It Is All About The Ammo
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 12:00
Post Written By Rick Doyle
It Is All About The Ammo
If you own a gun or are looking to buy a gun today it is almost a lost cause because America is out of Ammo. A gun without ammo is like a swimming pool without water or a condom with a hole in it, useless. I am an avid shooter and myself and my family are all conceal and carry holders including my wife, mother in-law, father in-law and my brother in-law. We all live on farms and we all hunt and contribute to varmint control. My wife even shot a ground hog out of a tree one day while on her 5 mile run. But lately it’s not about shooting, it’s more about hunting; hunting for ammo, that is. In fact ammunition is either so expensive, in some cases it has gone up 300% from just a few years ago, that even if you can find the caliber you need it’s so expensive a case can actually cost you more than the gun.
For many people, buying a gun is just a single purpose purchase that may only get fired a few times at the range, used for conceal and carry and may never even be drawn from its holster or stored in a spot in the closet at home. A few questions have to be addressed because when you buy a gun it’s not just about the gun it’s about the ammo and if there is no ammo then you basically have a piece of metal that you can throw. Why is there no ammunition? Why is it priced through the roof? Why is it almost impossible to get certain guns anymore? One answer to all those questions: Obama! As we got closer to the 2008 election and Obama was on his way to controlling the world, I mean nation, people seemed to be panicked on a level I’ve never seen. Why? Impending gun control with the new king, I mean president? Collapse of the economy so protection of family and self becomes a priority? Policies of favoritism towards terrorists and illegal aliens by Obama scaring the wits out of America? What I know is I have made some alarming observations.
My preferred gun for hunting small varmints is the .22 caliber long rifle with hollow point Aguila’s hyper velocity/interceptors. They used to be under $20 a brick (500 rounds) and I just saw them for $51 a brick plus shipping to total about $60. So many .22 caliber ammo either bulk by the case or brick ammunition is out of stock that I just ordered a case for my father-in-law in February (2,500 rounds for $69 +S&H from Sportsman’s Guide) and they are backordered for 4+ months.
My preferred gun for hunting groundhogs and skunks is the .223 caliber heavy barrel bolt action Savage with UltraMax remanufactured ammunition. I was getting it for about $12 per box of fifty. Now if I can find it at all I stock $25 to $31 a box. The wait time is nearly always listed as “unknown” which is fairly close to forever.
My preferred gun for deer hunting (in Ohio we use 2 shotgun slugs or over .357 caliber pistol) for me it is 12 gauge Mossberg and for my wife a 20 gauge Mossberg. We really like the Remington Copper Solid Sabots. They used to be about $4-6 a box of 5 shells. Now you have to take out a loan to pay for them because they’re $16-$18 a box plus tax or shipping.
My preferred gun for home protection, conceal and carry for my wife and I is the 9mm. We both carry Springfield XD sub compacts and Ruger and Beretta for around the house and barn. This ammunition was always cheap at around $6-9 for practice rounds (box of fifty) and defense loads were about $11 to $15 for the good stuff like Hornady or Remington jacketed hollow points. Now they’re closer to $20 to $30 a box and when I checked Cheaper Than Dirt today out of 109 different 9mm ammo choices only 7 were in stock. I have some 9mm ammo on order through Sportsmans Guide and it is on back order for 8 months! MidwayUSA carries about 150 different 9mm brands and bullet styles to choose from and numerous manufacturers and out of 2 pages of products I did not see a single 9mm box of ammunition that was in stock.
My preferred gun for plinking and coyote hunting is a 7.62 x 39mm SKS. We used to buy good non-corrosive ammunition for between $90 to $120 for a crate of 1,200 rounds but now that price is $300 for junk ammo and $650 for the decent ammunition in 7.62 x 39mm.
Finally we use a few other guns for special tasks like a 30-06 Savage and a 243 both for the longer shots and .17 caliber for annoying pests that won’t go easily with a .22 round (like muskrats, possum, skunk, raccoon, etc.) but the ammunition problems are the same across the board; sky high and not available. (We also have a .44 Desert Eagle but that is too expensive to even consider shooting except for defense purposes since it doesn’t leave much after hitting rabbits, squirrels or turkeys!) What is available is 5 times the normal price high end or garbage that will ruin a gun or is so inaccurate that shooting it at 3 times a fair price is just stupid. So when Cabelas or Sportsmans Guide or Cheaper Than Dirt or MidwayUSA are all backordered forever and local stores are either out of stock or marked up to absurd, where do you go for bullets, ammo or anything that you can use to shoot? Gun Shows!
It used to be fun to go to the gun show. Once or twice a year the gun shows like Bill Goodman’s Gun and Knife Show would come to Cincinnati or Dayton and there were good deals and plenty of goodies for everyone. Buy, sell or trade and lots of competition and bargaining to do. Not crowded so it was a nice relaxing time for all. Now the shows are monthly and the last 2 shows I went to have been so crowded you can hardly move. We had to stand in line for an hour and then the prices for everything were so high that only an idiot or someone desperate would pay those prices. Used Junk, priced extra high. New stuff, mostly cheap Chinese and eastern European junk, or exotic gigantic calibers that no one with a brain would buy because you can’t conceal a 12inch barrel and you aren’t going to shoot varmints with a 50 caliber. Any ammo that’s left is about double or triple because something is better than nothing. Reloading is another joke. If you know what you are doing and you already have the equipment as well as all the supplies you’ll need you’re good to go but, just like the ammo, reloading supplies are on backorder for the next hundred years. If you listen to the panicked buyers they all whisper the same things, “This is what I need so I gotta have it”. Then some genius who doesn’t know what he is buying figures out he needs ammo and the race is on. People are walking out of the gun shows with cases of ammo at astronomical prices that they will probably never shoot. Now there is an ammunition crisis that is just escalating. Why are 120 Million Americans out of 300 Million buying guns like a war is coming to your neighborhood next Thursday? Maybe they shouldn’t have put a pacifist, socialist in the presidency? Maybe they should have thought about the US’s impending bankruptcy before they voted for the democratic gun hating congressman or senator? Maybe times have gotten so bad that fear is running the show and if you keep letting the fools in office that want to disarm you, tax you or leave you defenseless you might just need that gun. Too bad you don’t have any bullets but it makes a nice paper weight. One final thought, if you wanted to control guns in America why go after the guns when all you have to do to make them worthless is to cut off access to ammo. In the end it’s all about the ammo. What do you think?
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admin says:
December 4th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
This has to be a trick question? Okay, a .223 round, JHP, JSP, BSP, FMJ, SP, 42 grain on up I personally like the Ultramax JHP in 55 grain. My understanding is that a military round can not be shot out of a civilian styled .223 gun but a civilian round can be fired from a military issued gun as wel as military .223 rounds. I hope this helps.
greg ebenhack says:
December 4th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Which round can be used out of a 223 barrel?
admin says:
July 12th, 2009 at 9:08 am
ej-
Great stats, very true and well spoken! We wrote the post mainly from the average consumers point of view but you put a really nice light on why there is nothing on the shelf. Thank You for sharing, Rick
ej says:
July 11th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
It is true the current administration is clearly anti-firearm, anti-republic, anti-self determination and clearly has an agenda that is self serving versus serving the Republic who elected them It is also highly evident our Republic is in trouble, no matter what rhetoric or spin the populist controlled media spouts out. I agree with a majority of what you said, but there are larger looming issues. The dollar is very weak, probably one of the weakest times in our history. When Euros, Sterling and other currencies are greater than ours, Americans have lost our buying power. Coupled with former 3rd world countries are in our backyard with respects to production as well as many of our business sending our raw materials out of the country to be manufactured in now industrialized countries. While I am in favor of any country bettering themselves, unfortunately it has been at our expense and our governot has given all its blessings. Hence, India, China, and other super industrial countries are not only buying trillions in American debt and having a stake in our economy, they are mining and buying raw materials on par with other large industrialized nations. In fact, some of these countries want to base their economy on raw materials versus the gold standard and have been pushing such thinking world-wide which would further destabilize our economy. As you pointed out that an escalating and lengthy war is contributing to our ammo shortages. Panic buying just cleans off what’s on the shelves. Manufacturers are producing at record paces and cannot keep up with the demand of popular calibers (9, 45, 223, 308). In fact, if you look at which companies are producing volume Olin, Lake City and Remington are the three big producers and most of them have aging equipment. In fact, Lake City exclusively produces for the military and they’re cranking in excess of 1.2 Billion rounds a year. Olin has picked up the smaller calibers and the military has had to outsource with South Korea and Israel several times within the past 2 years just for the smaller caliber. In addition with the passing of the terrorist act, law enforcement agencies have stepped up their training which also consumes an enormous amount of ammo. If you take a mid size agency of 300 sworn officers, with training, it is not unreasonable to blow through 10,000 rounds just for qualifying for the year. Count on another 10,000 rounds for advanced training and count on 27,000 rounds just for issue (1 box of 50 for handguns, 2 boxes of 5 for shotguns, 2 boxes of 20 for carbines). Moreover, as an agency, you want to have enough of ammo for emergencies, so count on several hundred thousand rounds for reserves (that will be consumed for another training cycle). Now how many mid-size agencies are there and how many large agencies are there? Billions of rounds just for law enforcement. Not to mention our governot snapped up and are supplying billions of rounds of 7.62×39, 223, 308 ammo to Somalia, Iran, and other nations. So, consumers are left with whatever overruns there are and whatever surplus ex-communist block ammo that trickles through. So, panic buying is really not in the picture.