Eh personally I think people are blowing this WAY out of proportion. The overflow thing is just biden preventing lake city (the largest military ammo production facility) from selling to the public anymore. He made that move over a year ago, and it's just now coming into effect as per the executive order.
Likewise, I'm not sure how many people realize this, but it's been illegal for decades to export "military style firearms" from the US to other countries, with the notable exceptions of Foreign military bases. This is to prevent enemy nations (IE China, Iran, etc.) From buying up mass amounts of Premium American Civilian market firearms, and reverse engineering them.
Military grade equipment really isn't that good. It's just the "best" for the price of being able to mass produce to the tune of millions of units a year. Your average middle market Civilian AR-15 from Smith and Wesson or Ruger is about 10 times as good as a M4. The disparity get's even worse when you start getting into "S-Tier" Manufacturers, like Daniel Defense, Radian, LMT, Kinetic DG, PWS, etc.
At that tier, you're talking about guns that are so much better than "military grade", that it's not even remotely comparable.
The same is true about ammo. Yeah, you can buy federal ammo in pretty much every NATO nation on the planet (even the most strict nations DO allow hunting and some form of firearm ownership), but the internal recipe is different for domestic and export ammo.
Export ammo tends to use a different, older style powder that's based on the stuff we had during Vietnam and Korea. Doesn't burn the same, and is underpowered compared to modern powder. Bullet design is also a big thing. Exports typically are only allowed to export "basic bullet designs", no fancy hollow points, no fancy ELR berger style bullets, etc. etc.
Case design, again, is an important factor, and you're typically only allowed to export "basic designs". So like, 30-06, 308, 223, etc. etc. None of the super fancy American designs that allow you to take a 308 case and turn it into a mile+ ELR rifle that bucks the wind for about how that range, thus making a sniper's job much easier.
A lot of people don't realize, weapons (including guns and ammo) are technically, "open state secrets", That's why export is so heavily regulated. In some cases, between friendly allied nations, you'll have a case where a foreign weapons company will be allowed to build "localized production plants" in an allied nation to make guns to sell to non military customers (Think like Sig and Glock having American branches to build guns here in the US because it's much easier than trying to import them from Germany/Austria). But for the most part, weapons trade, even among allied nations, is heavily restricted to older designs that aren't up to date when it comes to "the cutting edge", so as to prevent reverse engineering, and weapons/ammo ending up in the hands of enemy states.
So yeah, bit of a rant I know, but this is basically nothing new, and everyone is trying to act like this is some new phenomenon that's just now happening.
Normally “Military Grade” at least in Modern Day parlance means it’s made cheap by the lowest Bidder. Unless a more expensive Bidder promised a general or two a cushy retirement Job.
Only Spec Ops/Tier One get the real Fancy nice equipment.
Eh personally I think people are blowing this WAY out of proportion. The overflow thing is just biden preventing lake city (the largest military ammo production facility) from selling to the public anymore. He made that move over a year ago, and it's just now coming into effect as per the executive order.
Likewise, I'm not sure how many people realize this, but it's been illegal for decades to export "military style firearms" from the US to other countries, with the notable exceptions of Foreign military bases. This is to prevent enemy nations (IE China, Iran, etc.) From buying up mass amounts of Premium American Civilian market firearms, and reverse engineering them.
Military grade equipment really isn't that good. It's just the "best" for the price of being able to mass produce to the tune of millions of units a year. Your average middle market Civilian AR-15 from Smith and Wesson or Ruger is about 10 times as good as a M4. The disparity get's even worse when you start getting into "S-Tier" Manufacturers, like Daniel Defense, Radian, LMT, Kinetic DG, PWS, etc.
At that tier, you're talking about guns that are so much better than "military grade", that it's not even remotely comparable.
The same is true about ammo. Yeah, you can buy federal ammo in pretty much every NATO nation on the planet (even the most strict nations DO allow hunting and some form of firearm ownership), but the internal recipe is different for domestic and export ammo.
Export ammo tends to use a different, older style powder that's based on the stuff we had during Vietnam and Korea. Doesn't burn the same, and is underpowered compared to modern powder. Bullet design is also a big thing. Exports typically are only allowed to export "basic bullet designs", no fancy hollow points, no fancy ELR berger style bullets, etc. etc.
Case design, again, is an important factor, and you're typically only allowed to export "basic designs". So like, 30-06, 308, 223, etc. etc. None of the super fancy American designs that allow you to take a 308 case and turn it into a mile+ ELR rifle that bucks the wind for about how that range, thus making a sniper's job much easier.
A lot of people don't realize, weapons (including guns and ammo) are technically, "open state secrets", That's why export is so heavily regulated. In some cases, between friendly allied nations, you'll have a case where a foreign weapons company will be allowed to build "localized production plants" in an allied nation to make guns to sell to non military customers (Think like Sig and Glock having American branches to build guns here in the US because it's much easier than trying to import them from Germany/Austria). But for the most part, weapons trade, even among allied nations, is heavily restricted to older designs that aren't up to date when it comes to "the cutting edge", so as to prevent reverse engineering, and weapons/ammo ending up in the hands of enemy states.
So yeah, bit of a rant I know, but this is basically nothing new, and everyone is trying to act like this is some new phenomenon that's just now happening.
Normally “Military Grade” at least in Modern Day parlance means it’s made cheap by the lowest Bidder. Unless a more expensive Bidder promised a general or two a cushy retirement Job.
Only Spec Ops/Tier One get the real Fancy nice equipment.
Hence my point about why it's actually less regulated on the international market, as compared to civilian weapons.