Two Republican members of Congress introduced legislation on Friday that would limit the amount of ammunition the government is able to purchase at a given time. The bill is a response to far-right conspiracy theories that the government is “stockpiling” ammunition, either to wage a war against the American people or to dry up the ammunition market so average citizens can’t buy bullets.

Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will put forth the Ammunition Management for More Obtainability Act (or, AMMO) Act in both the House and Senate. The bill would require executive branch agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to maintain ammunition levels below the average monthly amounts that the agencies had before Obama took office.

According to a joint press release from Lucas and Inhofe, “The legislation would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a report on the purchasing of ammunition by federal agencies, except the Department of Defense, and its affect on the supply of ammunition available to the public”:

“President Obama has been adamant about curbing law-abiding Americans’ access and opportunities to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” said Inhofe. “One way the Obama Administration is able to do this is by limiting what’s available in the market with federal agencies purchasing unnecessary stockpiles of ammunition. As the public learned in a House committee hearing this week, the Department of Homeland Security has two years worth of ammo on hand and allots nearly 1,000 more rounds of ammunition for DHS officers than is used on average by our Army officers. The AMMO Act of 2013 will enforce transparency and accountability of federal agencies’ ammunition supply while also protecting law-abiding citizens access to these resources.”

For members of Congress whose interests have generally aligned with those of gun and ammunition manufacturers, this legislation isn’t smart economics; limiting the ability of the government to buy ammunition will remove a key consumer, drying up demand and causing manufacturers to take a sales hit. Similarly, Lucas and Inhofe’s claim that the government “limit[s] what’s available in the market” if it buys up more ammunition reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of basic economics. If demand for ammunition increases, ammunition producers will increase production in order to meet this demand.

Last week, another Republican representative, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) brought up the “stockpiling” conspiracy in a hearing with DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano, who said it was “inherently unbelievable that those statements would be made.”

The theory comes from fringe websites like Alex Jones’s Infowars, but have been given a platform by Drudge, a site that commonly peddles unfounded conspiracy theories. Even some far-right sites have taken it upon themselves to debunk the claim that DHS is “stockpiling” weapons. Brietbart.com described the theories as “based more on panic than fact.”

Florida’s efforts to purge “ineligible” voters from the rolls received an unexpected boost last week, after the Department of Homeland Security granted the state access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, all but encouraging Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) to resume his controversial voter purge.

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner responded to the news by sending a letter to elections supervisors informing them that the state’s original error-ridden list of possible ineligible voters — generated by a comparison of driver’s license and voter registration records — “should be considered obsolete.” Indeed, that database proved to both disproportionately affect Hispanic and democratic voters, and to be riddled with inaccuracies, targeting hundreds of eligible voters, including two World War II veterans.

“I am very pleased that the federal government has committed to giving us the access necessary to identify noncitizens on the voter rolls and make sure these ineligible voters cannot cast a ballot,” Detzner said in a statement. “Florida voters are counting on their state and federal governments to cooperate in a way that ensures elections are fair, beginning with ensuring the voter rolls are current and accurate.” However, the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database is not without its own limitations:

According to the letter — signed by a Homeland Security official, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services — to verify the citizenship status of people registered to vote in Florida, officials must provide evidence, like an alien number, that the person is indeed a noncitizen. Those numbers are typically given to people who are living in the country legally as noncitizens. Under federal law, such individuals are not permitted to vote. The SAVE database can provide no information on illegal immigrants who may have registered to vote.

That restriction will prevent Florida from solely using driver’s license information, as it did when the state compiled its initial list of 182,000 voters believed to be noncitizens. That list was then pared down to 2,600, of which 107 were found to have been registered to vote illegally, according to The Orlando Sentinel.

Florida is not the only state pushing for access to SAVE. Last week, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler threatened to sue DHS for access to the database. Gessler was backed by nine secretaries of state and two lieutenant governors, all republicans.

–Alex Brown

The Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities program is supposed to help prioritize the deportation of undocumented immigrants who commit serious crimes. It formed agreements with state and local police departments to check the fingerprints of every person booked at jails against an immigration database to identify who is undocumented. But the program failed to focus on serious criminals — most people identified through the program were charged with traffic-related offenses in some jurisdiction — and thousands of U.S. citizens have been detained through the program.

Following Monday’s Supreme Court ruling that invalidated three sections of Arizona’s immigration law, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded Secure Communities agreements with seven Arizona law enforcement agencies. They were the last agencies in Arizona with street-level task force agreements under the controversial program to check the immigration status of suspected undocumented immigrants. After the ruling let the “show me your papers” provision stand in SB 1070, a DHS official said the Obama administration determined that the agreements are “not useful” now in states that have Arizona-style laws.

Along with ending the partnerships, DHS officials said officials would not respond to calls from Arizona officials who want immigration agents to take undocumented immigrants into custody unless the suspects meet the criteria for enforcement priorities, such as convicted criminals or deportees who have returned to the U.S. While the task forces have been suspended, several Arizona departments still check immigration status in jails.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) accused President Obama of not thinking that Arizona is “part of the country anymore” if officials are pulling back on Secure Communities in the state. But a task force advising the president last year found that Secure Communities had a “negative impact” on public safety. It had “eroded the public trust” because even immigrants who had not committed serious crimes were being detained.

The Obama administration announced a new process in August 2011 to review deportations on a case-by-case basis. That way, immigration officials could focus their resources on higher priority targets — people who pose a threat to public safety or repeat immigration law violators — instead of low priority cases, like bi-national same-sex couples, children who were brought to America at a young age, pregnant women, and military veterans.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in August that the policy was first outlined in March 2010. And a senior administration official explained at the time that the process is designed to “keep folks who are low priority cases out of the deportation process to begin with.” But of the roughly 300,000 cases reviewed, only 4,400 deportations of undocumented immigrants had been halted so far. Stopping fewer than 2 percent of deportations is not good enough, one official told the New York Times:

“I do believe the administration has the right intention, prioritizing deportations,” Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a leading Democrat on immigration issues, said after seeing the low figures from the deportations review. “But these abysmal numbers raise serious questions about whether the Department of Homeland Security is making that vision a reality.”

Menendez suggested that immigrants who have close relatives in the U.S. should be included in the reviews, and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said prosecutors should grant work permits to immigrants who stay in the U.S. until their deportation case is reviewed.

Under President Obama, roughly 400,000 undocumented immigrants have been deported each year. About 46,000 parents were deported in the first half of 2011, before officials began reviewing deportation case-by-case. But if only 4,400 deportations have been stopped under the review policy, then the administration should use it more widely, like for students who risk being deported.