No other commodity is in short supply except ammo.

Zahn said:

New, additional gun owners. If somebody who already owns a .45 ACP gets a new one, he doesn't feel the need to buy several hundred rounds of additional ammo. If a person buys his first new .45 ACP, it is worthless without ammo.

There are a lot of statistics out there, but there are millions of new gun owners. They are all trying to stock up.

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this is true. i have quite a bit of 9mm and .45 ACP. however, the young guy i take to the range, just started with his first Glock. i took him to the bait and tackle store that has factory fresh and they also reload ammo there.

he bought some reloaded.

then i took him to another store, that sells factory fresh. he bought 2 boxes of 9MM at like $30 per box. i told him to take it easy at those prices, he's better off buying reloaded at $20, then get $2.00 off when he brings back the spent casings.

he said he has no real choice in buying factory as he needs it.

I went into my local adult (as opposed to teeny-boppers or twenty-boppers) clothing store and bought a pair of trousers. The sales lady - and that is a rather underwhelming titie, she does indeed know her business - told me they are having trouble with product due to shipping. It seems EVERYONE is attempting to keep up or make up the supply.

I rather imagine the same trucks and railway cars move clothing, TVs, washers and dryers, hardware and firearms/ammunition.

Suprised this thread hasn't been closed yet.

There are some real factors but you can bet they are using it to jump prices too.

3Crows said:

Well, toilet paper is not being scalped by resellers.

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Actually, during the height of the shortage last spring TP was being resold on ebay. As I recall, 6 packs of Costco private label Kirkland rolls were going for $30 plus shipping.

George P said:

Let's not forget, Remington who is a major ammo maker, hasn't been making much since before the BK they went through. They are finally starting to get production going so it should help ease some of the shortages.

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Remember Remington did not one but two bankruptcies. So their supply chain was inconsistent going back not just to last fall but to the spring of 2018. After the first bankruptcy in May of 2018 some of Remington's suppliers completely dropped them and most of the others were demanding cash up front for orders. Remington's line of credit after the 2018 bankruptcy was very small and they frequently could not come up with cash to keep the supplies flowing. Vista is no doubt rectifying this but that will take some time to re-establish relationships and get into various production schedules.

ETA: I don't think there is any conspiracy or nefarious plot, I just think this ammo shortage is simply a confluence of a larger variety of issues resulting in this extended ammo shortage. A highly contentious election year, social unrest, Covid-19, etc. have all lead to unprecedented firearms sales and the desire by both new and old gun owners to have ammo for them the demand is through the roof. And on the supply side you have Remington reduced capabilities due to financial issues going back to 2018 and other manufactures slow/resistant to increasing capacity due to how they were burned after then 2016 election and the collapse of the firearms market. That seems like more than enough to explain the current market.

Balrog said:

I do remember ammo shortages, but never remember one this severe for this long.

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I think the severity is unprecendented. Length? Got a ways to go. We are not yet really one year in.

dogtown tom said:

Being upset about the current supply of ammunition means you weren't paying attention to what has occurred SEVERAL TIMES since 2008. If you failed to plan, you failed. .

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Yes, you are right, this is a lot of it. On top of new gun owners, all the folks who went la-de-dah after the 2008-2016 ammo shortage and failed to resupply whenever ammo was available, especially from 2016 up to 2020, well, guess what, now they are all out beating the bushes adding to the shortage. If all this craziness settles down, if!!!!!!!!!, we may see ammo showing back up in decent quantity by summer. Next time folks should buy along the way, shoot a box, buy a box, shoot a box, buy two, steady purchasing instead of everybody who failed to prepare along with all of the new gun owners and the resellers swamping the supply chain buying all at once.

Balrog said:

I do remember ammo shortages, but never remember one this severe for this long.

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2013 and d 2014 we’re just as bad. I started shooting on a regular basis in 2012 and then Sandy Hook happened. The supply chain was wiped out for about 2 years straight. Primers maybe weren’t as difficult to find but just about everything else was like it is now.

Comparing the ammunition shortage to toilet paper is completely invalid.

- There were not 7,000,000 new toilet users who came into being in 2020.

- There is no concern for a ban on imported toilet paper , a permit process & surcharge for purchase of toilet paper , or a ban on high capacity toilets by the incoming administration.

Oops - that's right - the high cap toilet regulations have been in place for a while now.
So sorry!

vintovka said:

Concrete and lumber here in PNW are beyond dear, Prices are double + and building right now is beyond comprehension. Fuel and food prices took a jump as well. Forgot to add home values up 20% from last year and 12+% projected for this year. Bad news for everyone including homeowners and renters. Think inflation may go nuts.

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Here in NY too. Lumber costs are through the roof.

There is a vast swath of commodities with interrupted deliveries out there.
Checked on pork bellies, orange juice concentrate or retail auto fuel lately?
There's a distinct shortage of delivery truck drivers across the entire logistics industry. And a semi-concurrent shortage of forklift drivers, too.

The historically high demand for delivery-to-doorstep only exacerbates the logistics shortages, too.

Keeping this to just arms, there are shortages of magazines and other arms components; bunches of shortages in reloading items, from bulk expendables, to the fixed equipment. Most of that is going to be down to the logistics shortfall; some due to historically high demand.

In times like these it's also far to easy to make the logical failure where one ascribes to malice what is actually just circumstance.

CapnMac said:

There's a distinct shortage of delivery truck drivers across the entire logistics industry. And a semi-concurrent shortage of forklift drivers, too.

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From what I've read, that shortage is because job applicants are either drug addicts or only there to check a box on their unemployment forms. And we wonder why immigrants "take" our jobs away.

So maybe the Glory days are gone, maybe we’ll have to be more conservative with ammo more deliberate with shooting.

Until we see real proof of market manipulation we’re free to believe what we’re being told or not.

Live&learn and always have a plan B.

Go to any firearms related website and see how many items they have. Click "In stock only" and watch that number plummet. Everything is in short supply, not just ammo.

Why is there always some kind of conspiracy theory etc.

There are eleventy billion new folks who want a gun and a box of ammo for real and perceived fears. That alone tanks the norm. Think about it. If 7 million new gun buyers buy 2 boxes of ammo only that’s 14 million boxes of ammo of demand that didn’t exist 8 months ago. That’s like 700,000,000 rounds of additional ammo desired in the pipeline and that only assumes 2 measly boxes per person.

Add to that the “real” shooters stocking up.

Add to that legitimate supply, manufacturing and shipping hurdles due to the plague.

It’s just the perfect storm of a dumpster fire. It was a couple to three years before things started to settle down after Sandy Hook and there was really only a single factor at play.

Settle in, dry fire, buy a laser cartridge, find a new hobby for a bit, but embrace the suck because although likely a bump in the road, it will be bumpy for a bit.

cslinger said:

Settle in, dry fire, buy a laser cartridge, find a new hobby for a bit, but embrace the suck because although likely a bump in the road, it will be bumpy for a bit.

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This is how it is.

Dry firing practice! When your ammo comes back, you'll be conditioned to shoot it more accurately! You can enjoy your firearms hobby without actually expending rounds.

Supply would return soon if the buy-everything-in-sight-as-soon-as-it-hits-the-shelves mentality could be turned off cold-turkey. It sounds counter-intuitive, but if we rejected our instincts to stock up, a major contributor to the shortage would be eliminated.

Add to that refusing to pay higher prices, and things will return to closer to what we've been used to over the last few years.

Things other than gun related products are still not back to normal around here. Most of the grocery stores around here are not fully stocked. I just talked with a buddy that works at one of the Remington Ammunition plants and he says raw material is still a bottleneck in their production. I'm shopping for a new side by side and the dealer is short on new models.

Its not just guns and ammo. Everything along the production line from raw material, manufacturing, marketing, design, ect has been affected by Covid. From the guy that digs it out of the ground to the guy that hauls it to market.

@Waveski Exactly!

I would like to pose the question, how many of us have bought a new firearm without buying ammunition in the same transaction? For me, this happens very often, because there's a good chance I already have the caliber, so ammo is not a concern. Not the same case for someone new to guns; they will be making an ammo purchase the same time more than likely.

An estimated 7,000,000 new gun owners, if each of them buys 2-3 boxes of ammo (which I bet it was more than that on average) at 50 rounds each that's 1,050,000,000 rounds of ammo that wasn't anticipated.

In 2018, it was estimated that 8.7 billion rounds of total ammunition was produced (LINK). So just the additional estimated 7,000,000 new firearm owners would have taken just over 20% of what was estimated in 2018 for total production. Now add onto a election year, riots, calls for defunding the police, covid, and candidates that have stated they are going to take away guns and limit 2A rights; and people are still wondering why we don't have ammo?

3Crows said:

Well, toilet paper is not being scalped by resellers. This is a (huge) contributor to the current and last ammo shortage. When you buy from a reseller and pay over MSRP you are only encouraging them to go out and get their buddies and cousins and wives and whinos and meth heads to go buy all the ammo and then resell it at double the cost to you.

And toilet paper manufacturers have a handle on the number of toilet paper consumers, the population of such does not just suddenly increase over night. But we added a bunch of new gun owners overnight and they all want ammo.

And this is speculation, but some less committed retailers may have stopped ordering guns and ammo. Why? Because they were told to pull everything (their interpretation of the order to lock up guns and ammo recently) and have just instead decided they did not want the liability and have declined to resupply.

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There were MANY instances of people hoarding and scalping toilet paper and hand sanitizer when that insanity started - don't forget the guys who went state to state buying out every Dollar General they could find. They ended up getting hammered pretty good on that one. It did empty out dang near every store anywhere near me - I had friends and neighbors asking if I had a spare roll or two. That shortage did get caught up, yet still places have the 1/2/3 signs up. I was lucky enough to be at a CAL Ranch when the truck was unloaded, (I was looking for something else completely), and the line of locusts that came out of literally nowhere was astounding.
I keep looking here and there and once in a while, (like bullets I found on MidawyUSA for the mayfly brief time they were in stock, long enough to snag some), they can pop up.

"No other commodity is in short supply except ammo."

The premise of this thread does not hold water. Lots of goods are in short supply.
Ammo , however , is particularly bad for all the reasons stated in previous posts.

In addition to all those reasons think about this factor:
What other commodity is sought by millions of consumers (us) who have in common a deep concern for their Constitutional right to "keep and bear" , who are linked up in venues like THR , who have been through a crunch like this just a few years ago and vowed to NEVER get caught with their pants down again? Take all that , pile on 7,000,000 new consumers in one short year and you have a run of incredible proportions.

I don't believe that any other commodity has pressure from a source as unified and committed as that.

Waveski said:

Comparing the ammunition shortage to toilet paper is completely invalid.

- There were not 7,000,000 new toilet users who came into being in 2020.

- There is no concern for a ban on imported toilet paper , a permit process & surcharge for purchase of toilet paper , or a ban on high capacity toilets by the incoming administration.

Oops - that's right - the high cap toilet regulations have been in place for a while now.
So sorry!

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Ackshully...the US population birth rate in 2020 was .09%. The population is listed as 328.2 million. So, that means we had over 29 million new toilet users...well, they will eventually be using the toilet....

edwardware said:

I touch a Supply Chain (only marginally political, >$100million/yr) and I suspect that you completely underestimate the fragility of "modern, efficient manufacturing practices".

If you needed to wash 10% more clothes in your house this week, you might notice.

If my employer saw a 10% increase in demand for even a small slice if its products, it would take us months to fill it, even though the excess demand might only be a week's worth of production. The supply of everything, vertically, from the bearing grease we use on the machines, to the ink that prints the stickers that go on each item, has had every bit of breathing room squeezed out of it, with nearly no margin to spare.

This "saves" hundreds of thousands a year in "cost of inventory on hand" (a bit of balance sheet deception straight from hell), and works fine. . . until you get a 30% spike in demand for every product you make, and literally every supply contract you have goes belly up (light bulbs, temp labor, hand towels, forklift batteries. . .)

Don't like it? Own your own reserve inventory, because the MBAs running the manufacturers who make the stuff aren't going to do it for you.

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When I worked in Supply chain for a utility, (and my wife still does), it was simply called "Carrying Costs" and they ate our lunch. The key is rapid turnover; unfortunately, in some industries certain things must be kept on hand for emergencies because lead times are ridiculous.

I'm still seeing gaps in the grocery stores around here. Furthermore, you may find what your looking for but not the brand you want.
Big ticket items, stoves, refrigerator, hot tubs are hard to get.
Our stove went tits up and we were told at two different stores that it "could" be weeks before they would have the models we were interested in back in stock.
Lowes had a stove we wanted in stock, but even they said supplies were limited.
Ammo may be worse, but there are other scare items