Why is the Ammo situation so bad??? A answer that makes sense

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dizzy

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Regardless of who you are or where you are you have either experienced or heard the ammo situation is bad, and guys cannot buy what they used to.

Some say is hoarders, some say shortage of lead, or copper or powder.

The truth is ammo manufacturers are working as fast as they can to produce as much as they can, as after all they are in business to make money and as much money as they can, so why the shortage??

Since Obama came into power, there has been a perception that he will, or the government will go after guns in the U.S.. I don't care to get into politics and debate this, but one thing is for sure, that is the perception by a vast majority of folks.

Because of this perception, many folks who never before owned guns, have become gun buyers, which nearly double the market overnight, maybe even tripled, there are no hard statistics on the numbers, but the fact remains, the market grew overnight.

For many years, the gun and ammo market in the U.S. was stable, supply kept up with demand, and there was a balance. Every hunting season, there was enough ammo to go around, and suppliers kept up with demand. Now that that market has grown, and many new buyers are in the market it upset the balance, and created a shortage of guns and ammo. This was a real shortage, as there was only enough ammo to supply the existing market, not the new market. Most of us know that when the existing market thinks there will be a shortage, the existing market starts to stock up, so now we have a real shortage created by real market dynamics which sparks a buying frenzy in the existing market which makes the shortage even worse. When the market is balanced there is no reason to stock pile, so guys typically kept a small amount of ammo on hand, as they always new they could replace it. Guys bought boxes not cases. With the shortage, folks start buying by the case, buying a few range trips or years worth, this in itself is enough to create a shortage, never mind the new market demands.

So now the current market is buying all they can, and the new market sees that behaviour and the new buyers start trying to buy more than they typically need which once agains worsens the shortage.

In the end you have everyone trying to stock pile all they can, which absolutely causes a shortage in the Market and the suppliers simply cannot keep up.

The shortage will continue until the day all ammo users are comfortable that they don't need to stock pile any ammo and can rely on the retailers to have what they want when they want it.

The shortage will not be abated by ammo makers increasing manufacturing capability as they are unable to gauge what the real new demand is. Is is what it used to be? There is no way of telling. The guess is the demand has increase permanently but by how much? no one knows??

Hope this helps folks better understand why there is a real shortage. in a nut shell there a many new buyers and the ammo makers were not set up to handle the extra demands.
 
7 or 8 out of 10 guns sold is a semi-auto these days. Even a semi-auto .22lr will use up ammo at a prodigious rate. Seeing as everyone has a semi-auto pistol, a 10/22, an AR15 and a Mossberg 935, it's not hard to see how we use up WAY MORE AMMO these days than ever before. Plus tons more people reload, so they use up a ton of components and shoot a lot more for the same amount of money. Until ammo becomes too expensive to shoot with a semi-auto, it will continue to be scarce.
 
I think that's a pretty accurate analysis. Well said. And, I confess, I'm part of the problem - I do keep way more ammo on hand than I did 4 or 5 years ago, and when I buy rounds, I do buy far more than I used to. So, I am part of the problem, coz I'm not part of the solution, as they say. :)
 
What shortage?

For the real reason, read the parable of the ant and the grasshopper. There are far too few ants, and far too many grasshoppers.
 
There isn't an ammo shortage where I live, the Canadian Tire has tons of ammo. It may not have the exact load/type you want but they still cover most calibers quite well including a large display case full of just .22 ammo.
 
Anytime I need to buy ammo I can always find it, I've found that powder and reloading supplies are made from unobtainium these days. But as far as manufactured ammo it's around if you know where to look.
 
andrew3081 said:
There is almost no ammo shortage in Canada.
What you described is for US gun owners.
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Common calibres, you're right. Some of the older, less popular ones are scarce. And reloading components are very, very scarce all across Alberta.
 
What Canadian Tire are you referring to with a full case of .22 ammo...every one ive been at the case is empty..would love to pick some up...

Silverback said:
There isn't an ammo shortage where I live, the Canadian Tire has tons of ammo. It may not have the exact load/type you want but they still cover most calibers quite well including a large display case full of just .22 ammo.
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We just might be using a bit more than people did years back. For example, one year, about 20 years ago, I shot off approx. 20,000 rounds of mostly handgun rounds. My Dad, 20 years before that, might have used 6 or 10 shotgun shells in a year. Some of the old time duck hunters around here shot off maybe a case or two each season. The demand is up, the usage is up, number of actual shooting gun owners is up. It all = ammo shortage.
 
soulchaser said:
Tell that to all the retailers across Canada with empty shelves where the .22LR used to be stacked up.
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Notice I said almost no shortage?

I just bought a few thousand rounds of .22lr from Canadian Tire and some local gunshop for reasonable prices. So no, in my eyes, there is almost no shortage.
 
I'm in London Ont and I haven't seen 22LR in any of my local CT the last 5 times I've been in there over the past 5 months. The local gun shops are scraping the bottom of the barrel too. I've been in several shops over the past 5 months and they had no 22LR and when they did have any it was either expensive target loads in 50rd boxes or the really crappy Remington Yellow Jacket crap in 222 or 333 rd boxes. I haven't seen any CCI since the new year. I'm a little concerned. I mean it's been almost an entire year since I've seen CCI.
 
Other than .22 and non-typical calibre's (of which they are getting caught up on now too) the ammunition shortage has been over for some time now, even in the US.

Gun sales are going down, and supply of ammunition has caught up to demand.

One has to look no further than all the Lake City surplus coming into Canada and at decent prices, and all the cheap AR's at rock bottom prices flooding the market to shoot it all.

.22 is another beast and there was not enough profit to be made in expanding capacity when choosing where to do it, and centre fire won out by a long shot.

I suspect capacity will expand there now too, but the days of cheap .22 are a thing of the past as it will cost allot to expand that capacity.

But I am glad the OP is still beating on the sky is falling drum in regards to the ammunition supply like it is still 2013.
 
I personally hoarded a #### ton of ammo in all calibers.

If it was on sale or a decent price I bought it cheap and stacked it deep. I haven't purchased new ammo in almost a year.
 
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/14/news/companies/guns-ammo-sales/?iid=EL

Gun sales are plunging

Sales of guns and ammo are losing steam after a frenzied run-up sparked by fears of greater restrictions in the wake of the Newtown shooting and other massacres.

Background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, considered to be the most accurate means of tracking gun sales, plunged by a third in January compared to the year before. There were about 1.66 million background checks last month, and nearly 2.5 million in January the year before.

n the past two years, gun shop owners and consumers have complained of ammunition shortages and a dearth in fast-selling semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines, even as manufacturing ramped up.

But the shortage appears to be over. "Retail inventories, which had been in short supply last spring, have largely returned to normal now," wrote Rommel Dionisio, a gun industry analyst for Wedbush, in a recent report.

"Monthly comparisons have recently turned sharply negative, a trend we expect to last through at least May or June 2014," Dionisio wrote.

Dionisio said the "feared tightening of gun control legislation," which was the initial motivation for buying up guns and ammo at such a frenetic pace, has subsided.

Gun purchases increased sharply after the reelection of President Obama, rising by about 25% in November of 2012, compared to the month before, according to FBI background checks. They increased even more dramatically, by nearly 40%, the following month, when a gunman used a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle with high-capacity magazines and other guns to kill 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

Those events fueled fears among gun advocates that the president would impose stricter restrictions on guns.

But Obama's proposed bill, which would have reenacted the assault rifle ban that expired in 2004, did not pass Congress. Some states, like Connecticut and California, have successfully passed further gun restrictions, but these efforts have failed on a federal level.

Though gun sales have dropped from their peak last year, they're still outperforming monthly sales that preceded Obama's reelection, said Lawrence Keane, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry group based in Newtown.

For example, the tally of 1.66 million gun sales in January, 2014 is significantly higher than the 1.38 million sold in January, 2012.

"So we have come down from the peak but the valley floor is higher than before Nov 2012," said Keane, in an email to CNNMoney. "The consumer base has grown. This is because for the past few years, retailers tell us that about 25% of customers at the checkout counter are first-time buyers. Huge increases in the number of woman buyers."

Sales of ammunition, which is not tracked by the FBI, have also fallen from their peak, according to anecdotal reports from the government and private industry.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that its annual ammunition purchases have declined because of budget constraints. DHS said that it purchased 84 million rounds in fiscal year 2013, down significantly from the prior five years, when it averaged 109 million rounds a year.

Cabela's (CAB), a retailer of guns and hunting gear, said on Thursday that its same-store sales plunged 10.1% in the fourth quarter, compared to a year ago. This was partly to do with guns, and largely to do with ammunition, according to the company.

"Customers shifted away from ammunition more sharply than we expected," said Cabela's Chief Executive Officer Tommy Millner, in a company's quarterly earnings press release.
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