Military being part of government does wierd stuff regarding ammo. Like various branches being sure to waste most of what they have from last year in order to justify getting the same amount the following year.
It is a typical defense industry tactic, never use less money than you might need the following year or they will see you can get by with less and reduce your budget, and you may need more the next year. So they waste more tax payer money than needed doing things like burning through a bunch of perfectly good ammo to insure they get the same amount the following year.
You see similar things at all levels of government, they are sure to spend their budget because a surplus or being efficient and getting by with less than they had available means they may get their budget cut. So they burn through everything and then ask for more.
It is part of why government is horribly inefficient.
As for ammo, apparently the DHS was ordering massive quantities this year of hollow point ammunition. Which is obviously for domestic use. A bunch of nuts were all into that story and turning it into something else.
I think I saw two orders for 750 million rounds.
That is probably not helping bring down the cost of ammo.
Another interesting thing is since they are spending tax payer money, burning through tons of defensive rounds that can retail for $1 each instead of just practicing with FMJ rounds of the same grain bullets and velocity is how they do it.
Citizens may not be able to afford it and use cheaper ammo to practice, but when spending your money they use only the good stuff.
So there is a lot of ammo out there. In an interruption though you won't be getting it. However if you stop using ammo recreationally you really don't need very much.
Criminals for example often use so little ammo they can find them with magazines of multiple types of ammo, topped off with what they had on hand at the time they last fired some rounds.
You only burn through large quantities of ammunition recreationally or providing suppressive fire. An hour supply at the range would last you a long time.
It would take a civil war to need the type of quantities many hoard.
Well if we look to foreign examples of such situations, let us just take some war torn places like Afghanistan or Iraq during conflict. Far more people died of hunger than violence.
For example quick search for an example turned up this from 2009:
http://www.aolnews.com/2009/11/06/hunger-is-afghanistans-biggest-killer/
An estimated 25 times as many Afghan citizens die every year as a result of hunger and poverty than from violence
(And many many times more civilians die in violence in that conflict that soldiers or security forces, so 25x more dying of hunger is massive.)
When you got civil war a lot of jobs close. A bunch of bullets don't feed you, and hunting is a pipe dream because there is in reality very little game amounting to less than a year's food supply for the population even in the United States.
Guns and ammo may help you steal someone else's which is why they also have guns and ammo. But for those really scared of such a situation, ammo quantity is not a huge concern, unless you are trying to supply a faction of the conflict. Whether you have hundreds of rounds not being fired while you starve in your home, or thousands of rounds, or tens of thousands of rounds, how long your food lasts will matter more than the ammo you are likely to fire very little of.
If you do have gunfights, they will generally be over with people dead or injured before you get through much ammo, and you won't get many of such conflicts before your time has come.
Whether you die with 10,000 rounds stored, or 9,500 left, is not going to matter much.
There is always government, government is people that band together with arms, and tax other people to pay for their existence, and turn those arms on them to kill or arrest them if they don't go with the system. Some governments are good some are bad, but they always exist.
This illusion that government ceases to exist like in some fantasy movie or game is not reality. There is never Mad Max times, some segment of the population will always form a new government even if you lose the last one. Government merely has periods where they may not be available, but eventually they will come around to deal with what they heard about when they were not around.
So there is always someone you will have to answer to for your use of firearms as well.
