Message from the president of CCI/federal.

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In another thread it was explained that Remington ammunition has been in continuing production, and the buyers knew enough about the product to immediately start hiring to get the numbers up but--what happens when they go too fast? Quality suffers, whining justifiably ramps up, and the value of the brand diminishes. Ammo ages, commodity prices fluctuate, and no one can afford to sink millions into inventory sitting in a warehouse with no place to go. What do you suppose happens if certain types are prohibited or taxed to the point no one can afford them? And staffing cannot be on and off, as loyalty and dedication is important both ways in this business. I wish them well but they are facing many challenges and an uncertain future.
 
D.B. Cooper said:
Thanks for sharing the videos. You know, there is only one thing that makes their stories not totally air tight. They knew this was coming. They knew for the past 4 years, for the past 12 years, that this was coming. They knew the current party would not be in power forever. They knew that some day the opposition would regain power and they knew that, when that party came to power, there would unprecedented demand, just as we are seeing. They probably had no idea about the pandemic and the civil unrest, but they should have spent the past 12 years adding production capacity because they knew it would be needed a some point.

The ammo makers said essentially the same thing in 2008 and 2012. "We can't keep up, and we can't add capacity in 9 months." And I believe them. But it has been 12 years since Obama came to power and the ammo and components completely and totally disappeared for almost the entire time he was in office. By now, it should be painfully clear to all but the most blinded people that we will have at least 4 more years of this demand. (In fact, when we can no longer import ammo, we're going to have a supply side problem as well as a demand side problem.)

It's time to start breaking ground on new facilities. Not just at the assembly point, but the plants that make powder and primers and the plants that make cases and projectiles as well. These guys need to start forward thinking. This is like standing around watching the Titanic head straight for the iceberg and no one is trying to turn the ship.
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You're ignoring the market effect of the last three years where the market was flooded and ammo prices were at an all-time low in terms of relative cost. You don't build a new factory where people aren't even buying all the products your existing factory is making. IOW you can't convince a bank to finance a permanent solution to satisfy a temporary demand. Nobody could have predicted the double whammy of covid + riots.
 
I must not get out enough or read enough of the conspiracy sites but I never heard any silly rumors about secret warehouses or anything else. But since he brought it up we should waste months focusing on it! :scrutiny: I’m not impressed by tactics that want me to think a certain way.

What any person in power says has to be taken with a grain of salt. What does the person controlling him want us to think?

I’m sure Federal is producing all they can but if there’s silly stuff going on by billionaire antis, we probably will never know specifics.

What would I do if I was a billionaire that wanted to keep average people from stocking up on ammo? I would buy up specific components to cause bottle necks. Then pay and threaten specific people in high places to divert attention with more lies. Play the hurt feelings card to inspire a response to defend said person. Maybe shame the average, greedy shooter for buying so much ammo.

After seeing this video, I’m more sure there is some BS going on high up the chain.

ETA: also discredit and attack anyone who calls BS on their orchestrated little show!:D
 
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Lots and lots of misinformation and conspiracy theories abound. I'm sure the gentleman in the OP's link isn't the only ammunition maker who feels frustrated because customers believe the companies ought to build more production facilities and redouble production.

I have sympathy for them.




It would help, however, if the ammo companies wouldn't ship two thirds of their production to AREA 51. :neener: :p ;) ...... :rofl:
(Just kidding).
 
Axis II:
Thanks very much. I sent the link to about six people, who are actually quite level-headed and "self-starters".

Hier Kommt die Sonne: Exactly.
Retail shop talk easily was a driving force after the election in 2008. "OMG---he gonna take away dem ARs!" Our new 2008 President needed every "drop" of political support (> and then some.<.) for his...Planned...major healthcare legislation.
Despite high 'popularity' he had only a limited amount of political capital/support for new healthcare--and Bought Off a few Senators just to pass it.. Why would gun shops then have wanted to explain " limited political support" to every gullible dufus who walked in?

Even the same "flavor" of President , ...... after Jan. 20 ,...... realizes that citizens want something which Benefits them. They can't take "No more pistol grips and smaller mag/ capacity" to deposit into the bank. $$$$
Threats didn't work out at all for Al Gore. And don't forget them keeping "eyes on the ball" in 2022 elections.
 
Axis II said:
because it’s going to get to $100 a brick
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Going to be? Man its already there. I got 4 bricks in today for $48/shipped and proud to get 'em. I was offered $500 for them by a local gun store! I refused, if course. Rather save 'em for a rainy day.

As for the video, it was quite good. And believable. The only "secret ammo stores" are those hoarded up by the guys selling primers for $250/thousand and 9MM for $100/ box on gunbroker. No conspiracy, just demand.

Mac
 
D.B. Cooper said:
Thanks for sharing the videos. You know, there is only one thing that makes their stories not totally air tight. They knew this was coming. They knew for the past 4 years, for the past 12 years, that this was coming. They knew the current party would not be in power forever. They knew that some day the opposition would regain power and they knew that, when that party came to power, there would unprecedented demand, just as we are seeing. They probably had no idea about the pandemic and the civil unrest, but they should have spent the past 12 years adding production capacity because they knew it would be needed a some point.
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Let's be reasonable here. Yeah, they knew it was coming and all that other stuff. So did all of the current gun owners. I participate on a few forums and I am totally amazed at how many people who were caught by surprise, AGAIN, that there was a shortage. I am amazed by people that didn't have a clue even as late as October. What is so amazing is the number of them that consider themselves situationally aware, head on a swivel, ready to put down civil unrest if it comes to their town kind of people, but they only had 3 boxes of ammo to their name, LOL.

Then there are the folks who figured they could hedge against factory ammo shortages because they reload and BOOM, they can find primers or they can't find brass. They have been buying 100 or 200 primers at a time and not buying 10,000 at a time.

Elkins45 said:
You're ignoring the market effect of the last three years where the market was flooded and ammo prices were at an all-time low in terms of relative cost. You don't build a new factory where people aren't even buying all the products your existing factory is making. IOW you can't convince a bank to finance a permanent solution to satisfy a temporary demand.
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Right, it is expensive for companies to make product and then store it for LONG periods of time. Storage actually incurs a variety of costs and the best thing a production company can do with completed product is to put it into the hands of retailers. Product being stored is product losing money.

Again, getting back to the comment about when prices are low and supply is good.... consumers don't want to spend money on building up their own private inventory, not when they can just go buy a couple of boxes any time they want to, right? Better to spend the extra cash on other things.

Why would anyone think it is up to the ammo companies to protect consumers against themselves for not preparing better?
 
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One of my powerball ideas would be to open up a rimfire ammo factory starting with high end target .22s I wonder what the initial tooling would cost for that.
 
Double Naught Spy said:
What is so amazing is the number of them that consider themselves situationally aware, head on a swivel, ready to put down civil unrest if it comes to their town kind of people, but they only had 3 boxes of ammo to their name, LOL.
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"LOL" was my response, too.

Double Naught Spy said:
They have been buying 100 or 200 primers at a time and not buying 10,000 at a time.
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Guilty. And I should have addressed this in my post, rather than let someone call me on it. (Because I was already thinking it when I was typing.) We each had (have) a responsibility to see to our own needs. I was buying thousands of primers when I should have been buying tens of thousands. And to be honest, I thought thought I was doing well and getting ahead of all of this. I failed to accurately analyze my own habits and then to adequately provide for them. That is no fault of the ammo makers. Still, I don't think we can continue to call these runs on ammo "market shocks." These happen with enough regularity and of significant duration that they are just part of the economic cycle in this industry, and the industry needs to start to come to grips with that.

But hey, if I was an economics expert, I'd be working at the Federal Reserve lol.
 
D.B. Cooper said:
These happen with enough regularity and of significant duration that they are just part of the economic cycle in this industry, and the industry needs to start to come to grips with that.
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The industry doesn’t need to come to grips with anything. Everyone who “knew” this was coming should have stocked up last year when 9mm was under $10 per box. Everyone who “knew” this was coming should be rich by now from selling off all the ammo they had stockpiled when retailers were running sales and manufacturers had rebates available.

Anyone who thinks building warehouses and filling them full of ammo is a prudent financial decision can start a business and put their theory to the test. Any company that operated in such a manner would go bankrupt if they guessed wrong and prices stayed at historically low levels.

If people want to continue shooting while the market has these hiccups, they need to take responsibility for themselves and stock up once prices some back down.
 
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D.B. Cooper said:
These happen with enough regularity and of significant duration that they are just part of the economic cycle in this industry, and the industry needs to start to come to grips with that.
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In my younger days I owned and ran a landscape operation for about 12 years. At 43 degrees north latitude the seasons vary a great deal each year. My employed crew varied from approx 20 from April through October down to 5-6 during the winter months. It was extremely difficult to manage that variation in labor needs and cash flow each year - even though it was completely predictable.
I don't see how an ammunition manufacturer can possibly iron out the kind of wild fluctuations we've seen in demand and resultant supply over the course of the last couple of administrations. Hiring , purchasing materials from subcontractors , stocking/shipping , taxes .....

Regarding "These happen with enough regularity" - There is nothing
"regular" about the political/cultural clash that has been escalating for the last 10-20 years. What has happened in the streets of this country in the last few years alone is difficult to comprehend , even in hindsight.
Where is Abe Lincoln when we need him?

Like I said earlier , It tends to look simple from where we sit. We just want to be able stroll into the big box store and snag a couple of boxes of 9mm off the shelf at $11.50 apiece whenever we darn well please.....
 
Waveski said:
subcontractors , stocking/shipping , taxes .....
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Taxes are a big issue, I worked in an electronics plant for years, tax Te was a pain. Every part, even the .001 cent chip resistor had to be accounted for, all pieces in win, work in progress, even 20,000 dollar circuit boards, all machinery, depreciating asset, all had to have taxes paid. That's why not ammo companies can't horde millions of rounds of ammunition.

Waveski said:
Where is Abe Lincoln when we need him?
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Lincoln? Roosevelt's new dealight work better.
 
I am the guy that said primers are the most important piece of the puzzle.......over and over. Still there are many here that were amazed when primer stock fell off the edge of the earth. I have enough for me to get by for 5 years but already have been pesteted by others that ran through their 400 primers and need to "borrow" a few K to get by. Sorry not my problem you decided to buy a new 3/4 ton pickup every three years instead of buy primers or ammo you might need today. These days if you don't have enough "stuff" (toilet paper, way to get water, food, etc.) to ride out 6 months of supply disruption you need to rethink things.
This covid thing has not impacted me nearly as much as it has a lot of people and I have been able to help others that had no resources to stock up as well. I worry that things will not get better anytime soon as far as reloading/ammo are concerned.
 
Waveski said:
Regarding "These happen with enough regularity" - There is nothing
"regular" about the political/cultural clash that has been escalating for the last 10-20 years. What has happened in the streets of this country in the last few years alone is difficult to comprehend , even in hindsight.
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You can't seriously be suggesting that you were blindsided by an event unfolding for decades, can you? If is has been going on for 10-20 years and you don't consider that regular enough to buy more ammo, then you don't understand what is going on at all.

However, let's take this a step further. The current ammo shortage did not happen Tuesday night and we were all out of ammo on Wednesday. THIS HAS BEEN A SLOW, PROGRESSIVE EVENT HAPPENING SINCE MARCH OF AN ELECTION YEAR!!! So, it is an election year. We knew this was coming like we did the last 3 elections. That it started a few months earlier due to other and related circumstances really should have been the fire under people's butts who didn't think they needed to prepare. Apparently, the fire was not hot enough. For example, here is a thread from this very forum from March talking about the issue of a gun and ammo panic. https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/why-is-there-a-gun-and-ammo-panic-now.865745/ There has been months and months of time to buy ammo during that period, even of strange calibers. Ammo at the time was selling off of shelves quickly, but being restocked nearly as quickly. Early on, prices that I saw online were not inflated. You could still buy a case of 9mm, .223, 6.5 Grendel, or .308 just fine. Up until October that I could see at our local Cabelas and Academy stores, prices remained stable. People all over the internet were complaining about skyrocketing sales, but were they buying ammo themselves?

People don't have tortoise nervosa. We all had the ability to move fast enough over the last 10-20 years and even over the last 9 months to be gearing up for shortages.
 
Double Naught Spy said:
There has been months and months of time to buy ammo during that period, even of strange calibers. Ammo at the time was selling off of shelves quickly, but being restocked nearly as quickly. Early on, prices that I saw online were not inflated.
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It’s no fun to buy ammo when it’s available everywhere. For some reason people like to wait until it’s a challenge. A year I was getting daily emails for $130 to $180 for a case of 9mm and people weren’t buying it. Now those same people are clamoring for a chance to buy a box for $50. Makes no sense at all.
 
Heir Kommt Die Sonne said:
I think most of those rumors are from guys behind the gun counter. It scares people into buying when you tell them you won't be able to have it anymore.
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While there may be a little bit of that, if you watch the video and read this and other types of gun forums, you'll see the number one culprit of those foolish rumors is the internet. One only has to go back to the ;ast .22 shortage and read the threads from back then to read about "conspiracy" rumors and "the Government is buying all the rounds". You'd think after a handful of these types of shortages in the last two decades, folks would get the idea. Two other very realistic answers to the shortage I didn't hear on the posted video were "hoarding" and "reselling".

As for component availability. First big ammo shortage back in 2008, while ammo was impossible to get, most reloading components were still on the shelves. Look at threads back then and all you see are folks telling others. "this is why you need to reload, I reload and I got plenty of ammo". Coupla years later when the next "banic" shortage came around, it was no mystery, at least to me, why components were in short supply too. Reloaders are much more plentiful too and are also huge hoarders. Read the Reloading forum here and see what folks brag about having stockpiled. This drives others to stockpile too when stuff becomes available, slowing down the time it takes shelves to fill up again.

On top of all the buying, amount of shooting, for the average gun owner, has increased greatly too. Guys who used to shoot their deer rifle once a year are now into dumping several 30 round mags worth of ammo during monthly range visits. All of this is a good thing for shooters, the gun community and ammo manufacturers. But it does make ammo harder to find. My e-mail feed lately has had several notifications from online ammo sellers about "another truckload of ammo has arrived!" I follow the link and I see most everything is already sold out. This tells me the video is correct. But I'm patient....I too am a hoarder of reloading components.
 
Hooda Thunkit said:
Keep in mind;

All it takes is a simple change is shipping regulations, and ordering ammo, powder and primers stops with the stroke of a pen.

If you think it won't happen, then you haven't been paying attention.
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I'm quoting myself, to point out another detail:

Mr Biden has stated that he will put forward Mr Buttegieg as Transportation Secretary.

You know Mr Buttegieg: "Hell yes I'm coming for your guns"

And what does the Transportation Dept do ?

ETA: Well, among other things, they develop and implement shipping regs.
 
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