I wish I could find the article now, but I read something not too long ago that made more sense as far as the ammunition shortage goes.
basically, it turns out police departments have dramatically ratcheted up their levels of firearms training the last decade. The amount of ammo they are using for this purpose has skyrocketed.
the military use of ammo supposedly does not have a whole lot of affect on the civilian market since the military controls its own ammo factories.
anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of people shooting today who did not do so in the past. even a small percentage of people shooting just a little bit more can easily disrupt the supply of ammo.
the other day a guy i shoot with said he had taken a defensive shooting class the previous weekend. the class did not allow reloads so he was forced to buy 1000 rounds of factory 40SW (500 for him and 500 for his wife) for the class. he had to go to four or five places just to get a total of 20 boxes of ammo.
ten years ago, there were not very many shooting schools out there. now they seem to be on every corner, and the people taking the classes are putting a lot of rounds down range.
my guess is that in years past, most gun owners fired less than 50 rounds a year. if just a few of them started shooting 50 rounds 2 or 3 times a year, thats an enormous amount of ammo by itself.
