How much ammo is too much ammo? And who gets to say?

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I'm about on par with Glen. I need more 5.56 but I really want to be able to pay $300 for 1k rounds. For now I haven't shot that rifle much because I cant afford to replace what I've got.
 
I'm shooting 9mm that I bought in 1992 for $2.99 a box; it still has price stickers on it. According to http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/, that ammo should now cost $4.98. Try to buy a box of 9mm for $4.98. That $2.99 a box ammunition was a great investment. I wish I had bought 50K rounds, even 100K rounds, instead of 1K rounds. (I have to admit I have bought 9mm since 1992 and shot it all off but what I have now is the rest of that 1992 stuff.
 
Levant said:
Saying that buying ammunition is as crazy as canning urine doesn't make sense to me.
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Your confusion may partly stem from the changing of the argument, mid-stream.

Owning 27,000 rounds of ammo makes as much sense as canning urine.

"Buying ammo" makes as much sense as canning urine.

See the difference? Owning 27k rounds is not identical to "buying ammo".

I should think (though my internet experience causes me to doubt it now) that we could all agree that "some number" of ammo begins to make about as much sense as canning urine. Is that number 27 MILLION rounds, 270 thousand, 27 thousand? Somewhere there's a line that most everybody could draw.

Now, second logical fallacy is the transfer of "it doesn't make sense" to the assumption that "it should be illegal".

We are free to do all sorts of things that don't make sense. My thinking that it doesn't make sense is not synonymous with my thinking that it should be illegal.

Personally, I agree with the statement. Owning 27,000 rounds of 22 ammo for the average person makes about as much sense as canning urine, possibly less, since it could be argued that collecting that much ammo contributes to the shortage which contributes to the perceived need to collect ammo. It becomes circular. I don't think canning urine will become circular.

However, I believe in the power of the free market and it will eventually stabilize, with or without the guy who collects 27k rounds. When it does, most of those guys are going to be selling at a loss, realizing that they won't use that much is 5 lifetimes.
 
I have almost 3000 rounds of .22, 1000 of .40, and 500 9mm.

27,000 rounds seems like too much for me, but I don't shoot half as much as I would like. Some people think the amount I have is crazy. /shrug
 
How much secure storage space do you have?
From the buy cheap and stack deep school of ammo and handloading procurement that and cash are my limiting factors.
Who is going to snitch on an ammo stockpile/hoarder anyway? Just keeping my buying habits to myself.
:cool:
 
I have a heuristic - a thousand rounds for each gun caliber as a reserve.
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My thoughts are similar, although I set my comfort levels depending on number of guns owned in each caliber, frequency of use and whether or not I reload the caliber and can make more as needed.

very high use and no reload - 7.62x39 and .22LR (2,000 or more each)
high use (reload) - .38 special and 9mm (1,000 each)
medium use (reload) - .45 ACP and .380 ACP (500 each)
low use (reload) - .44 special, .44 mag, .357 mag, .25 ACP (100-200 each)
 
You know you have too much ammo when.....

(a) You are visited more by the EPA than the BATFE.
(b) You feel certain you will be the richest man on earth after the next financial crash.
(c) When your redneck friends think you are too redneck to hang out with because of your ammo addiction
(d) When you lost half your ammo in the divorce because you threw your wife's old shoes out to make room for more ammo.
 
You know you have to much when you run out of space and have to stack it around the toilet such that it and the ammo falls through the second floor on to the first floor.

A friend of mine swears this happened to someone he knows. I do know someone who was sitting on the can - no ammo around him - and the throne plunged through the second floor to the first. He was seriously injured.

So I supposed ammo could accelerate the process.
 
Ok, here's a twist. How many magazines is enough or too many?

I've seen pictures of piles of 300+ magazines owned by some folks in combinations of various pistol calibers and AR-15s.
 
After all I had a Ruger target pistol that I ran about 40,000 rounds through over a 20 year period that pretty much just fell apart and has officially been retired to the old guns home.
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Um, my boys and I used to kill a couple of thousand rounds at the club in ONE afternoon. 27,000 rounds would last a dozen or so range trips for us. Of course, this was before the post-Newtown ammo-hoarding madness.
 
I don't have a number but I agree with the sentiment of enough that I can weather another drought or price spike. I've exceeded that by a fair bit so I've stopped buying ammo for now. Kinda kills me to pass up a 1k pack of 9mm for 218 but I did and hopefully someone who has been starving for ammo will get it.
 
Two more school shootings this week. This shortage is not going to end until we get a Congress and President that realize it is criminals and not us that are shooting and that taking our guns, not keeping our guns, is the cause of violence.
 
I have almost 3000 rounds of .22, 1000 of .40, and 500 9mm.
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My wife and I both compete, practice for competion and generally enjoy shooting.

There have been many occasions when we've used more than 500 rounds of centerfire pistol in a single day, and on at least one occasion, the inventory dropped about 1300 rounds of centerfire in a single weekend.

I don't mean this to be a commentary on your level of ammunition inventory, or mine either for that matter--just pointing out how different levels of usage color one's thoughts on the matter.
 
Isn't that a significant part of using a public forum?
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Discussing on a public forum should generally be discussing and not judging. I'm hardly one to speak on that since I tend to see the world in black and white but I work on it.

Where I get the most judgmental is morals (my morals - go figure) and when people talk about doing things that leave victims behind. If someone brings to the forum that they're having an affair on their wife, I'm going to judge.

If they say they prefer white cars, I'm going to (at least try to limit to) give them my opinion that I prefer black cars.

You want a thousand rounds, I want 500. Someone else wants 10000 or 100000. That's a discussion of pros and cons, reasons to, reasons to not; that's a forum.
 
I have not read the whole thread but....

I was talking to one guy that said he has 27000 rounds of 22lr. Why would anyone need that many rounds ?
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From an investment standpoint, I wish I had 27K rounds of 22lr, purchased at the price point that existed when I first heard the idea that .22lr would be a good thing to have in uncertain times (late 1990's) ..... it would have been a much better investment than that mutual fund was ...... :mad:
 
I buy it to use. I can shoot 500 rounds of 22 LR a week. Twenty seven thousand rounds is just over a year of shooting. I know guys who shoot two to three hundred rounds of center fire rifle ammo every weekend. Other guys I know shoot obscene amounts of 9mm. Another guy I know put 45,000 rounds through one of his 1911s in just under two years.
 
jimbob, you're absolutely correct.

Had you put all your money in gold in 1980 you would not have kept up with inflation to now.

Had you put all your money into ammunition in 1980, you would have kept up with inflation and then tripled that in value.
 
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