someone told me they (gubermnt) wuz gonna start making manufactures
put"something" in ammo that would limit the shelf life; it would even
be in bulk smokless powder;

now this is a place where nothing goes unoticed, espically a regulation like that,
so it's not that I believe it, but I've never heard of such a thing; did I miss the memo?

That would only be limited to assault powder.

Lol, i love this shit, TINFOIL TIEM

This rumor goes back the the 90's Assault Weapon Ban.

At the time, several of the usual totally dense anti-gun politicians and activists wanted to make ammo makers add "taggants" to gun powder.  These taggants would allow the police to identify the maker and even the lot of the ammo by the taggant.

It was explained that taggants would alter the powder in unsafe ways and that no military or police organization would allow it in their ammo, and that the unknown and unsafe taggant effects would likely cause explosive accidents.
So, common sense prevailed and the adults dropped the idea.

From that came rumors that the government wanted to put additives in powder or primers that would give ammo an expiration date.  Within a set number of years the ammo would simply deactivate itself and become useless.
This would prevent those NRA crazies from stockpiling ammo.
When it was explained that there is simply no possible way to do this, and again, no one military, police or civilian would allow such an unsafe additive, most people understood it was just a rumor.

Like most rumors, it refuses to die.

To sum up, there's no way to put a taggant in firearms ammo because of problems like the taggant and powder separating out and causing massive overloads.

There is no known reliable or safe method of causing ammunition to deactivate itself after a set time.

well, that rumorz so old I've never heard it.,,,,guess I can cancel that order for
a boxcar load of Unique (Flaming Dirt) & H335,,,,,,,

It's complete and utter bullshit, but just imagine what kind of liability the congresscritters and powder and ammunition manufacturers would open themselves up to.

When it gets close to the expiration date, it goes to the 50% off rack!

Why does this BS come up, every panic buy!

Did this person happen to be selling "pre-expiration date" ammo or powder for "the best price you'll find around"?

What if my primers expired 1½ years ago? Should I still use these?

That and in a testing panel of several  volunteers all volunteers were 100% successful in removing 100% of the taggants from 1 pound samples of tagged powder using a black light a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers.

And it's amazing who can get caught up in these kinds of myths.

My BIL is a pretty smart guy. He's actually a production engineer for a pretty significant firearms mfg'r (Yup. AR's of all kinds!) and he called a month or so ago, petrified by this very rumor!

It's a good thing my wife took the call. God knows what I might've said! (I'd really hate to piss him off. He's good people.) Ha! Like I said . . . it's amazing who can get fooled into a near panic by this kinda' shit!

Oh yes.  Totally true.  Your ammo is worthless.  I will take it off your hands - you only have to pay to ship it to me

This would be a terrible liability issue if ammo began to degrade much faster than expected, and failed to perform or took on unforseeable characteristics.

Not going to happen

Good one

Christ, this rumor almost predates the internet and led to the great primer famine of the mid 90s. No truth to this, cant be done, utter bullshit. You are authorized to throat punch anyone in a gunstore spreading these lies.

Limiting the shelf life of ammo is complete nonsense. If a shooting war ever starts, I'd be more worried about this.

The US did that in Vietnam.  They'd capture an ammo cache, booby trap some rounds by filling them with an explosive, then propagate a myth that bad batches of ammo were coming down from the north.

Don't believe everything you hear, and don't start a thread based on said belief!