Why is handgun ammo so hard to find?

Miscellaneous
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Does anyone know why handgun ammo is so hard to find? Is it the riots/protest/looting or just fear of more gun control?
Also, handguns are getting harder to find :frowning:
Byron

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Welcome to the family and god bless you brother.

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Thank you. Looking to learn a lot from these forums :slight_smile: God bless

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It is a combination of things to be honest.

  1. Huge amount of first time gun buyers who also bought ammo

  2. With the rioting/protesting for a time many stores actually stopped selling guns and ammo for a time (the thought was to help deter the violence)

  3. The “Virus” scare. With all the companies who had to shut down or cut back due to government mandates (worldwide) it put some of the raw materials in short supply. It is not just the ammo factories just starting production back up but they have had supply issues also, some can go all the way back to mining.

  4. (I hate this one but) Supply and demand, if the supply is short (real or imagined) the price goes up and in some cases (not all) supplies are held back and let out at a slower pace just to keep prices higher.

There may be other factors as well but these are some I have witnessed first hand.

Don

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All of the above


In my neck of the woods just as the Covid lockdown was kicking off, a politician introduced a bill that would require residents of this state to obtain a state police issued permit to purchase ammunition, complete a NICS background check and transfer (through FFL) for ammunition, and made it a felony to purchase and introduce ammunition from outside of the state or purchased online w/o being a licensed importer (FFL).

After introducing the bill
the original author bailed. Now it sits in the House Judiciary Committee. Hopefully, it dies as it is.

So, yeah
add garbage like this to the long list of many reasons as to why at least ammunition is becoming more difficult to obtain.

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Thanks for your replies. I think you are correct on all the points you raised. As far as buying guns, there is this HR5717 bill that is being discussed where a tax of 30% on all new gun purchases and a 50% tax on ammo. This bill may have had something to do with this shortage of guns and ammo :frowning:
God Bless
Byron11

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Ah, The Shortage Question. Those new to the firearms hobbyist communities don’t often get briefed in until you are already involved in some depth.

Fact Of Life in this game–ammunition is not stocked in great depth or warehoused in huge quantities in this country. It is costly to store merchandise, and most links in the inventory chain practice “Just in time” marketing to minimize warehousing costs. Ammomakers have been in business for a long time, and have good ideas about just how munch of each caliber sells over a year’s time–or five years–ten years–20 years. And they will make exactly that much, plus whatever the goobermint wants made, who is a much bigger share of their market and always gets priority. Any bump upward in demand strips the inventory chain in a pretty short hurry, and it takes a while–sometimes a year or two–to fully get caught up. Not a new thing at all, and I have primers stocked in some depth to keep my sport and practice ammo supplies in good order.

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Welcome to the community. As for the question. Most of the gun factory’s, whether it’s ammo or guns themselves, are only running at 20% right now. That means 20% of every factory that makes ammo is providing for the entire country.

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due to the Ammo shortage I have had a hard time contemplating going to some of the training courses that are going in my area. I want to do the training but at the same time, don’t want to use 500 rounds to complete the course? I am not a big stock pile person so 500 is like 35% of my supply. However, the training is something that I want to do.

I have been going by a few shops during each week and buying my 1 box that they allow and slowly increasing the supply.

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Save your brass!
Eventually you may get in to hand loading.
The more strict laws get, the more attractive it becomes.

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Thanks for an excellent response.
Be Safe

Byron

| Allen21
August 22 |

  • | - |

Ah, The Shortage Question. Those new to the firearms hobbyist communities don’t often get briefed in until you are already involved in some depth.

Fact Of Life in this game–ammunition is not stocked in great depth or warehoused in huge quantities in this country. It is costly to store merchandise, and most links in the inventory chain practice “Just in time” marketing to minimize warehousing costs. Ammomakers have been in business for a long time, and have good ideas about just how munch of each caliber sells over a year’s time–or five years–ten years–20 years. And they will make exactly that much, plus whatever the goobermint wants made, who is a much bigger share of their market and always gets priority. Any bump upward in demand strips the inventory chain in a pretty short hurry, and it takes a while–sometimes a year or two–to fully get caught up. Not a new thing at all, and I have primers stocked in some depth to keep my sport and practice ammo supplies in good order.

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I have scaled my training way back as a result. You can find good self defense ammo fairly easy online. Getting bulk, ball ammo to train with is a real challenge, putting it mildly.

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Millions of new gun owners, and everyone who was satisfied with keeping a hundred or 2 rounds at home now want to have 500-1000 rounds.

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You are most welcome.

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I will speak just to the 22 LR ammo. How many of you remember when it disappeared off of the market in a two week period. This was blamed on the buying public, there was nothing going on at the time to make people think that they needed to buy more 22 LR ammo. I know because I was buying a case a week (5,500 rounds) because I was shooting 550 plus rounds a day 7 days a week. In a two week period everything disappeared. This was also around the time that Homeland Security bought all those millions of rounds of ammo.

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All of the above plus those who hoard (same thing with the TP remember). You know the one, “I’m gonna shoot a hundred rounds and I was gonna buy a thousand, but gosh, I may be hard to get, so I’ll buy 10,000 this time”. And of course we have the folks who bought every round they could find so they could go on Armslist and sell it for a 300% markup


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I have had to quit shooting unless I can find my ammo locally. I’m not out of Ammo I am at my lowest allowable level. I keep my daughter’s gun fed for when we go to range. Except in .308, so been practicing with it, getting back out to long range.

A fellow user here helped me get a really nice set up for Lazer practicing (btw drives my cats crazy) for my handguns.

YMMV

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@Dwayne you do know that the people that you say hoard ammo have bought the ammo over the years. They do not affect the market, they do not need anymore ammo. What does affect the market is times like this when the new people to guns start buying everything that they can find at one time and at the same time whether they need it or not That does away with the ammo on the market and also drives prices up. So just what is your description of a hoarder?

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Oh, yes–the Strippers & Flippers. Buy up every box of 22 LR that landed at whatever Big Box store stocked it, then take it to a gun show and make 5X their investment. Purchase limits put a bent in that nonsense, but didn’t stop it completely. The worst of that I saw–$125 for a 500-rd brick of Montgomery Ward 22 LR (from the 1960s) in a ragged carton. C’MON, MANG. P.T. Barnum nailed it.

The best antidote to these spates of silliness are to reload your fired centerfire practice ammo. If you are truly sick & twisted, you’ll cast your own bullets to feed your war toys, too.

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Let us explain it another way and then you tell me which one effects the market the most. Everyone has to eat. Some have enough food and supplies in their home to last them anywhere from one or two months if pushed. Then you have the folks that have to go to the store to buy what they will eat that night. Now that person that went to the store every day is buying everything that they can lay their hands on. Now which person was really affecting the market at the beginning of the corvid 19

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