Before Payton Gendron stormed into a Buffalo, New York, supermarket and killed 10 people in a racially motivated rampage in 2022, he stocked up on ammunition made for the Army.
“Since I will be expecting to shoot through the front door windows at the security guard, I will have to use the best barrier penetration ammo I can get,” he said in his manifesto. On his shopping list was 5.56mm ammunition made in the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri.
A New York Times investigation found that ammunition from that plant has been used in at least 12 high-profile mass shootings, including at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; and the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Ammunition from Lake City has also been seized by law enforcement from gangs, Mexican cartels, and anti-government militias.
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A group of Democratic lawmakers wants to know how the Lake City plant, a government-owned facility operated by Olin Winchester under a Pentagon contract, produced ammo used in some of the country’s most violent crimes.
“[The Department of Defense] must ensure that public tax dollars no longer subsidize the production of military-grade ammunition that finds its way onto our streets and fuels mass shootings,” the group of lawmakers wrote Sunday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and…
