PHOENIX, AZ --(Ammoland.com)- I haven’t seen anything that suggests foul play of any kind, to me, it’s strictly supply and demand, and it shows you what panic in a market looks like.
Rationing and price spikes are the result of demand far outstripping supply.
Sure, government ammo purchases should give you pause, it’s the reason we’re all armed.
A trusted source provided this:
“Take for example .22LR ammunition. The industry as a whole (all manufacturers combined) is setup to produce 4,200,000,000 (4.2 Billions) .22 LR annually. That is running all the machines, full capacity all the time, all manufacturers together.
There is NOTHING they can do to produce more.
That corresponds to 230,137 cartridge per State per day, which is 460 bricks of 500 .22lr per day per State. That means that if less than 50 people per day in each State are buying 10 bricks of .22, it is enough to dry up the entire supply as it is being manufactured.”
News from ammo makers seems OK too, but it’s right to be wary. Trust but verify. How do you do that?
If you don’t have ammo, you’re stuck in a high market. If you’re like many Americans, you’ll comfortably ride this out until the market corrects.
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I disagree that it’s widespread panic. The government is buying up all the .223 so people are buying and shooting their .22s more often now because they can’t find .223 but still want to practice.
Well the only ammo that you can not walk into your loco gun store here in Kansas and buy is .22 l/r.
I believe the problem is all do to cost of ammo. Everyone went to the cheapest ammo you could buy, cause the cost to shoot .22 L/R is and always will be. So now we are forced to shoot what ever other caliber we have or can get, but at a steeper cost.
When did you last try to purchase .223? Its in bulk in walmarts everywhere! Have had my ar almost 2 years and never have I been out of ammo for it or not been able to find it. 22lr on the other hand i can rarely find
Ammo can be found. LuckyGunner
who’s buying 10 bricks a day of .22s? and why hasn’t the market corrected itself? anything else had a 6 mos. of very high demand, there would have been more manufacturers to jump in and also there would have been more foreign sources.
could it be over “regulation” by the government? could it be that it takes more time to go into business then it’s worth? does the president knows
Chris Rakes: “…who’s buying 10 bricks a day of .22s?…”
I don’t believe they are buying it to shoot — they are buying it to re-sell on gunbroker and the like.
If folks would just quit paying 2 to 3 times (or worse) the normal price to these gouging resellers, I believe we would see the prices resettle back to historical norms. The biggest problem is getting folks to quit feeding the gougers.
I do not trust this administration nor the democratic senate. They are oily and have back door ways of restricting and overiding our rights. The “ammo shortage” is one way to limit gun use, there are others which will be coming at us.
OK, here’s another take on this: http://www.humanevents.com/2013/06/23/inside-the-great-obama-ammo-grab/
These .22 calculations ring true with what a friend of mine worked up last Feburary. He suspects .22 LR supply could remain tight for some time.
http://www.radioshownotes.com/2013/02/do-years-of-ammo-shortages-loom-ahead.html
Of course, any waning of interest by today’s ammo buyers could help supply recoup faster.
What isin’t mentioned is the importation of ammuniton to the states .We have a ban on chinese ammuntion like norenco for good reason, because they could supply our demand . Instead they want the prices to be high .I personally think .22 is being targeted because it was cheap and economical and easily available .Most kids start out with a .22 as their first rifle. Them days are over with ! the prices they are demanding is outrageus.Even retail shops are tacking on higher prices because everybody wants to make a buck . Sad thing is .22 can not be reloaded by the home reloader so therefore your totally dependent on an outside manufacturer to feed that rifle . This is also part of the problem .I wonder if this is a clue for manufactures to stop makeing .22 with clips but make them 3 shot like most center fire rifles ?
Today I bought to boxes of 30-06 just because they were there.
How much paper do you need to shoot at to get better? I quit shooting at paper yrs. ago. I save may ammo for hunting and self protection. Shooing squirrels, with a .22, is much more challenging than shooting at paper. The paper doesn’t move. One very good shot tells you that you are good. What else do you need? You can lie on a hot dusty range and fire all your ammo,then go buy more that has risen in price, since yesterday. I’ll sit in the woods and take my few shots and know I am good, plus get more satisfaction out of it. I can wait a very long time, hunting squirrels, for the prices of ammo to come down. All rifles and pistols sight in the same way.
Well heres the way i see it.There aint ever no ammo to even to buy on the shelves so how can people be buying it up?Where is all the wolf and other imported ammo?This aint demand and supply nomore.Something is stopping the ammo from getting to the shelves.
You also have to take raw materials into account. From what I’ve heard, .22 isn’t very profitable for ammo companies, so with high demand for center fire and large government buys, they’re probably rationing their raw materials to mostly certain center fire calibers.
223 is on shelves all over the place, don’t see a shortage of that, bought an overpriced brick of 22 ammo from a guy in NC. He sells at gunshows and admitted to me that he bought all the 22 ammo he could get when prices started going up and is rakeing in the profits now.
Everything comes from China, I just bought a radiator from China, WHY NOT 22 LR AMMO? They could cover us in Ammo at 50 cents a box. But I was told the clinton adms put on a ban.
There is plenty of .223 available now, in the past month, there hasn’t been a day I couldn’t walk into cabelas and pick up 100 rounds of .223. Haven’t seen a single round of .22lr or 9mm on the shelves in the past 9 months. It makes no sense.
My luck with Made in China products has been horrible. Not sure that I would like every third round going halfway down the barrel because the charge of gunpowder had just a bit more drywall dust than powder. I think I will stick with the reputable manufactures even if it is a bit scarce or over priced.
Well, it’s been 9 months of .22 ammo shortage, enough time for everyone to buy 10 500 round bricks of ammo…so why aren’t the shelves filling back up? After someone buys a million or so rounds, don’t you think they’d stop? What about other calibers? Where’s the .308, 30-06, .45acp, 9mm, 12 gauge buckshot, etc? ANYTHING THAT MIGHT BE CONSIDERED A DEFENSIVE ROUND IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE!!! Don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining…Im 57 years old, and I’ve never, NEVER seen such an all encompassing shortage.
.223 seems to be back. 9mm Makarov is cheaper than .22 LR. Cabelas has plenty of 7.62mm Nagant. .22 LR is a precision product, tough to make in quantity and quality. But the math rings true, if everyone buys it, there won’t be any on the shelves. I don’t recall the Chinese ever making .22 LR. I wouldn’t trust Russian stuff except in calibers they use themselves: Mosin, Mak, Tok, Kalashnikov.
I have seen them stock ammo at Walmart late at night, early morning 12:00am to 4:00am. Most of the time it is just a few boxes. I go grocery shopping at these times, because there is less people and this is when things get restocked. I have personally found boxes of .22, but they have a 2 box limit per person, per day. I bought 2 boxes(about 15 boxes left) at about 2:00am, then went back at 7:00am (should be a new shift) to get more, but they were all gone already. I talk to a of managers for stores that sell ammo & in my town they same it is always the same people buying ammo early in the morning at their stores. A friend of mine works in a gun store and he said most of them are older and have no jobs(retired), so they can go to the store anytime they want. As opposed to people like me & others who have day jobs and can only go after 5:00pm, so by the time we get to a store all the ammo is gone.
I love it when a plan comes together. Who needs your guns? They are worthless without ammo.
i just bought 500 rnds of Winchester 22 lr for 20 bucks at cabelas. only problem is im from Canada! 22 cal lr in stock and lots! 9mm too! 40 cal too, 45 too, 223 too, 308 too everything available and regular prices!
What is the point of the story????
I Drove 140 miles round trip to get primers and powder that had increased 60 to 180% in price over a couple years. I passed on a box of 50/22’s at $11/box. That’s 22 cents a shot!
Ammo has gone via the 10 cent cup of coffee. I’m sure the supply will eventually come back, but don’t look for the price to come down. Visit your local gun store, express interest in buying a gun and say, “I’d love to buy it, but why purchase something I can’t afford to shoot”?
I do not understand when the Government orders 12 Billion rounds of .22 lr for “training” no one even notices. That is a 3 year production run for all US manufacturers, 24/7. So now you tell me why they need enough training rounds for 250,000 soldiers to have to have 48,000 rounds of .22 lr each. Why are they training with a round that neither targets nor travels nor drops anything like the live rounds they chamber and carry into action?
To assume sheer stupidity is to rule out all other possibilities and thus rendering the conclusion stupid and shallow.
THW GOVERNMENT HAS IT’S OWN AMMO MANUFACTURING PLANTS, THEY MAY HAVE A CORNER ON THE COMPONENT MARKWT FOR THE AMMUNITION THEY PRODUCE. JUST ANOTHER CONSPIRACY PILE OF BS. SHEESH
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t5qMsmucXhI According to this video CCI makes 4 million rounds of .22 every day. At only 300 days of production that’s 1.2 billion rounds. Do you mean to say that there are only 3-4 companies in the US producing .22 ammo? I think your reliable source needs to make up some new numbers…
“Temporarily unavailable from manufacturer.”
That is what it says under about 90% of the .22LR entries on the Graf and Sons wen site.
Graf is a MAJOR distributor.
So, the stuff we have been being fed about hoarding and excessive demand.
Absolute nonsense.
If Graf can’t get it from the manufacturer it’s either going somewhere else, or it’s not being made.
Would really like to know what’s actually going on, as opposed to the fiction of the past two years and more.