It sounds like something that is unlikely to happen, and an attempt to whip up a scare story. Typically for such things, the mathematics are askew (remember the figures for the website suggesting that every American should be given his share of the banking bailout to square up his own finances instead, only they let the decimal point slip on the figures?) How big a box of ammo does it take to cost $2.50 extra with a tax of 0.05 cents per round? I suppose it must either be or not be $0.05.
Here, though, is a photo of the primer from an M16 case I picked up in Kuwait, at the top of a highway exit ramp where it is very unlikely that US or allied forces were engaged in the 1991 reoccupation. My military students told me it was the classic spot for a resistance ambush. You drive ahead of the Iraqi vehicle, then up onto the shoulder of the exit ramp, open fire as he passes it, and he has no choice but to take what is coming to him until he passes under the bridge. Then you have a wide choice of escape routes.
With one of the two M16s used, there has been a tiny pyramidal hole, made by slamming shut on an unusually hard grain of sand, into which the primer metal has been extruded. Why not have a tiny number engraved around the firing-pin hole of everybody's gun? A three-digit number would be circumstantial enough to make anyone dread losing an ejected case at a crime scene, and yet pose little danger to the innocent man, who could buy and keep pristine ammunition as at present.
