For years, American politicians on the right have sounded the alarm over Chinese-manufactured fentanyl making its way into the U.S. drug supply.
They have accused China of fueling an overdose crisis and framed the flow of chemicals as a form of foreign aggression. Entire policy platforms have been built on the premise that when a foreign country enables the deaths of American citizens, it is not only a public health issue, but a national security threat.
Yet when it comes to the flow of Russian-made ammunition into the United States, bullets used in civilian firearms, military-style rifles, and potentially countless acts of domestic violence, there is only silence.
No calls for sanctions, no breathless headlines, no congressional hearings. The bullets are flying across American streets, the deaths are real, but the outrage is absent.
There is no direct proof that Russia is intentionally arming American shooters or directing violence. There is no public evidence of a covert Kremlin program to destabilize the U.S. through its ammunition exports.
But in the same way conservatives connect Chinese supply chains to the opioid crisis, it’s worth asking: Why doesn’t the same logic apply to Russian bullets?
For years, ammunition manufactured by Russian companies like Tula Cartridge Works and Barnaul made its way into the American market, legally and in massive quantities. Brands like Wolf and TulAmmo became staples for gun owners seeking cheap, mass-produced rounds — often for use in semi-automatic rifles modeled after Soviet-era AKs.
Before sanctions were imposed in 2021, tens of millions of rounds flowed into the U.S. annually. Even after import bans, distributors continued selling stockpiles already on U.S. soil. What happened to those bullets?
Once sold to American retailers and consumers, there is no national system that tracks their use. If a homicide or mass shooting involves a bullet manufactured in Russia, there is almost no chance it will be traced back to its origin. The data is fragmented, and in most cases, not collected at all.
That’s what makes the silence so revealing. We don’t know how many Americans have died from bullets made in Russia. And it seems that no one in the Republican dominated federal government wants to find out.
Meanwhile, the political weaponization of the fentanyl crisis continues, with politicians pushing sanctions, border crackdowns, and anti-China rhetoric while ignoring the fact that the same principle — foreign supply enabling domestic death — applies to a different kind of killing.
Why is fentanyl labeled a chemical weapon, but Russian ammunition gets a free pass? Why are Chinese-made ingredients a matter of international condemnation, but Russian-made bullets are treated as just another consumer good? The parallel is too sharp to ignore.
The conservative argument has long been that threats to American lives — whether from abroad or within — must be met with decisive force. That narrative has justified wars, bans, border walls, and trade wars. But the selective nature of the outrage makes clear that this isn’t about protecting American lives. It’s about which deaths count and which do not. And who profits.
Multiple investigations and congressional reports have exposed how Russian operatives cultivated relationships with prominent Republican figures through the National Rifle Association, using the organization as a financial and political conduit.
Beginning in 2015, Russian national Maria Butina infiltrated conservative political circles under the direction of a Kremlin-linked official, establishing close ties with NRA leadership and attending closed-door events with GOP lawmakers. Federal prosecutors later revealed that Russian money flowed through the NRA to boost conservative political campaigns, particularly in the 2016 election cycle, raising alarms about foreign influence cloaked in gun-rights rhetoric.
While the NRA claimed ignorance, internal documents and Senate findings suggested the organization served as an unregistered foreign asset, amplifying Russian interests while shielding the flow of funds behind patriotic branding. The overlap between pro-gun extremism and Russian geopolitical objectives did not emerge by accident. It was cultivated, financed, and weaponized.
When a young person overdoses on fentanyl, there is a political machine ready to exploit that death for ideological gain. When a person is gunned down on an American street with a Russian-made bullet, there is no political infrastructure to even register the event, let alone trace the round.
Ammunition is a product with a singular purpose — to inflict lethal force. Unlike fentanyl, which has legitimate medical applications, bullets are not ambiguous. They do one thing. And yet, despite their lethality, despite the reality of mass shootings, homicides, and domestic violence in which ammunition plays a central role, there is no political will to investigate its origins.
That failure is not accidental. It is structural. It reflects the ongoing refusal of lawmakers, especially those aligned with the gun lobby, to engage with the idea that guns and ammunition are not just a domestic policy issue, but an international one. It reflects a refusal to see imported bullets the same way they see imported drugs – as a public threat worthy of scrutiny, control, and consequence.
And while fentanyl is rightly the subject of a national reckoning, it’s time to ask why bullets aren’t.
There is no question that foreign policy can intersect with domestic harm. That’s the entire premise behind sanctions, trade restrictions, and international drug interdiction programs. When China is accused of enabling the opioid crisis, the response is sweeping — tariffs, diplomatic pressure, and a sustained narrative that demands accountability.
Outrage is only manufactured when it serves domestic political narratives. It’s easier to blame a foreign enemy when the victims are perceived as politically useful. But gun violence in America disproportionately affects the poor, the marginalized, and communities that conservatives often ignore or vilify. Deaths by overdose can be framed as a border failure. Deaths by bullet? Those are written off as cultural decay or inner-city dysfunction.
This is the double standard at the heart of the crisis. Russian bullets are used in legally purchased firearms that operate in a legal vacuum. There is no national registry, no meaningful restrictions on ammunition stockpiling, and no requirement to track imported rounds.
When a shooting happens, the investigation stops at the trigger. No one asks where the bullet came from. No one asks who made it, or why it was available for pennies on the dollar at a gun show in rural America.
There’s an entire political movement in the U.S. that believes TikTok is a national security threat, that a Chinese-owned video app poses an existential risk to American youth. The same movement has nothing to say about Russian-made ammunition pouring into American homes. That isn’t a coincidence. It’s a political calculation.
The problem isn’t just hypocrisy. It’s fatal inaction. Every bullet sold, every cartridge fired, every life lost to untraceable violence, all of it is compounded by the refusal to look upstream. To ask not only who pulled the trigger, but where the bullet came from. Until that question becomes part of the conversation, we’re only pretending to care about stopping the next death.
Russia is not overtly orchestrating mass shootings. But it’s fair to ask why bullets made in a hostile foreign state are so abundant in the hands of American civilians, and why that fact continues to provoke so little interest, outrage, or policy response.
If China’s chemicals are a threat, so are Russia’s cartridges. If fentanyl demands a reckoning, so does ammunition. Because in the end, there is still a grave for an American citizen on American soil.
© Photo
Jamie Carroll and Alexkich (via Shutterstock)
