HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TND) — One thousand rounds of ammunition.
That’s how many investigators say 32-year-old Joseph Couch bought the morning he allegedly went on a shooting spree on I-75 in Kentucky Saturday.
Police say he wounded five people and hit at least 12 cars when he fired as many as 20 to 30 rounds from an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, which he also bought that morning. Authorities are on their fifth day of a manhunt to locate him.
According to the arrest affidavit, the former Army reservist legally bought the gun and ammo for $2,914.40 at Center Target Firearms, a gun store in Laurel County. Family members reportedly told investigators he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Less than a year ago, another Kentucky man suffering from mental illness fatally shot five coworkers at a Louisville bank.
Connor Sturgeon, 25, died in a shootout with police that day in November. He bought his assault rifle, 120 rounds of ammo and four magazine cartridges for $700 just six days before the shooting. He fired more than 40 rounds over the course of about eight minutes, also injuring eight others.
Sturgeon wrote in his journal that the process to buy the weapon and ammo only took about 45 minutes at River City Firearms, a gun store in Louisville. Some say a background check can take a little as 10 minutes, and there’s no federal waiting period requirement. But some states require a waiting period of a couple days or weeks.
Sturgeon wrote he was shocked at the no-frills transaction, considering his documented mental health struggle that consisted of a suicide attempt, medication and regularly seeing a psychiatrist.
“OH MY GOD THIS IS SO EASY,” he wrote in bold. “Seriously, I knew it would be doable, but this is ridiculous.”
He wrote that his goal of the shooting was to prove gun laws in the U.S. are too lax.
“I have decided to make an impact. These people did not deserve to die but because I was depressed and able to buy [guns], they are gone.”
Federal law requires people who buy guns at federally licensed dealers to be at least 18 years old and to undergo a background check. They cannot be convicted of a felony or domestic violence misdemeanor or have a history of mental illness.
Some states require even more than this from potential buyers, like being 21 years old instead, and having a permit.
But as far as ammunition goes, in some states, it’s almost easier to buy than Sudafed.
In Alabama, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas, you can actually now buy ammo out of vending machines at your local grocery store.
Federal law currently prohibits certain categories of people from buying it (underage, convicts and those with a history of mental illness) – but sellers aren’t required to conduct background checks on people just buying ammunition.
Just six states and Washington, D.C. have laws regulating ammo sales and requiring background checks: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.
Ammo can be bought online in most states. And dealers aren’t required to maintain ammo sales records, obtain licenses or report high-volume sales to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
It’s how the 17-year-old Santa Fe High School shooter was allegedly able to get ammo to go on the shooting rampage in 2018 that killed 10 people and wounded 13 others in Texas. According to the lawsuit, he bought it on Luckygunner.com in two minutes, with zero verification.
Luckygunner.com claims the shooter misrepresented himself during the purchase, and the platform complied with all laws in the sale. Luckygunner.com was eventually dismissed from the lawsuit, meaning it wasn’t responsible for any damages, but a civil jury in Texas found the site 20% liable for the tragedy. (The shooter was 80% liable).
It wasn’t always this easy to buy ammo in the U.S.
The Federal Gun Control Act of 1968 made dealers identify people buying ammo and keep records of it. It also included a ban on interstate mail-order sales.
The law was passed in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and President John F. Kennedy. Still, it had many loopholes, and many of the regulations were changed or removed entirely upon the passage of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986, including every one surrounding ammo sales. That law was passed to combat what gun advocates described as unnecessary federal restrictions on law-abiding citizens.
No federal regulations on ammo have been passed since, nor have many firearm regulations, save the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022. That law attempts to crack down on gun trafficking, straw purchasing and guns in the hands of domestic abusers.
The only ammunition regulation now is federal law prohibiting the manufacturing and selling of armor-piercing ammo.
Lawmakers in Congress have tried and failed to bring those 1968 ammo regulations back. Republican majorities block any proposed bills from making it to the floor.
Lawmakers also proposed other ideas like requiring dealers to flag bulk ammo purchases to the ATF, heavily taxing ammo (the current federal cap is 11%), requiring ammo dealers to be federally licensed like firearms dealers, or banning high capacity magazines – a ban President Joe Biden and Democrats have been demanding for years.
Advocates with the National Rifle Association and National Shooting Sports Foundation cite several arguments against ammo regulation:
Too much paperwork; criminals will find ammo anyway; law-abiding citizens don’t deserve extra hoops to jump through; competitive shooters who go through a thousand rounds of ammo or more a day are targeted; buying ammo in bulk saves them money; shooters will become worse shots if they can’t practice with as much ammo, and more.
Yet, in many mass shooting cases, the shooters aren’t good shots (like the bank shooter, who police say “did not have a firm understanding” of how to operate the weapon). But the wealth of ammo allows them to fire and fire until they do hit people.
A New York Times investigation found ammo from one plant specifically has been used in at least 12 high-profile mass shootings, including Uvalde, Parkland and Aurora: Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri. It’s been supplying the U.S. military since World War II, but it also sells ammo commercially.
Lawmakers and attorneys general have called for oversight of the plant. Democrats say excess military-grade ammo shouldn’t be sold to the public, but advocates argue it’s also used for self defense and shooting sports. LCAAP points to the fact that the Department of Defense permitted the commercial utilization of the plant so that, in the event of an emergency, LCAAP could give the commercial supply to the military.
It’s why scholars call ammo the “actual agent of harm” in gun violence. Criminals don’t have to be good shots, or worry about how much ammo they burn through. Without the ammo, the gun is just an empty vessel.
It’s tough to get a grip on the scope of the ammo market in the U.S., since the government doesn’t have or release any data on manufacturing, importing or selling it.
Oxfam International estimated in 2012 that the global trade in ammo for small arms and light weapons was $4.3 billion per year. Other estimates show Americans buy 10 to 12 billion ammo cartridges per year, including the military and law enforcement.
The NSSF says in 2023, the firearm and ammo industry accounted for more than $90 billion of the total economic activity in the U.S.
Still, so-called “bullet control” is often left out of the gun control conversations. Advocates, from lobbyists to victims to comedians, say it should be just as important as firearm control.
It’s like Chris Rock said in his “Bigger and Blacker” HBO special in 1999:
“You don’t need no gun control, you know what you need? We need some bullet control … I think all bullets should cost $5,000. $5,000 per bullet. You know why? ‘Cause if a bullet cost $5,000, there would be no more innocent bystanders.”