What Is Driving The Shortages Of Ammunition?
BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 10 months ago
That’s correct. You are not seeing things or dreaming. Check out the photo once again. The price tag on that 38 Special +P+ ammunition is $110 a box of 50 rounds. Outrageous. This is just one example of current pricing of ammo at a recent arms show due to the ammo crisis.
At a recent gun show, I recently saw packages of 100 rounds of 22 LR ammo selling for $40 — and that was a good buy.
Ammo at inflated prices? That 22 rimfire ammo mentioned above only 9 months ago was selling for $15 a box. The ironic part is that any available ammo was flying off the tables once buyers got over the sticker shock and pried their wallets out of their pockets. Some buyers came by the tables two or three times before they bought. It took a while for the high-priced reality to settle in.
What’s the deal? To be honest, no one really seems to know. Dealer after dealer told me their suppliers and distributors were simply “out” of ammunition — and they were not accepting any back orders. Many felt like some suppliers were withholding stock to keep the prices high so they could cash in while the getting was good. We’ve seen that before as well.
There were no indications of when ammo supplies might be fulfilled in the future. Smaller dealers said they believed that ammo supplies were being allocated to their biggest dealers and the little guys were just left with nothing. It’s getting to be a dire situation if you are really in need of even just a few boxes of ammo. It’s getting to be the same with guns. One dealer told me he would be out of business in six months if firearms supplies did not open up.
Even common everyday hunting loads for the 30-06 Sprg, 270 Winchester, 30-30 Winchester, or the 243 Winchester were non-existent at this gun show. Deer hunting season is still open here and hunters were frantically searching for even one last box to close out the season. There was almost none to be had, and what was available was triple the price it would have cost twelve months ago.
The ammo crisis is hard to understand, given manufacturers’ reports that ammo production is at top capacity. There have been local news reports of the Winchester rimfire factory in Oxford, MS running full blast. If so, where in the heck is all the ammo going? Even the big box stores are out of ammo, too, including Walmart and Bass Pro Shops here locally.
I know that in my neck of the woods it may be something, I don’t know what, alluded to in the article, but it’s something else too.
I dropped into my local Academy Sports a few days ago and talked to one of the guys behind the counter.
Buyers know when the trucks come, and when they do, there is no telling what they will bring, what caliber, or how much. But it’s usually Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and he told me folks start lining up at around 0230 hours on all three of those days.
He said, “If you’re not here in line by 0600, you won’t get any ammo.”
It’s being hoarded for sure, but then, I live in a firearm friendly county.
On January 26, 2021 at 9:18 am, Don Curton said:
It’s definitely hoarding. Guys that used to buy a couple of boxes while driving to the range now feel an personal crisis if they don’t have 10,000 rounds in their closet. (No judgment, I have a pretty good stockpile myself). Plus you have other guys buying up everything to resell at inflated prices.
As a manufacturer, this is an artificial demand in that people are buying at an inflated rate, but they are not consuming at that same rate. Sooner or later everyone will have their 10,000 rounds stored up and then demand (and prices) will drop like a rock. I see something similar in my industry.
The problem with big corporations is that management is EXTREMELY risk adverse, especially with spending capital. So the idea of spending money now to increase capacity when that capacity might not be available for months (?) or years (?) is risky. Doing that when you believe (with good evidence) that the market is poised on a bubble is downright poison. I don’t know how long it takes to get a new ammo manufacturing facility built, but it’s not overnight.
On top of all that is the political landscape. No idea what’s in the future, but management will absolutely, positively, under no circumstances, spend any capital money to increase capacity if they suspect the govt might change rules in the near future.
So you see the current strategy of running existing facilities 24/7 with 3 shifts per day. That works, for a while, but eventually you’ll start losing capacity as equipment breakages increase. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s already happening.
On January 26, 2021 at 9:24 am, Don Curton said:
I meant “NOT” spend any capital money in that next to last paragraph
On January 26, 2021 at 9:41 am, Andrew said:
People forget the “Crisis in 2008”.
Or didn’t shoot much back then.
I know I only had so much at the time and the only thing I could regularly find was .22LR, so mostly I shot that, parceling out “Center Fire” a box or handful at a time per range trip.
With the way it is now, figure this “supply shortage” could last until 2023 (there’s an election next year…) and maybe 2025, assuming there’s a chance of “changing parties” that is.
But what do I know, I’m not a lawyer, doctor, and I didn’t spend the night in a smart hotel.
On January 26, 2021 at 9:49 am, Ned2 said:
I don’t see prices stabilizing if this current environment continues either. Price of ammo didn’t drop much after Trump was elected.
Time to get into reloading if you haven’t yet, and you have been buying primers and powder anyway, right?
On January 26, 2021 at 10:08 am, The Dark Lord said:
so what is causing the ammo shortage ? is it hoarding ?
On January 26, 2021 at 10:10 am, Papa said:
Primers are G. O. N. E.
Gone.
Powder, when found or gotten, is useless for reloading without pppprimers.
Time for primer plan B.
And, dare I say that some of the ammo going to retailers doesn’t make it to the shelves and customers?
On January 26, 2021 at 10:13 am, Bram said:
Hoarding – yes. Covid related supply-chain interruptions – yes. Millions of new gun owners – yes.
The only ammo that seems relatively reasonable is birdshot.
On January 26, 2021 at 10:20 am, Herschel Smith said:
@Bram,
The Cabela’s where I am is even out of that. Nothing. Bare shelves.
On January 26, 2021 at 10:43 am, Bram said:
I have a couple of shops near me. One has lots of guns and little ammo – the other is often the opposite.
On January 26, 2021 at 11:07 am, James said:
i started shooting 3Gun, IDPA USPSA, Rimfire matches 10yrs ago and was shooting 5-10k rnds per year, all handloads but for 22lr. I have completely stopped shooting as i can’t replace my components at this point without a second mortgage.
On January 26, 2021 at 11:23 am, ViulfR said:
Probably not all hoarding; as previously pointed out: https://www.captainsjournal.com/2021/01/15/ammunition-availability-2/ if you can run bots to buy up supplies as they hit the loading dock, you don’t have to ban anything (and all the messy counter messaging that requires), you (as in alphabet soup agencies and ngo’s) can just buy it up before the general public and thereby limit the amount of kinetic resistance in the resistance…you have the treasury behind you, price is not an object.
First to market is an awful lot like “get there fustest with the mostest”…
On January 26, 2021 at 11:27 am, Herschel Smith said:
Yes. This ^^^^^
A lot of it is being bought in bulk before it ever gets to the retailers.
I saw the 2A Warehouse a few days ago had barrels of 15,000 rounds of 5.56. Wondered if anyone would buy it. Price was something like $1 per round for ammo in the barrel.
It’s all gone.
On January 26, 2021 at 11:47 am, Wilson said:
In a political environment where ammo and guns have a very real chance of being banned or the market severely hampered no company is going to invest in expansion.
On January 26, 2021 at 12:22 pm, John said:
Does this mean the ammo and component shortage will make muzzle loading the “New Thing?
Wouldn’t that be ironic to see the flintlock make a comeback?
On January 26, 2021 at 12:54 pm, Rocketguy said:
I’ll second the comment about the diminishing returns associated with running manufacturing equipment 24/7. I was engineer on a line feeding stuff that went boom to the troops during the last Iraq invasion/occupation. We saw 3X demand for our product.
Any maintenance time is down time. You end up with more equipment failures because you’re putting off preventative maintenance. To man all the shifts, you end up staffing with non-optimal personnel (one of my lines had a problem child machine that did a very “fiddly” assembly and required an operator who cared and was ready to deal with the frequent stoppages – my best people could get 3-5 times more parts per shift than lesser folks) further cutting into your numbers. All those hours wear on people, cutting into their output. You also need more people in support departments – material receiving, quality assurance, engineering, maintenance, supervision, etc. All of the above results in increased cost of quality – more fall out, more re-work, more scrap.
You also run into issues where your suppliers aren’t prepared to support your rates. They also deal with the same issues as they ramp up to support you. You run out of parts, receive poor quality parts, etc.
It’s a real mess. We eventually found that it really wasn’t useful to run more than 2-shifts, 7-days. The best part of all that? We still ran 24/7 so the corporate folks could say we were working 24/7.
On January 26, 2021 at 5:53 pm, Crossing Gorgoroth said:
The Clintonian plan of $300 a box whether due to market forces or comradegove edicts is coming to pass?
It is fun to look at price stickers on boxes from long ago with $15-25 for pistol rounds even +P+ rounds.
Maybe people just aren’t feeling the unity of the glorious comrade’s collective as they stock up on ammo and pantry items.
Why it’s almost as if they are waiting on the other jackboot to drop.
On January 26, 2021 at 7:31 pm, JoeFour said:
“Buyers know when the trucks come, and when they do, there is no telling what they will bring, what caliber, or how much. But it’s usually Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and he told me folks start lining up at around 0230 hours on all three of those days.”
I’m wondering why the big retailers don’t require their shelves to be stocked, prohibit direct buying off delivery trucks, and then limit shelf purchases to some specified few boxes per customer.
On January 26, 2021 at 7:44 pm, Herschel Smith said:
@Joefour,
Good questions. At Academy, they stock the shelves and people have to buy from there. They aren’t allowed to buy off of trucks.
There is also a box / skew limit. But I’m told (so this is just hearsay) that there are some bad actors who pay others to line up at 0200 hours, buy as much as they can, and then they resell at their own convenience.
Which of course is a no-no.
On January 26, 2021 at 7:59 pm, joe said:
i get ammo direct from a distributor and he told me a couple weeks ago this will be your last order, we are being told we won’t be able to get ammo until the end of this year…all the ammo on back order at the box stores, wiped clean like it never happened, they will never get the ammo…
On January 26, 2021 at 8:13 pm, Fred said:
It’s not bots. People use words like bot and have no idea what they are talking about. Bulk buyers, that’s the term, because that’s what it is.
On January 27, 2021 at 10:20 am, Roger J said:
I think that by the time ammo and primers are available again, we will need Comrade Joe’s caliber-specific license to purchase any. And it will be taxed to the hilt to provide funds for “gun violence prevention programs”, aka keeping “reformed” drug dealers and gangstas on the public dole. I hope I am wrong, but the American Bolsheviks figured out that the surest way to kill the American gun culture is to choke the supply of consumables. Look for them to do the same to the American automotive culture. The elite will have cars and access to fuel because they “need” it. When you take the free public buses be careful who you sit with.
On January 27, 2021 at 10:30 am, Levi Garrett said:
The people like those mentioned above at the gun shows (the end buyers in all this mess) that walked past the table two or three times before prying their wallets out and paying those ridiculous prices aren’t doing so because they want to go plink at the range. They have real and legitimate fears that they are actually going to NEED that ammo to defend themselves in the future. Because of that perceived need, they’ll pay those outrageous prices. Feeling vulnerable and being without the means to defend oneself is a dreadful thing.