Could the FBI save money by converting their handguns to 9mm?
 

There's an article I found that argues the FBI could, instead of fielding proposals for a new service handgun in 9mm, save money by converting its .40 S&W Glocks to 9mm.

For those who don't want to read through the article to find its proposal to convert the FBI's Glocks to 9mm, you can find it here.

Is the article's author on target or not?

Something to consider is that the existing Glocks may be worn out. Sure, converting to 9mm would mean new parts, but why not just get new guns?

I've heard that the reason why the M9 handgun is being replaced by the US Armed Forces that used it previously is that the M9 frames are wearing out. But does the FBI use their handguns often enough to approach that level of wear?

The article also mentions that many FBI agents have no business being armed, or don't have the field experience (i.e., in on-the-street law enforcement with the possibility of running into violent situations) to use their handguns well without a lot of time they may not have spent training. I don't know how accurate that is.

There is also the possibility of a making a "trade-in and buy another model at a discount" deal with Glock. If the FBI traded in their .40 S&W Glocks for Glock 19s to fit with their caliber change they could save money and still keep the same manual of arms.

I don't know if the federal government would be allowed to do a straight up trade-in deal with Glock. There's a lot of money on the line, and I think the FBI has to solicit competitive bids.

If they want to do this on the cheap, it is very simple to get conversions of their existing Glocks into 9mm. It's rather easy if they want to save money. Most likely they can just straight up trade in their current Glocks and most likely resold back onto the civilian market

With so many recent procurement deals going severely over-budget in the American defense industry (just look at the Zumwalt-class destroyers), a trade-in deal or caliber modification program looks much more cost-effective and should have less opportunities for costs to balloon out of control. Or is there a law somewhere that demands that competitive bids always be fielded first? Those bids for all-new handguns aren't likely going to have the same manual of arms and are almost certainly going to cost more than a trade-in deal or caliber modification program.

The trade-in deal is something I mentioned already. But how likely is a "resell to civilian market" move going to happen? The FBI's .40 S&W Glocks could just as easily be returned to Glock for recycling.

R&D on a brand new product is one thing, like the Zumwalts and the F-35, but there are plenty of existing handguns that meet requirements for the FBI to choose from. I don't know if the FBI is legally bound to solicit bids, but they'd get a better price and product if they did, and they'd avoid congressional scrutiny. A congressman from Virginia or Massachusetts can, understandably, make a stink as to why $80 million worth of government contracts weren't going to a SIG-Sauer or S&W factory in his or her district without a competition.

You would think the FBI being a domestic agency will have more leeway in how they choice their guns. It sorta went out of control back when deciding on the 10mm and then bitched out and went to .40

^ Keep in mind much of that was a knee-jerk reaction to a bad shootout where afterward they felt every suited agent needed a bad-ass handgun to fight off potential assault-rifle toting suspects when that doesn't really happen much today, and certainly was nonexistent 30 years ago. That said, they are essentially an agency that has to think about having a standard gun for a wide array of agents with varying physiques and sizes, and have to do so under a budget, same as any police department (especially bigger ones).

Anyway, I do believe there is something to the point perhaps not so many feds actually need sidearms, otherwise I think fcm has said it on pretty much all the other points. Perhaps a rechambering could be cheaper, but as fcm said, by this stage, especially if a fair portion of their pistols are pretty worn out, indeed why not just get new ones? And if so, they'll have to do competitive bidding - Gov't agencies are pretty much forced to in most cases, for a number of reasons.

In many cases competitive procurement has many times resulted in getting better product for the money (and in a few rare cases we DID spend less money than we would have, in some form or other). If anything we oughta be stronger on it. Super-badass 'gee-whiz' hardware like the F-35 is hardly a good example. Frankly most of the 'bloat' I think is in our defense spending as a whole, but that's another thing. In the event, I don't think you can compare multi-billion-dollar deals for massive defense hardware that requires R&D and initial engineering/building costs to a simple handgun procurement where there are many models already existing out there that can just be bought; The FBI doesn't need to have a pistol built for them from the ground up to meet their requirements.

FBI Special Agents do go out into the field, conduct investigations in the field and interact with some pretty unpleasant people. They were unarmed until the Kansas City Massacre in 1933 and I really don't see the FBI disarming their agents anytime in the near future. Also up until the 1970's (I believe after Hoover died) applicants had to have either a law degree, accounting degree or a technical/science degree to even apply so that hasn't changed. The writer makes some good points, but having just a small select group of agents carry really isn't that realistic. There are numerous sub-offices that fall under a main field office (Boise is under Salt Lake City and there is one agent in Twin Falls and a couple in Idaho Falls). For those small offices how would one determine the ratio of armed to unarmed? Yes the writer makes some good points, but not all of them. As far as the old 40 caliber Glocks. I imagine they'll be cut up and melted down and crushed.

Why would that hypothetical congressman make a stink? If it's a contract from the FBI, it's government/tax money (since the FBI is a government agency) that can end up in the congressman's state any number of ways.

Sole-source contracts are not necessarily bad either. Here's a link I could find on short notice that shows how they can go well:

http://bestfighter4canada.blogspot.c...searching.html

And now the FBI is going back to 9x19mm.

I'll agree that one size never fit all, but how much would it hurt if agents could use a Glock in 9mm or 10mm, their preference? I don't think agents are swapping magazines to each other in extended firefights 5 times a week, or some other circumstance that would make magazine commonality between agents a major asset.

Why destroy the old Glocks? Is it kind of like the scene from Lord of War where Nicolas Cage's character says "It was cheaper and easier to buy new weapons than move the old ones back home"?

Would arming only half the agents in a building work, so as long as most of those who are armed are well-qualified, such as HRT-trained personnel?

Instead of disarming their agents, the FBI might want to give them something simpler to use. A pistol-caliber PDW might work well because it would have more points of contact and be easier to aim under stress than a handgun.

Speaking of FBI guns, I remember how in the first X-Files movie, Mulder goes to infiltrate a hostile facility while apparently being unarmed and ill-prepared. I thought that, since the TV series had been filmed in Vancouver for a long time, the production team might have just contacted the same film armourer as the Stargate TV series and given Mulder a touch more firepower for his mission. Something like a suppressed FN P90 (made famous in the Stargate TV series) might have worked well for someone in Mulder's situation. A P90 certainly would have been better than nothing while escaping from the rampaging Alien Colonists in the facility (and he didn't seem to have a backpack to get Scully the necessary clothing needed to survive in the hostile environment outside the facility either).

With my agency (65 officers - city police department) we are issued the Glock 21 - except for those of us who were already employed before we went over to a general issue in 2006. For those who were not comfortable with the large framed Glock 21 the Glock 19 was offered as an alternative. I went with the Glock 19. I don't have large hands and the Glock 19 is just easier to carry on the hip throughout a twelve hour shift. I actually like the 9mm Parabellum and I trust it. In case you're curious I carry the Federal 124 grain +P HST load. For those officers hired after October 2006 and just haven't warmed up to the G21 they can carry the Glock 30 as a substitute. It accepts the Glock 21 magazines and since Glock came out with the Gen 4 frame the 30 is actually a fairly compact pistol. The only officers carrying the G30 currently are the ones assigned to detectives, narcotics and a couple plain clothes task forces. Uniformed officers carry the G21. We have had a couple female officers request permission to switch to the Glock 19 and they have been issued the G19 after their formal requests were reviewed and approved. But they had to go through the field training phase and the academy with the G21 first. Don't ask me why. The 40 caliber isn't very popular and it beats up the Glock frame.

The Federal government has a long tradition of destroying firearms that are no longer in use. Not so much military , but the ones used by the various Federal law enforcement agencies.

A PDW isn't really any more convenient than an SMG or compact carbine, and for what a civilian agency like the FBI deals with PDW cartridges are a poor choice IMHO. The purpose of a PDW is to have something similar to or smaller than an SMG that still has good armour piercing properties. They tend to have pretty awful terminal ballistics because of this though so the only way that they are really effective is if you use them in full auto (which is actually viable due to their low recoil). The problem is though, do people want FBI agents spraying large numbers of armour piercing rounds in built up urban areas? And is this armour piercing capability really needed in most normal situations?

There is a case study in the idea of replacing a law enforcement body's sidearms with a PDW with the British MOD police. To reduce maintenance and training costs (so similar to this proposal) they decided that they would replace their Browning L9A1 pistols and L85A2 rifles with MP7s. However, the British government has never liked issuing full auto weapons to police so they are semi only. Having shot these semi only MP7s, I honestly feel that my Ruger 10/22 is a more capable man-stopper.

As a policy this has totally failed anyway, as they realised that they would still have to issue sidearms as personnel protection to anybody that was being deployed to a lot of foreign countries along with the fact that there are some roles where the MP7-SF is needlessly overt/militaristic. On the other end of the spectrum there are some situations where the MP7-SF is simply too underpowered and ranged so they have retained the L85A2. Along with this you have specialist units who decide they need to use other weapons. All told, rather than replacing the L9A1 and L85A2 with the MP7-SF, they have ended up also using SIG pistols, Glocks, the upgraded versions of the L85A2, MP5s and C8CQBs. It hasn't turned out to be quite the cost saving endeavour they were hoping for.

Because government contracts mean jobs, and that's what congressmen fight for. You can have a multimillion dollar federal contract (and the jobs that it comes with) go to a factory in your district, or you can watch it go into someone else's district. Ultimately, you have to act in the best interests of your constituents.

Not only that, but early history, they have horrible ideas of how to get rid of unwanted guns...like dumping them into large bodies of water and essentially polluting the shit out of it.



I seriously doubt for the sake of comparing what real FBI would use that Mulder would request a P90. A weapon like that is meant for someone who knows how to use it and Mulder has never seemed like the door kicker FBI type. Would have been real FBI cool of him to use an MP5/10 instead

Really? Isn't that asking for people to go pull the guns out of the water?

If one knows where they're dumping, which most probably don't until long after said guns are rusted beyond repair.

I recently watched a WWII doc about what the US military did to tons of Japanese guns. They dumped them into Tokyo Bay and into the ocean.

First, the show - when it was filmed in Vancouver, that is - used Felcan Enterprises as it's armorer, same as SG-1, but I don't think P90s appeared in Stargate before X-Files moved the show's production to LA. That said, the first X-Files movie was likewise filmed in LA, not Vancouver, so that doesn't matter. In any event, the FBI didn't use P90s back in the mid-late 90s, so that would have actually been a bit off - MP5s were still more the norm.

Second, Excalibur is right, Mulder is not a real 'gun-hand' type of agent (Hell plenty of times he didn't even have his sidearm). Him carrying a spare rod is about as far as that has ever gone. Only three times did he use something other than his sidearm, one being the mocked-up assault rifle inside the videogame in "First Person Shooter", the other two being 870 shotguns - one as part of tactical assault in "Tunguska" where he was along with several tac agents and outfitted similarly (armor, suit, helmet, etc), and the other time in "Trevor" when he needed to use rubber riot slugs against a particular 'monster' suspect. Mulder is not someone who thinks of lugging along a shoulder arm whenever he goes out, especially in instances like that where he goes halfway across the planet without prior formal authorization. As for not having his sidearm, we don't know that for sure simply because we don't see him pull one out, that said, Mulder going into situations being ill-prepared is honestly part of the show's point really.

Back to the topic, I don't mean limiting carry to only a portion of agents, but.. eh, again, just not sure all of them have to be packing necessarily. But as JCordell said, they're not gonna disarm 'em anytime soon, so that's that.

Otherwise, a rechambering might be feasible, but still, just simpler to outfit new weapons.

Well, to be fair to that situation, we had essentially just conquered Japan and didn't need those weapons falling into the hands of people that might still be willing to continue fighting.

Aaaand, they just went with Glocks again.

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2...rvice-handgun/

So they are getting brand new Glocks...I guess they don't want the cheap route and getting conversions from 40 to 9mm

I don't know what's behind their opposition to finger grooves.

Not everybody likes finger grooves on the grips.