Ammo Availability thread

The demand will go down just as it did with centerfire ammunition. Not long ago .223 was hard to find and over $1/rnd., now I'm getting flyers and emails daily like they're trying to get rid of it and the price is dropping pretty fast. The same happened with every other popular caliber. Walmart almost never had .223 or 5.56 in stock, now my walmart has so much they have to constantly rearrange the shelves to store it.

Comparing cell phones to ammo is absurd. There aren't new phone manufacturers popping up regularly, just new phone models. Cell phones are advancing daily so as they move to manufacturing new models they stop making the old; they're not adding production lines, they're modifying them.

To start an ammunition manufacturing facility involves a lot of crap that doesn't exist for making phones or other products so a new company coming in is unlikely.

 

Does the shortage of ammo have anything to do with our government buying up so much ammo? Thought I read something about that just a month ago. Just curious....

 

We haven't had .22 here since 2012. Fuck paying skyrocketed price. Just buy a new gun in a caliber with available bullets and have fun.

 

That's very possible as ammo availability is regional and luck of the draw and I can only speak for Ca. and Az. I've seen mag. on the shelves somewhat regularly, more so in Az. A little over a year ago I was in Walmart in Az. and they had stacks of .22LR on the shelves. When I went again a few months later there was none. Another store I went into had a vast selection of .22 ammos but it was all oddball stuff and more $ than I wanted to spend. The stores are getting ammo in, you just gotta be first in line when they stock the shelf to get some of it.

 

I'm sure demand will fluctuate but it's not going back to pre-2012 levels. Growing population + increasing numbers of shooters + increasing numbers of 22 rifles / pistols bring made all factor in. Even without a panic, supply capability should be growing over time because the market is growing all the time. That will likely continue to be the case until 22s are banned completely, direct energy weapons replace traditional ones, or there is a massive scale economic disaster.

I wasnt trying to make a direct comparison with phones. The point is that growing markets of consumer goods in high demand for a very long time are almost always met much more...aggressively in almost any other product one can think of. Whatever you want to compare ammo too doesn't really matter. The point is, when you have year after year after year of demand outstripping supply, you have an unresponsive market which is highly unusual presuming business people want to make money. The price to enter the market excuse only last so long. I mean, 50 years from now will we be making the exact same number of 22 round per day that we do now? 25 years? 10? If so, what other growing market works that way regardless of the cost to enter?

 

Has .380 ever come back? That's another one. Smh

 

They buy a lot of ammo to use, but the majority is mil-spec ammo. A common theory is that the government is buying ammo up just to keep it out of the hands of civilians, I don't believe it. Even if the government was trying to disarm us by taking all the ammo there's no reason to go after the least lethal being .22LR. .22 was one of the last common calibers to dry up and it's now going to be the last to catch back up. All the other calibers are on the shelf and dropping in price. Even within .22 variants the same happened. First went away the most common high velocity copper plated in bulk boxes, then the more obscure. Now you can find the obscure much more easily than the bulk HV plated stuff. .22 short was one of the last to go away and I don't see it on the shelves yet even tho it's not a high use item. I assume some people resorted to it when nothing else was available and since it's low demand the manufacturers probably aren't gonna crank up production like they have with LR, if anything they'll make less short to make more LR. Shot shells got somewhat scarce but they're still around but they're useless other than for controlling for small pests at close range.

The same happened with magazines. Not long ago AR mags were ridiculous money and hard to get, the last few I bought were $7ea for stainless steel 30 rounders and there was a monstrous bin full of them. Did manufacturers stop making them? No. Was the military buying non-milspec mags? No.

I believe it's all hoarders and re-sellers. Look at youtube and you'll find lots of guys with tons of ammo and mags, now imagine how many thousands of similar people there are without public displays of it. The supply has saturated this group with centerfire, .22 will follow.

The same happened with guns, the shelves were mostly empty a couple years ago because people panic-bought everything up. Now the shelves are stuffed to the gills everywhere.

 

My local walmart has a decent supply of .380. .25 has vanished everywhere and is even harder to find than .22.

 

I tried finding .25 today and was shocked that it was gone. I'm gonna have to pick some up some time soon when I find it

 

When to Sportsman's Warehouse looking for some 22ammos couldn't find anys but got this 12g shotshells im ready for squirrel season.

 

Academy in Austin (Brodie Lane) has a bunch of Remington .22LR 500-count for $25. Limit one per customer per day, while supplies last.

 

I hear that Walmart shelves are starting to show .22 LR ever since they removed ammo from their website. Now the hoarders can't see which stores have ammo in stock and have to get lucky like the rest of us. Rumor is the Midwest is fully stocked on .22 and its working its way to the coasts. Cabelas has some in stock but it is still a bit pricey. .308 .223 .45 and 9mm seem to be back to fully stocked at pre Obama pricing.

 

I have ammo.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/fs-lots-of-ammo-san-diego.387419/

 

if this has gone into effect, it hasn't helped me out here in Vancouver, WA. I've been to Sportsman's Warehouse, Cabelas, and the two local WWs in the last week and WMs shelves were bare (of 22LR, they have everything else) every time. Cabelas and SW both had a small amount (less than 10 fifty round boxes) of uber-match grade stuff that cost a fortune. No plinker ammo or bulk packs. Meh! It's been almost 3 full years since the 22 ammo market went completely off the deep end and I'm MORE than ready for it to go back to normal. I know peeps in TX that say that 22LR is everywhere in large quantities. Lame.

 

Got over 1500 rounds in my ammo can. Academy is chock full of 525-count Winchester packs. It's just not fun finding it in stock anymore.

 

Found a crapton a few weeks ago. Bought the max I could (3bx). Haven't seen it since.

 

Yeah, you suck. I have been 'living' off my supply of bulk packs from the 90s (ahhh, the days when 500 rounds were $6.99-9.99) ever since Sandyhook. I've managed to land 22 once during that entire time (almost 3 years now) at WM. I go to WM at least once per week and they NEVER have any. Even now when the shelves are over-flowing with other kinds of ammo, 22 is non-existent.

I'm glad that things are better in the middle of the country. That tells me that the 'end' of this 3 year nightmare is just around the corner. Once it's plentiful, prices will stay low and I'll stock up. Until then, I just have to wait some more.

 

Palmetto State Armory--- .22 LR rounds in stock at pretty decent prices, roughly $.08/round

 

Went to cabelas yesterday, they had 22 shotshells and nothing else. Me thinks Texas is hogging all the ammo!

 

I found a store in AZ that has .22 LR, but I keeping to myself, if I tell you fool then there won't be any more for me when I need it.