authorized to carry firearms. However, our DOJ analysis is not to suggest that the department represents a model or standard against which DHS is assessed. Differences in the amount of ammunition purchased per firearm-carrying agent or officer reflect a number of factors, including unique mission requirements and training needs. To assess the reliability of these data, we reviewed DHS ammunition procurement contract files and interviewed knowledgeable officials at DHS and DOJ responsible for collecting and reporting these data. In addition, for the data we obtained from DHS components on ammunition purchases and costs, we compared the data with corroborating evidence, such as information from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), to determine data consistency and reasonableness. We found the data on ammunition purchase, usage, cost, and inventory, as well as workforce data, to be sufficiently reliable for our purposes, with caveats and exceptions noted throughout the report. We also interviewed DHS component officials from each of the components in our review Page 4 GAO-14-119 DHS Ammunition and Firearms responsible for overseeing the ammunition procurement process and determining ammunition requirements at the component level. We also discussed the purpose of quality testing the ammunition, and to understand the context of why proficiency among firearm-carrying personnel is important. Finally, for additional context, we visited the ICE National Firearms Testing Lab, which performs quality control testing on ammunition and firearms, and maintains an inventory of ammunition and firearms for distribution to DHS field locations. To address our second question, we reviewed DHS-wide and DHS component-level policy documents, such as acquisition and personal property management directives, and firearms and ammunition guidance and operating procedures. We interviewed knowledgeable officials from the DHS Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, CBP, FLETC, FPS, ICE, TSA, and USSS regarding their management and oversight of ammunition and firearms and the related policies and procedures for DHS and its components. We also reviewed available DHS Inspector General audit and component inspection reports related to the oversight over ammunition and firearms. We did not assess if the components’ policies, procedures, and process for managing their firearms and ammunition inventories were working as intended, as that was outside the scope of our review. For more information on our scope and methodology, see appendix I. We conducted this performance audit from May 2013 to January 2014 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. Background DHS and DOJ DHS and DOJ have several components with law enforcement functions Components in Our whose personnel are authorized to carry firearms in support of accomplishing their respective missions. Table 1 describes the various Review with Firearm- law enforcement and homeland security missions of the DHS and DOJ Carrying Personnel components within our review, as well as the number of personnel authorized to carry firearms in fiscal year 2013. Page 5 GAO-14-119 DHS Ammunition and Firearms