Did We Cause the Ammo Shortage?

How does your current stock of ammo compare to what you had on December 13, 2012?

  • I have significantly more ammo now.

    Votes: 24 12.3%

  • I have roughly the same amount now.

    Votes: 146 74.9%

  • I have significantly less ammo now.

    Votes: 25 12.8%
  • Total voters
    195
  • Poll closed .
I can tell you exactly what is happening to all the ammunition. Every store near me gets an almost daily supply of ammunition. It gets here at 7, and it's gone before 8. The lines are usually 75 deep.
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Exactly. Here's a "completed listings" search on GB for .22lr ammo. 5k round lots, 10k round lots, even 15k round lots, and they're selling successfully. That's more .22 than I've shot in my entire life, being sold in a single GB auction. And there's still Armslist as well as any number of local classified ad services.

"Ammo shortage"? Yeah, go ahead and pull my other leg now.
 
A friend told me that he read in "shooting insider" magazine that the ammo companies in the US are producing a billion rounds per week.

Does that seem possible? or is he mistaken? For comparision, a billion rounds of 115 gr 9mm would be a stack 200ft X 200 ft x 10 ft high, and would require 16 million pounds of lead. Now I realize that the ammo industry makes the full gamut, from 22LR to 470 Nitro Express, but assuming that 9mm is about "average" size, this is a huge amount per week... Really?

Anybody read "shooting insider" magazine?

Jim
 
I have not bought any ammunition in years, now if you want to talk bullets, powder and primers.
This may lead me into trouble because I am running low on carry SD/HD ammo.
 
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A friend told me that he read in "shooting insider" magazine that the ammo companies in the US are producing a billion rounds per week.
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Sounds high to me. According to this industry report, annual sales of small arms ammunition are typically around 7 to 10 billion in the U.S. Although according to that same report, the Army needed 300 million rounds *per day* in 2005, which sounds impossibly high to me.

I did find a lot of references online to the "one billion per week" figure, but they may all just be parroting the same (possibly flawed?) source. Personally, 52 billion rounds per year sounds too high, even with all of the manufacturers working at capacity.
 
Stayed abou the same

I did purchase 2 50 round boxes at Walmart about 7 weeks ago for $17.99 each and I happened to run across a full shelf of PMC bronze .223 in Cabela's the end of February. The associate was just loading the shelf and I picked up 4-20 round boxes for $8.99. There must have been 200 boxes on the shelf and he wasn't done filling it up. This was after 8:15 p.m. on a Saturday evening, 45 minutes before they closed so it must have been interesting they next morning when they opened their doors. What was funny was the store was nearly empty and I was the only one in that aisle, no one was even noticing!
The winter has been long up here and I have only gone out shooting a few times in the last few months so what I have for ammo is lasting pretty well. I think I have enough to last me for most of the next year so I am waiting it out.
 
Since December I have bought 300 rounds of .308 and that's it. I could have scooped up a lot more as there was roughly about 5000 rounds sitting in the stack of boxes I took from but elected not to. I need .45 but have not bought it. I have bought two boxes of .40 S&W, four boxes of 12ga 00, and that's about it.

I don't have nearly the stock I would like so I'm not shooting much at the moment, I will go to the range and buy pistol ammo there to shoot, other wise I'm kind of sitting on what I've got.
 
Yes, I helped cause it. Being a pessimist by nature (the gun 'bug' began in '07: age 52), my ammo buying began in '08 and mostly stopped in '11.
I bought six boxes of British .303 in December before the last place raised prices.

So much military surplus ammo has disappeared: i.e. .303, Nato 7.62. The UN Small Arms Treaty has motivated some countries to block exports, and the Treaty has paid to have some countries destroy heaps of ammo and milsurp rifles.

Awareness of US massacres in the '90s along with some after 2000 were not forgotten (by some of us).
Politicians' and media responses to massacres at Tucson, Portland and Aurora should have grabbed the attention of every US gun owner:(. People assumed that Columbine or VA Tech would be the last school targets? Most schools are easy targets for psychos. But Senators' kids attend schools with armed guards....;)

I hear that most young people don't try to look at evening news, or skim through a newspaper, do they?
Well, newspapers don't have buttons to play with, but the trouble signs (to buy ammo or a desirable gun) were very clear-not everyday, but with a tragic frequency.
 
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There are clearly people that have been moved to buy their first firearm due to the current political climate, however, there is clearly hoarding going on that is creating most of this shortage.
 
I don't buy into consumer frenzies. This crap reminds me of when people would wait for store to open to buy Bennie babies.

I usually buy ammo by the case when it is a decent price so I don't have to go shopping every time I go out shooting. If I run low then I shoot 22lrs until things are normal, if I run out of 22lrs the I shoot arrows.
 
There are three buyers for ammunition:

US Military (they keep the plants busy)
Heimat Sicherheit Dienst (who just bought 1.6 billion boolits)
We The People

The latter panicked and we had our "peak" boolit which is just starting to ebb.
 
Could someone please define "hoarding ammunition"???
I hear this being constantly spouted as an accusatory phrase, blaming shooters for the latest ammo run.
I haven't been buying much ammo lately, but let's just consider...
I am 40 years old; and if the gods agree, I would like to be still shooting when I am 60. That's 20 years... We have a major shoot about every 6 weeks or 8-9 times a year....20 x 8 = 400.
Let's say conservatively, I shoot 300 rounds of various calibers per trip. That's 12,000 cartridges.

Now, with the uncertainty of more government regulations, threats to the import of ammo by the UN Arms Treaty, and the plethora of other issues driving up the cost of ammo.
Why shouldn't I buy as much as I can afford when I can get it?
It's not going to spoil.
And if ammo is not available, or prohibitively expensive in the future, what good will my guns be if I REALLY need to shoot them??

I'm not trying to start an argument, just trying to give a little something to chew on.
 
Hoarding ammo? Generally speaking, the hoarders aren't those folks who keep their normal supplies of ammo. While some folks keep more than others, those with a goodly amount on hand probably had plenty.

The hoarders in this case seem to be those people (not a mutually exclusive group from the former, you understand) who are buying out of fear they won't get a chance to buy again and are buying more than they would normally ever buy, often times many times what they would normally buy. Moreover, people who have gotten into hoarding that previously were something of ammo snobs, showing amazing disdain for ammo such as Wolf, Blazer, etc., not miraculously have found a very good reason to buy up ammo that previously they would never consider shooting in their guns, let alone actually buying some of it.

For me, the difference would go from buying maybe 5 or 6K of ammo per year to buying 20, 30 or 40K rounds of ammo per year when my consumption hasn't changed. Then I would be in the hoarding category, IMHO.

What gets me, and maybe this is smart, maybe just part of the panic, are the people who buy ammo in calibers they don't even own. If they can't find the ammo they need, they buy up what is there, ostensibly for the purposes such as trade for what they do need or for reselling it. A buddy of mine now has a couple thousand rounds of revolver ammo, purchased a box at a time, who gives the excuse that he might buy a revolver in that caliber some day. He didn't start buying it until after the panic started and so is paying some inflated prices for ammo. So who in their right mind decides buying up inflated price ammo for a gun they don't own with the excuse that they might buy such a gun someday...if they aren't hoarding?
 
Factory Ammo, Primers, Powder, New Brass etc appear to all be in rather short supply in New Zealand at present.
Just bought 1500 Winchester x22lrpp this morning as I can still reload most C/F calibers.
I got told it was because of Low supplies from the USA seeing as the Homeland Security bunch are trying to buy 1.6 billion rounds of all types of ammo (are they thinking of invading somewhere or wot!! or are they expecting something's going to happen in the near future?)... Not sure if this H.S. thing is true or not, maybe someone could deny/confirm this for me.

Cheers
G
 
Homeland security has ordered 6 billion rounds now, but people here will tell you it's for training. If it was just for training then why is the money coming from the social security fund. Anyway... what do I know. Maybe they realized their people can't hit a barn if they don't practice. It's just funny to me they realized this just as they start talking about taking people's guns. I don't know if they caused the shortage but it couldn't have helped.

On a side note... why do we need homeland security? Isn't that the FBI, and the national guards job with the armed citizens to back them up. Oh wait... militias are terrorists. I forgot.

Think what you want well you're still free to do so. More or less.
 
Though i can't speak for anyone outside of Ohio or my part of Ohio, but a few thing happened in Ohio to contribute to the demand here.

My family lives in Dayton, Oh and im about 25 miles away. The city tore down whole blocks in a certain part of town and built several new government homes.

When that happened, as well as the recession, home invasions, car-jacking's, armed robberies, and shootings skyrocketed in an area of town that wasn't accustomed to it.

When you go down-town to turn in your paperwork for carry permit there is a long wait with large lines. My sister went down right before easter weekend thinking more people would be focused on the holiday and the line would be shorter....she was there for2 1/2 hours to file it.

The shooting requirements in many of the classes require 200 rounds to be fired. The people who are taking these classes usually have a wait to get in and they purchase ammo for practice (as well as guns) before even doing the range requirements of the ccw classes.

I have spoken to several of the people taking these classes and i have yet to have someone respond anything but things are getting bad and they wanted to be prepared.
 
Homeland security has ordered 6 billion rounds now
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What!!!
6 billion!!!
What are they going to do with that amount of ammunition... Send (nearly) every one on the planet 1 round each for Christmas???

Them buggers are up to something strange!

Cheers

G
 
Just a thought on the 1500 Winchester x22lrpp I bought this morning.
I have noticed (checked 1x50 box) that the noses can be rotated on nearly every round... Is this a Crimp problem or normal?
Will they be OK?
I normally use CCI 40grain round nose but they were out of stock with no lead time on another CCI shipment, the Winchesters were cheap enough, buy 2 bricks get one free, so I got some.
The noses can't be pulled out but the rotational thing got me a bit worried, I assumed (rightly or wrongly) that Winchester would have good QC on their crimps so this must be normal and probably OK. These are USA Winchesters not the Australian made ones.

Any advice?

Thanks in advance

Cheers
G
 
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