Recently we been hearing from a number of bloggers and other people who have some experience in the world of shooting, ammo and guns explaining that the ammunition shortage is simply a matter of supply and demand, people hoarding and purchasing new firearms etc. etc. etc.
Basically that this shortage will right itself and all will be well once again in our world.
At first I kinda agreed with these prophets of wisdom and was more than willing to wait this thing out. I was willing to discount the rumors of government involvement in the shortage and write the whole thing up to panic buying.
I mean who could blame them right? Hell Obummer being re-elected is enough to make anyone panic.
Lately though the continued and complete lack of any .22 Long Rifle after all these months got me re-thinking this entire thing. Aside from the fact that unlike during other times of shortage I am not seeing all the imported stuff I was expecting, which is making me believe that perhaps we are seeing the powers that be denying some import permits. What has me really taking notice now are some numbers I saw released from CCI.
Now CCI is claiming they are producing 4 million rounds of .22LR per day. That's 20 Million rounds of the stuff a week and only from one manufacturer what about Federal, Remington, etc.?
It doesn't seem far fetched to me to figure there are at least 40 to 50 million rounds of .22LR are being produced a week within the USA with no bottleneck against immediate distribution. At roughly 10 cents a round now we are looking at what? Four to five million bucks a week in monetary velocity just to buy all these rounds? How long has this been going on?
Even figuring there are 200+ million gun owners within the US and let's just say each owner has his or her own .22 rifle. How many weeks has this total lack of ALL .22LR been going on now? At least 28 weeks or more at 50 Million per week. That is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.4 Billion rounds of something the government supposedly never ordered. Well over enough claimed production that each gun owner should have a couple hundred or so rounds for his very own.
Either my late night sleep depraved mind has screwed some number rounding up bad in my head this evening or something just ain't right here fellas. At 10 cents a round not even Georgie Soros could be hoarding that many .22 LR.
As I said perhaps I am rounding things wrong here but I am starting to believe we are going way past simple supply and demand hoarding.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
I agree.
ReplyDeleteJust today I had to go to the local Bi Mart, that's twice this week, I haven't seen a single round of .22LR in that place in six months now.
They did, however, come into quite a supply of the Hot Lips Ruger .22 25 round banana magazine that they have been out of since before December.
Yes something is rotten in the Land of the Free. Someone is sitting on a whole lot of ammo. The Feds?? The manufacturer??
ReplyDeleteAnother stop and think post. Plus the market is down again this am.
I saw this as a comment at the Ruger Forum, so the idea is not mine:
ReplyDeleteEstimated Annual Production 2.5 Billon Rounds (Wikipedia).
That is Approximately 13,700 bricks of 500 per day.
Sounds like allot? About 1,800 Wal-marts sell Ammo, that is less than 8 bricks per day per Wal-mart.
Without substantial capital equipment say they can flex up 20%. That is still less than 10 bricks per day. If you went for adding capacity say 50% to 12 bricks per Wal-mart per day, if you started now it would take you 18 months minimum to get new lines in production.