35,000,000 rounds of .22LR on backorder...

[rallyhound]

just for perspective.

Federal ammo in Anoka mn is currently producing 42 million rounds a week of 22 lr

 

[witchhunter]

Yeah, I heard that CCI alone makes 4 million a day. That is a couple of weeks worth.

 

[cowtownup]

Just imagine how lucrative estate sales of the future will be... LOL..

 

[Queen_of_Thunder]

It will take a few weekends of hitting estate sales to come up with 35,000,000 rounds of 22LR.

I don't know if I can fit that much in my truck.

 

[orpington]

This is why I much prefer centrefire rounds over rimfire rounds -- e.g., one can reload centrefire rounds. Should everyone have a .22 rifle. Yes, of course! However, utilize that for occasional shooting and bring out the centrefire rifle for more frequent shooting. The way .22 LR has gone, I can, for example, reload a small calibre round much cheaper, over time (such as .25-20).

 

[basicblur]

That is a big number. Hard to digest, but perhaps true.

A lot of those orders may be "phantom" orders.

Remember a while back when a big flap was made about Ruger no longer taking orders?
The rest of the story was Ruger was selling everything they could make, so they saw no need to take additional orders, AND they knew a large number of those orders were phantom orders.

I know my local gun shop has the same order in with multiple distributors - if one or two were to suddenly fill his order, he'd no doubt cancel the orders with the remaining distributors.

 

[wally]

It has been literally years since I have seen a box of .22LR on a shelf at a retail store.

I've seen plenty, but when its at the cost of hard cast 9mm reloads its a non-starter for me. No matter the virtues of .22lr, shooting 9mm is better practice at the end of the day.

 

[ngnrd]

Let's keep this in perspective, folks... 35M rounds is only 7000 cases. And, 7000 cases is only enough to send 140 cases to each state. How many gun shops do you have in your state? ... I'm pretty sure each of those shops wouldn't even get a whole case, but let's assume that they did. And, how long do you think a case of .22LR would last sitting on the counter of your LGS? Less than hour, I'd bet.

How excessive does that 35M rounds look now?

 

[TheVision]

How excessive does that 35M rounds look now?

These are personal and affiliated club back orders. The CMP doesn't sell to gun shops.

 

[GAF]

Wal Mart could gobble up 35,000,000 rounds of .22 and sell it all in 2 or less days.

 

[BSA1]

Queen of Thunder,

You can borrow my pickup for a small cut of the load.

 

[ngnrd]

These are personal and affiliated club back orders. The CMP doesn't sell to gun shops.

Yeah, I know. I was trying to provide some perspective for what may seem like a large quantity, but in reality is just a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the amount that people are shooting.


Here's another attempt at perspective:

There are 3275 Walmart Supercenters in the US. Assuming each of them has a gun counter, if this 35M-round backorder was for Walmart, each store would get about 2 cases of .22LR. - just 20 bricks per store. Again, how long do you think that would last? And does a 35M round backorder still seem excessive?

 

[The_Next_Generation]

Shoot with a purpose other than to just expend ammo.

I get very little out of shooting "a whole brick" of .22 at a single setting.

Now that's not entirely fair. My shooting buddies and I all use (more like "used") our 22's for the sole purpose of cheap marksmanship practice. It wasn't about mag-dumping or shooting anything and everything. We would set clay targets out at 200 yards and railroad ties at 300 yards and spend the day practicing our wind-reading and trigger-squeezes.

After 6 or 8hrs of doing that we'd have gone through just under a brick each. While the shortage has made me a more practiced reloader, there's no way you can beat 400 or so trigger-pulls for 16 bucks.

However, the pellet gun is a great idea and one I have been considering for the past few weeks.

 

[itsa pain]

After reading posts here and seeing the gluttony of guys buying 22 ammo I am inclined to think 35 million is just one guys order. The heck with 22 ammo I have bought some pellet guns and never shot so much. Inside outside no noise cheap and a lot of fun

 

[borrowedtime69]

Couldnt come at a worse time. The last US Lead lead smelting plant is closing and will, in one way or another, be affecting ammo prices.

http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/last-us-lead-smelter-makes-plans-close-affect-ammunition-manufacturing/

I can see the feds wanting to force the the price of ammo up to prevent any more stockpiling as well as changing bullet materials to be lighter or less effective than lead.

 

[jcwit]

I see more research needs to be done by some regarding the shut down of the Doe Run Smelting plant and how its effects will be to the ammo industry.

For your reading enjoyment.

http://www.factcheck.org/2013/12/no-back-door-gun-control/

 

[Sam1911]

The last US Lead lead smelting plant is closing and will, in one way or another, be affecting ammo prices.

Naaah. That theory's been debunked. The Doe Run plant didn't have any direct presence in the supply of lead for making bullets. The major players have weighed in and all agree that the long-expected closure of that plant won't make a tiny bit of difference to US ammo prices.

I can see the feds wanting to force the the price of ammo up to prevent any more stockpiling

LOL. Well, they missed the boat on that one! There's so much ammo in the hands of US citizens by now that even if the supply stopped, it would hardly make much difference. I don't think "the government" has any real opinion on whether US citizens should own a lot of ammo or a little. Nothing action-worthy, at least.

I mean, read the statistics again. 4.2 BILLION rounds of just .22 Long Rifle ammo made each year. How much of that is sold to the fed.gov? Pretty much NONE. It goes into the closets, basements, and down the barrels of US citizens. Now, that's just one type of ammo, out of hundreds of kinds sold. EACH YEAR. "The government" trying to stop any more stockpiling of ammo is like the Mississippi river deciding to do something to end ocean waves. Just a failure of SCOPE .

...as well as changing bullet materials to be lighter or lass effective than lead.

Because why?

 

[newfalguy101]

I mean, read the statistics again. 4.2 BILLION rounds of just .22 Long Rifle ammo made each year. How much of that is sold to the fed.gov? Pretty much NONE.

I dunno bout that, I had a guy at my last gunshow insisting that a buddy of his ( who is in the military ) witnessed shrinkwrapped pallets of .22LR being stockpiled in bunkers by the military..................I personally have no idea if its true or not, I actually think its NOT true as it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever, however, it is the government he was talking about......

I told him it didn't make an sense to me, and then just nodded and smiled till he left...

 

[thecarfarmer]

I've heard much from people at shooting ranges/gun stores/etc. that sounded like their brain activity had been hindered by the long term affects of wearing tinfoil-lined hats.

-Bill

 

[Sam1911]

LOL. Uh huh.

 

[mrvco]

I recommend shooting a caliber that you can reload. Seeing all that empty rimfire brass laying on the ground always seems like such a waste.

 

[Queen_of_Thunder]

Queen of Thunder,

You can borrow my pickup for a small cut of the load.

More then happy to let you have what I can't haul off in the truck.

 

[Rembrandt]

A distributor is an entity that purchases from manufacturers (or perhaps from larger distributors) and resells at wholesale to retailers.

If the distributor in question isn't high on the totem pole, when demand goes through the roof and supply can't keep up, the manufacturers and larger distributors will service their primary customers first. If a distributor can't get product to resell, their revenue goes down and if that state of affairs lasts for any significant amount of time, they go out of business.

Many people don't understand that these demand spikes can be deadly for businesses that aren't at the top of the food chain. If a local gun store sells until their shelves are empty and can't restock, they don't have a way to make income. If a distributor sells all their stock and can't get more, they go out of business.

I'm one of the many that have had .22 on order with CMP for over a year, my concern was that they no longer have a distributor. JohnKSa's explanation seems to put the distributor issue into context. Hope the CMP doesn't have to go to the back of the line of another distributors backlog. Waiting for 2-to3 more years for ammo is going to destroy our clubs shooting programs.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Considering that we'd have to agree 99.9% of what was made in 2013 was sold, or so would suggest all the bare shelves, the chart for last year would look more like this:

35 million out of 4.2 billion equals 0.83% of the total annual production.

If they don't want to take back orders, then seems to me like there are other places who will. Many of those places would probably look on 35 million back ordered rounds of ammunition as "guaranteed instant sale of 35 million upon delivery".

 

[Sam1911]

Yeah, but with 4.2 billion being churned out each year, who's really got time to deal with some petty little 35 million unit order? Chump change!