I had a "tale of two cities" experience with two separate gunstores this morning. One in the boonies, one closer to downtown DFW.
The place in down town has about a dozen ARs, M1As, AKs, FNARs, and other EBRs of various alphabetical nomenclature. They have multiple dozens of shotguns, bolt rifles, lever guns, many kinds of pistols, and lots of ammo.
They have 50rnd boxes of 5.7x28mm SS197SR ammuntion for 100$--I'll leave it at that.
The other store deals more with used/milsurp guns than new stock. Ordinarily has a couple dozen Mosins and other historical bolt guns, several dozen ARs/AKs, a decent supply of fairly expensive ammunition, and a good smattering of lever guns and pistols (long guns are their primary focus). They were out of damn near everything. The only non-oddball ammo they had was Persian surplus 30-06 corrosive-berdan-primed, which will be too hard on my FN49. The only bolt guns left were a Steyr M95 (in weird chambering), an Italian Carcano (in weird chambering), an Arisaka. Even their K31 had sold. Even their MAS49/51 in 7.5 French had sold (quickly). And now they have nothing left to sell. The owner is reducing the number of days a week he opens; there's plenty of business, but nothing for customers to buy. He says that he will hopefully get some new stuff from his distributors in a couple weeks. I sure hope he can pay his bills and retain his employees that long.
I saw a Five-seveN pistol sell for 4000$ dollars at a gun show today. It's incredible what even the smallest hint of fear for one's self will do to peoples' sanity. Any seller who doesn't exploit this irrational demand is only hastening their own demise, righteous though they may feel to the end.
TCB