Who thinks the ammo situation will never get better?

[taylor]

A couple days ago at Sportsmans warehouse they had packs of 325 rounds of .22 for $25. I was glad to get it but I began to think, why would ammo makers come down in their prices at some future at some unspecified point? Most folks think theres a crisis regarding ammo but at some point its going to all get better, I think this is probably as good as its going to get and if the Dem's take both houses then you could call these the good old days.
What do you guys think?

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[41Slinger]

Well first of all, if the Dems take both houses then we'll probably end up using all the ammo we have or die trying, but to your point, I personally won't pay $25 for 325, but I understand if your feeding a couple of kids or something. I'd rather wait and see. The only place that I've seen trying to keep the retail price down is Bi Mart. I went to the gun show in Eugene last weekend and didn't see any 22 ammo to speak of, 1 box cci 22 mag for $15, left it sit there, but that's just me.

 

[U201491]

Well first of all, if the Dems take both houses then we'll probably end up using all the ammo we have or die trying, but to your point, I personally won't pay $25 for 325, but I understand if your feeding a couple of kids or something. I'd rather wait and see. The only place that I've seen trying to keep the retail price down is Bi Mart. I went to the gun show in Eugene last weekend and didn't see any 22 ammo to speak of, 1 box cci 22 mag for $15, left it sit there, but that's just me.

 

[Mark W.]

Sportsman was 20% above market before the panic started. In Salem theres a Sportsman (was Wholesale) Warehouse and a BiMart on Lancaster Drive. I would stop by Sportsman on the way home from work and if they had a certain bullet I was looking for I knew BiMart with its smaller inventory never carried I would buy them. But then I would go down to BiMart and spend the balance of that weeks ammo/component budget. I don't hink I ever bought any rimfire ammo at Sportsman/Wholesale as they were always just to expensive.

So nothing but how fast the inventory has changed

 

[Blitzkrieg]

I've been able to score quite a bit from Cabelas locally, (bought the limit each time) and by being an online vulture. Also have been stocking up on components from this forum and online retailers. You just have to seek out all the websites and have the money ready and don't hesitate

 

[Greenbug]

If you think it is bad now, wait until about November 2016.....

 

[U201491]

If you think it is bad now, wait until about November 2016.....

With a conservative Senate and Congress it will get back to what it was before obunga.
Get to work making that happen.

 

[Burt Gummer]

If you think it is bad now, wait until about November 2016.....

Yep the next puppet/crow will make the current one look like George Washington. That's already written in stone. A Bilderberg, CFR, UN darling who will go after guns and any individual rights like a tornado.

As for 22lr, when you find it at a reasonable price buy it because it is one of the few things you can buy that will be a great investment, entertaining when used, purposeful, etc (unlike silver or gold).

22lr might as well be this - with simple inflation I don't see CCI Mini Mags in abundant supply for .06/round ever again for instance.

 

[OLDNEWBIE]

With a conservative Senate and Congress it will get back to what it was before obunga.
Get to work making that happen.

Mid-Term Elections is in 274 days, 21 hours, 31 minutes

 

[Eugenian]

The shortage of 22LR has been entirely caused by panic buying and hoarding. If people stop hoarding, and some people buying to resell, then the situation will return to normal.

I find no shortage of ammo in other calibers, except 380 for some reason. Even .22LR I've managed to get what I need through a little extra effort online and visiting the stores at the right times.

 

[cascadianliberty2012]

First off, I think it is contrived and will NEVER get better. Call me a pessimist, but it seems that they want shooting and using any ammo to become a cost-prohibitive hobby reserved for the upper class who can "afford" it, when traditionally shooting has been something anyone could afford, from poor to rich.

22 is mass produced unlike any other caliber. Factories are running at up to 150% power (compared to pre-panic) and 24/7, yet I have not even seen a brick in a retail store since early December 2012. I've also noticed that there aren't even many "gougers" out there selling 22 bricks at ridiculous prices. I think two things are going on; first is that the government is buying/intercepting large sums of ammo from commercial suppliers, when normally the government has its own plants to produce for its own needs. Second is that the standard shooter is greedy and thinks that they "need" 30 bricks of 22 now. Even in the worst SHTF situation you would likely not even go through one brick. Seems to me Joe Blow walks into a store at a good time and buys a couple more bricks to throw on top of his other 30. I've got a couple bricks myself, but thinking about it, I really don't need any more. I'd like to buy one more, but simply because the last one I bought was November 2012.

Now there's the issue of powder, where the h3ll has that been? I haven't seen IMR4895 in well over a year, and you'd think that because powder manufacturing is a simple mass produce and bottle process, that it would find its way into stores, but it seems to not. I see brass around, and it is easy to find online. Bullets are everywhere, luckily. Primers are very hit and miss, but generally not too hard to find.

Interestingly enough most handgun calibers are available, and even now aren't "very" expensive, but still more than they should be. I routinely see 9mm (albeit that lousy Mexican stuff) at Sportsman's for ~$19 and 45 for ~$20-22, which isn't good, but I'd reluctantly say is fair considering the circumstances.

One very noticeable thing is that you can easily find .223 now easily for under $10/box, when you'd be hard pressed to even see a box of match-grade stuff until at least April/May last year. 308 is around, and not hard to find.

I must say though, that Bimart has become insanely USELESS as an ammo source. Every time I go in there (several times per week) I see nothing but .243 and .17. No 223, 308, 9mm, 45 etc. (do I even have to say they don't seem to have 22 lol?) Oddly enough I think Sportsman's has some of the better deals around right now when they used to be one of the more expensive places. Some little shops also have fair deals.

We've definitely improved, but something tells me we're gonna be struggling to achieve that "normal" from 13 months ago, and I really don't think we'll ever get back there; still way too much missing from shelves, powder seems to be "extinct," and this is in a far less hostile political climate than a year ago...

I just wanna be able to reload again!

 

[Grunwald]

Just wait until Hillary gets elected.

 

[CLT65]

Supply and demand; not much more complicated than that.

Right now demand has been outpacing supply for over a year. My understanding is that manufacturers have been reluctant to spend serious capital to increase supply, because if the bubble of demand pops, they will be left overextended. That said, supply will eventually rise to meet demand, and I believe that demand will eventually drop, once people realize that they don't really need 200k rounds of .22lr in their basements.

Once supply again outpaces demand, prices will drop to whatever level is still profitable after the cost of production. Since manufacturing costs are not that much different than they were, prices should return to about what they were before all this panic and craziness. Barring outside factors (politics and panic), basic economics should prevail.

 

[idahoan]

From a Friend of mine that works at sportsmans they are getting more 22LR in than they have been in a year, its just that people are buying all of it. He said that his store got 50 325 round packs and it was gone in 10 minutes. Thats 16,250 rounds that got bought by roughly 3 customers. Oh and you have to add in all the 50 round boxes that got bought as well, he didn't say how many but say it was roughly the same amount. Thats ~30,000 rounds for one store.

 

[RVTECH]

He said that his store got 50 325 round packs and it was gone in 10 minutes.

Yep the unemployed (and ambulatory 'disabled') have discovered a business opportunity.

 

[ZA_Survivalist]

Its going to get worse. Buy what you can when you can.

 

[Boomerang]

From a Friend of mine that works at sportsmans they are getting more 22LR in than they have been in a year, its just that people are buying all of it. He said that his store got 50 325 round packs and it was gone in 10 minutes. Thats 16,250 rounds that got bought by roughly 3 customers. Oh and you have to add in all the 50 round boxes that got bought as well, he didn't say how many but say it was roughly the same amount. Thats ~30,000 rounds for one store.

A little self-regulation and rationing by the stores can help a lot with this. Have a limit of 2 or 3 boxs of ammo per customer, and don't put it all out at the same time. Manufacturers are producing in record amounts, it's a simple case of too many people buying more than they need and socking it away out of fear.

It's the same as a run on the bank:

A bank run (also known as a run on the bank) occurs in a fractional reserve banking system when a large number of customers withdraw their deposits from a financial institution at the same time and either demand cash or transfer those funds into government bonds, precious metals or stones, or a safer institution because they believe that the financial institution is, or might become, insolvent. As a bank run progresses, it generates its own momentum, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy (or positive feedback loop) – as more people withdraw their deposits, the likelihood of default increases, thus triggering further withdrawals. This can destabilize the bank to the point where it runs out of cash and thus faces sudden bankruptcy.

It's a run on the bank, except with ammo instead of money. The cause of the shortage is too many people fearfully buying and hoarding, plain and simple.

 

[Boomerang]

Its going to get worse. Buy what you can when you can.

I know where you're coming from, but I think this mentality is precisely what's causing the shortage. Same amount of ammo is available (or more), but people are snapping it up out of fear. This leads to empty shelves which only reinforces that there's a shortage. It's a positive feedback loop, same as what causes a stampede with cattle.

If everyone in the US stopped shooting temporarily and refrained from buying *any* ammo for three or four weeks, the stores would have so much on their hands that they would have to start putting it on sale, because they can't have that much money in overstock / excess inventory.

 

[bzltyr]

Just wait until Hillary gets elected.

No way. I heard Jeb Bush might be on 2016 ticket.
I see Bimart raising prices. 250 pack of 40 had been low 80 now 90's.

 

[deen_ad]

Its going to get worse. Buy what you can when you can.

I got the last 1000 rd of 7.62X39 Wolf Poly coated that Ammoman had a couple days ago. Didn't really want to spend the money right now as my wife's short term disability just got cut by 40% but I did it anyway. Guess I need to go sight in my SIG556R with some of what I have.


Deen
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