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This ammo shortage is getting to be outrageous!

Maverick9

Regular Member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
1,404
Location
Mid-atlantic
If you were in guvernmnt and got together a think tank how would you deal with the current state of 'Muricans being armed?

You'd find ways to discourage new gun buyers/owners. Insurance, laws about having a big safe to store them in, laws about keeping everything locked up and mags, bullets and firearms stored separately in the home.

You'd allow carry, concealed or openly but you'd say all magazines have to be stored separately, the gun unloaded and bullets in boxes. People would just give up.

You'd buy up all the ammo and make factories cut back on production by giving them an allowance, much like they did for farmers NOT to grow certain crops. You'd make it economically unsound to produce ammo or to sell it to anyone but the guvernmnt.

You'd buy up or make magazines illegal. You'd draft laws that were vague and confusing (magazines protruding below the handle - hey every mag protrudes a little).

You'd have a patchwork of carry regs (oops already have that) making it hard for someone to take a vacation and be armed.

You'd give guns to criminals (and mexicans) making it so scary out there that people would vote for more intrusive big guvernmnt.

You'd find ways to have highly inflammatory school shooting by offering high value targets and removing all guns and means of defending themselves, virtually saying 'all crazy persons and psychopaths, come and get 'em'.

You'd have media ignore SD shooting and play up the school shootings, lying about frequency, and using the word 'Little Children' or 'adult children' in the story so as to sensationalize every story.

You'd watch as various states legislated more intrusive gun laws, and watch as that spread across the country.

You'd convince Congress that the best populace is an unarmed constituency and tell them that THEY (Congress) are special and the only ones smart enough to have weapons and bodyguards not these crazy people who are eating themselves to death at McD's.

You get people to report on their neighbor for a $500 bounty.

You don't go in the front door and ask for the guns. The guv is very smart. They have time and money on their side. We have very little and it's eroding quickly.
 
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PFC HALE

Regular Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2012
Messages
481
Location
earth
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Again: struggling college student. Not my fault.

You don't have to stop doing what you're doing, but you might as well stop trying to excuse your way around the fact that it makes you a selfish *******.

Listen, guys. Nobody's saying we don't understand hoarding, or we want to ban it.

We're merely saying, well, see above. No different from how you treat us, really.

wow take thing personally much? grow up kid!
 

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
wow take thing personally much? grow up kid!

lol, so being in college means I'm a kid?

How old do you think I am?

By the way, you make it personal when your self-justification consists entirely of blaming me for what you imagine to be a lack of foresight.

You know what my response is to that? Wait for it...

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marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
Where are our amateur economists on this? A free market prevents hoarding by allowing supply-and-demand pricing to function. When the price is made to lag the demand then there is money to be made by buying low, hoarding, and selling high gouging.

On the surface, a free market can't be said to exist when you have such artificial externalities such as government regulation, or threat thereof.

My ammo supply is at its minimum, and I cannot afford to replace what I might shoot, so I am hoarding. Make a good enough offer and I might gouge you to sell a little bit.

Frankly, my dumb, blind-to-the-future ass decided, purely on a lark (because, you know, I am not gifted enough to be among the prescient who somehow "knew" this was going to happen and yet, strangely, weren't in Newton to stop it), to invest in a reloading setup, so the only thing I'm really having a tough time with is .22 LR.

Which, by the way, is not the perfect survival situation round everyone seems to think it would be.

.22 is for fun, buying a brick or three at a time. Not for hoarding, and definitely not a winning survival round.
 

OC for ME

Regular Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2010
Messages
12,452
Location
White Oak Plantation
Uncle Sam, deep pockets, short calendar. Ammo manufactures could have said no to Uncle Sam. But, they said yes and now must abide by the terms and conditions of the sales contract.

Does not get any more free-market capitalist than that.

As was alluded to, if the feds can't legislate guns out of the hands of the citizenry, they sure can buy up all the ammo. A gun without ammo is a really expensive hammer that sucks at being a hammer.
 

eye95

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 6, 2010
Messages
13,524
Location
Fairborn, Ohio, USA
If you have 10k rounds of .22LR and have no intention of shooting any of it, and are still buying all you find, your a hoarder. If you buy ammo for no purpose other than to resale it at a higher price your a gouger. These are my opinions, and I am entitled to them.

No one ever buys ammo with no intention of shooting it. They may only intend to shoot it when and if the SHTF, or may be holding to ensure that they will survive future shortages.

If you buy ammo for no purpose other than to resell it at a higher price, then you are a retailer.

There is no such a thing as gouging. There are markets driven by supply and demand. When prices are held artificially low (because of fear of the silly "gouging" label, or because of laws against "gouging") people buy more than they need because it is a bargain and theymight need it. If prices are allowed to move up naturally, then prices will find a level where everyone can find what they need and will self-ration. There will be no need for two-box limits.

The free markets are part of this Liberty we talk about so much here.
 

eye95

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 6, 2010
Messages
13,524
Location
Fairborn, Ohio, USA
i have around 14,000+ rds of various ammo. i saw this coming 2 years ago and started buying at a normal pace. im good for ammo and no need to buy at these retarded prices.

your own fault for not being prepared.

You hoarder you! This man needs to be flogged and have all his ammo confiscated!
 

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
Uncle Sam, deep pockets, short calendar. Ammo manufactures could have said no to Uncle Sam. But, they said yes and now must abide by the terms and conditions of the sales contract.

Does not get any more free-market capitalist than that.

Again, in a free market, government is not a major player.

By definition.

And duh.
 

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
The free markets are part of this Liberty we talk about so much here.

Blah, blah, blah, free market does not apply. See above.

What's truly sad is that peoples' notion of what constitutes a "free market" has been so watered down they think it applies to the current situation.

Not a free market, in at least two ways I've identified, either one of which is sufficient reason on its own.
 
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Firearms Iinstuctor

Regular Member
Joined
Jul 12, 2011
Messages
3,431
Location
northern wis
The price one pays for ammo is small compared to the price one is paying for collage,


From a former starving collage student. I was able to fund my shooting habits not as much as I would have like to when I was in collage. But I did shoot during my collage years.

Some of us have been there and done that.
 

eye95

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 6, 2010
Messages
13,524
Location
Fairborn, Ohio, USA
I dunno, a nice collage, by a respected artist, can be quite expensive, sometimes more-so even than a quality college education. ;)
 

markand

Regular Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2006
Messages
512
Location
VA
Simple math

Its hard to nail down exact figures, so don't expect precise cites, but consider this. There are about 50 million households in the US who own firearms (NRA says 80 million, others say only 30 million). With all the hysteria, it seems that most of these households want to lay in a supply of ammo. Let's say that every gun owning household wants to add a mere 1,000 rounds of their favorite caliber to whatever they already have on the shelf. That's 50 billion rounds of I-want-it-right-now demand. Ammo production is about 1 billion rounds per week. Simple math. It will take about a year for ammo manufacturers to satisfy this sudden demand. Yep, this is a bit over simplified. Not every gun owner is looking for ammo and some want a lot more than 1,000 rounds. And some people actually shoot ammo, creating additional demand. But the basic idea is all of these gun owners suddenly seeking to buy ammo creates demand that can't be met by existing production capacity. And the shortage exacerbates demand as gun owners that weren't in the market for large quantities of ammo suddenly get spooked and line up at WalMart at 7 am to pick over whatever ammo shipment they get that morning.

The way manufacturing companies plan these days, they don't include excess capacity or inventory in their plans. They have just enough inventory and capacity to satisfy expected demand. When demand spikes, they can't respond quickly. They're already running some production lines 24 hours a day. And the government isn't sucking it all up either. Hornady says less than 5% of all of their ammo production goes to "government entities". The current ammo situation is simple supply and demand.
 

metalman383

Regular Member
Joined
Jan 20, 2009
Messages
282
Location
Eau Claire WI, ,
If after the first election of Obama, people didn't learn a lesson about making sure they have the ammo they need, then it is their own fault. I don't think anyone can be blamed for scarffing up what they can, when they can. It's kind of like having 7 cars and not being able to get any gas, they are then deemed useless.
 

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
The price one pays for ammo is small compared to the price one is paying for collage,


From a former starving collage student. I was able to fund my shooting habits not as much as I would have like to when I was in collage. But I did shoot during my collage years.

Some of us have been there and done that.

Indeed. But, as I said, I've been reloading and shooting .45 without too much difficulty.

The notion that I'm somehow to blame for being unable to buy .22 LR, because I can't afford to hoard it, is what I'm refuting.
 

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
If after the first election of Obama, people didn't learn a lesson about making sure they have the ammo they need, then it is their own fault. I don't think anyone can be blamed for scarffing up what they can, when they can. It's kind of like having 7 cars and not being able to get any gas, they are then deemed useless.

Wow, you're so smart and prescient, will you be my advisor?

See, again, blame. It's my fault.

Guess what?

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acmariner99

Regular Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2010
Messages
655
Location
Renton, Wa
Finding 22 and 9 mm is indeed difficult these days. Though this past weekend, my local gun shop was stocked on 45 (at 25 bucks for a box of 50 - inflated, but not outrageously so) and GASP 556! 12 bucks for a box of 20 rounds - again, higher than expected but not outrageous. And yes, I did get as much as I could afford. Seems timing is everything. I also saw the shelves stocked with rifles and high capacity magazines. I suspect supply is starting to ease slightly where I am since the fear of a state or federal AWB has passed - though prices are still higher (much higher for some rifles) than before "the scare" I think those will start to relax in the next few months.
 

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
Finding 22 and 9 mm is indeed difficult these days. Though this past weekend, my local gun shop was stocked on 45 (at 25 bucks for a box of 50 - inflated, but not outrageously so) and GASP 556! 12 bucks for a box of 20 rounds - again, higher than expected but not outrageous. And yes, I did get as much as I could afford. Seems timing is everything. I also saw the shelves stocked with rifles and high capacity magazines. I suspect supply is starting to ease slightly where I am since the fear of a state or federal AWB has passed - though prices are still higher (much higher for some rifles) than before "the scare" I think those will start to relax in the next few months.

It seems the supply of rifles and magazines has indeed stabilized. Many people are still waiting on backorders which are delayed months, but more basic models are appearing on shelves now, waiting to be bought.

In fact, I have 20 standard capacity mags scheduled for delivery this afternoon. I ordered them months ago for me and a couple friends, and Brownells is finally starting to get them out.

But people really need to lighten up on the ammo. When new shooters are deterred, the anti-gunners get their way.
 
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