A Scottsdale-based ammunition manufacturer and gun dealer anticipates that 1 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition it donated to the Ukrainian military will be delivered to the war-torn country Wednesday.
Ammo Inc., which makes ammunition and runs the online marketplace Gunbroker.com, announced the donation Feb. 28 after Russia invaded its neighboring country.
“People ask me why did we do this,” CEO Fred Wagenhals said Tuesday from his Scottsdale office. “One is democracy and freedom. I believe everybody should have that choice. But most important, I don’t think Putin is going to stop at Ukraine. I think we’ve got a real disaster on our hands and we need to support this real quick or I think we’ve got major problems on our hands.”
After announcing the donation, the company was soon inundated with so many offers to make donations to the cause, it began referring people to Care, a nonprofit humanitarian group that works around the world to help people in poverty.
Care is not affiliated with Ammo, and Wagenhals said he directed the donations to the group because they are actively helping people in Ukraine, which is not his company’s specialty.
“Our donation is the ammunition,” Wagenhals said. “We don’t want to touch anybody’s money. We have people here dropping money off and we have to return the money to them.”
Wagenhals said the company’s donation, which is worth about $700,000, came after he heard reports that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was not leaving his country and that he needed ammunition.
The exact quote has since been questioned, because it was based on a confidential source, but the intent behind it remains clear — that Zelenskyy is not leaving his land.
Ammo, which is traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “POWW,” has a factory in Wisconsin where it makes a variety of ammunition, including under contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense.
“The first step was to find out what they needed,” Wagenhals said of the munitions sent to Ukraine.
Once the company learned the Ukraine military could use 7.62mm rounds for AK-47s, Wagenhals discussed it with one of the company board members, Richard Childress, a NASCAR owner.
“He said, ‘We’ve got to do something for these people,’ and I said we’ll give them half a million rounds, and he said ‘We’ve got to step it up,'” Wagenhals said. “So we set our sights on a million rounds.”
The company made some of the rounds at its factory and purchased some from another company to get it to Ukraine promptly, he said. Then it was sent to an undisclosed site in Europe before it will move into Ukraine.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security oversees exports of weapons, but in this instance, Ammo needed special permission from the U.S. State Department, said John Flynn, who handles international trade for Ammo.
The Commerce Department did not respond to a request for comment on the issue.
The State Department said it has seen a number of similar requests from companies during the past week seeking to transfer ammunition, helmets, rifle scopes and other controlled equipment to Ukraine.
Wagenhals said the U.S. government has not impeded his company’s donation in any way.
“We are abiding by the rules. If they said, ‘Don’t do it,’ they have the ability to stop it,” he said.
In addition, U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., has helped coordinate the donation, Wagenhals said. A native of Ukraine, Spartz has worked to assist the country.
“I’ve been in contact with her,” Wagenhals said. “We’ll know the minute it crosses the border.”
Reach reporter Ryan Randazzo at ryan.randazzo@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4331. Follow him on Twitter @UtilityReporter.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Scottsdale company’s donation of 1M AK-47 bullets heading to Ukraine
