Ammunition shortage causes police to adopt the duty axe as defensive weapon

The United States is having an ammunition shortage. For months now civilians have been finding it hard to locate many popular ammunition sizes, and now even your local police are having some issues. So creative chiefs are adopting the use of a Tactical duty Axe for uniform officers.

Many blame the ammunition shortage on the election of President Obama for his second term. Fear is that he will push for and get more gun control laws passed. As such this year has seen record gun sales. New guns without something to shot out of it are useless so new gun owners are buying up ammunition also.

These record sales have made ammunition hard to find in stores. When it is in stock people are limited on how much they can buy and price has gone up. Police who order ammunition are finding the wholesalers cannot always meet their order volumes and the cost is outside the budget for the year.

Chief Ted Oakenshield of the Middleton police came upon the idea of using axes after a major fire. “A few commercial buildings in the downtown were burning. I could see it from my office. The FD called for mutual aid from a number of surrounding cities. With how big it was I figured I better go down on scene. Good thing I did. I saw some of these firefighters working with their axes. Suddenly the tactical trainer in me started thinking, what would I do if someone attacked me with an axe?”

After the fire Chief Oakenshield started to look into axes. He did not start out looking at them for duty use. He was looking at them as a weapon that maybe someday one of his officers might have to face. Instance of Middleton police being attacked with edged weapons has been on the rise.

“Then I go to order ammo and I realize I can only buy about half of what I we typically order. I have this totally random thought, the guy who has a gun in a knife fight typically wins, by that logic the guy with an axe at a knife fight should also win.”

So the chief went to talk to a metal fabricator in town. The fabricator combined an standard expandable baton and hatchet head to make the prototype. Oakenshield said he wanted the expandable handle to keep the weapon short for wearing on the belt but still able to be wielded with two hands.

The chief showed the prototype to various manufactures. Quickly he was able to license it with Balin knifes and production is going into full swing. Balin knife is producing a number of verities made from different metals. Pricing will be in a range from about $200 for the basic metal model, up to about $600 for a axe made with more exotic materials