Ammunition Prices

[Eurodriver]

I hope you're absolutely correct on this, but I have severe doubts.

I heard the same doubts from folks in 2013.

“Obama gonna ban ammo sales! We’ll never see 30cpr 223 ever again”

And then, we did. And it lasted for years (save for a brief spell around the 2016 election) and it was glorious.

Unfortunately, as I said, most gun owners are idiots and didn’t capitalize on this when it was SO CLEARLY going to happen again.

[Bret]

Unfortunately, as I said, most gun owners are idiots and didn’t capitalize on this when it was SO CLEARLY going to happen again.

Shhhhhhhhhhh. I still have some ammo left to sell.

[marchboom]

Would it be too much for everyone to stop buying ammo for 1 month (or better, 2 months) to allow the ammo manufacturers time to get the shelves fully stocked? This would also help in getting prices down to a reasonable level.

Without doing this we can expect these shortages to continue for 1, maybe 2 years.

[TomMcC]

Would it be too much for everyone to stop buying ammo for 1 month (or better, 2 months) to allow the ammo manufacturers time to get the shelves fully stocked? This would also help in getting prices down to a reasonable level.

Without doing this we can expect these shortages to continue for 1, maybe 2 years.

Its probably already happening for the most part here. I doubt many here are buying .223 or 9 for $700-$850/K here. I haven't bought any loaded ammo in over a year. I did make a minor buy of some .223 and 7mm bullets months ago, but nothing since then. Whatever ammo is being bought at half way reasonable prices these days is probably being re-sold at much higher prices. At least some of it.

[Pappabear]

I just hope Trump takes office March 4rd and all this shit is acedemic.

I just said it.

PB

[iflyskyhigh]

I heard the same doubts from folks in 2013.

“Obama gonna ban ammo sales! We’ll never see 30cpr 223 ever again”

And then, we did. And it lasted for years (save for a brief spell around the 2016 election) and it was glorious.

Unfortunately, as I said, most gun owners are idiots and didn’t capitalize on this when it was SO CLEARLY going to happen again.

I've been formulating a theory about this. Not entirely my own. Made up of my own thoughts combined with the insight of others.

Goes like this.

Things are going to be different this time. We will never again see prices as low as on firearms, ammunition, and accessories as they were from 2016 to the beginning of 2020. The four years of Trump were the culmination of a perfect storm.

During the Obama administration the firearms industry and everything surrounding it absolutely exploded. Every tom dick and harry got into the business, and everyone who was already in business was ever increasing their production to try and just keep up with the demand. They added capacity and grew their business at break neck speed. Adding men, equipment, raw materials...buying bigger and bigger facilities. Never once slowing down. This continued for pretty much the entire 8 years of the Obama administration.

Then 2016 happened. Everyone (including the firearms industry) thought Hillary was going to win so they kept the production machine in over drive. At this point they had produced more product then they could possibly hope to sell during normal times. And then it happened. Trump won and the floor pretty much dropped out the entire industry. The general public just stopped buying. Diehards, enthusiasts, tactical Timmy's, competitors, et all kept going, but the public at large just quite buying firearms and accessories. I don't mean to imply the firearms industry wasn't doing great, maybe even growing, but not at the pace of production. I personally think firearms and accessories have been steadily increasing in popularity for the past 20+ years. Again, just not at the pace that the manufactures were producing product for this given time period.

2016-late 2019. Inventory started piling up. Shit was on sale. Everyday. Everywhere. Dirt cheap. Brownells was offering 10% off the entire order pretty much day...with free shipping. Most other large retailers followed suit. It got to the point where I was saving 0.0 dollars reloading 9MM and 223. In fact when you figured in my labor it was probably cheaper to buy it. The sales and low prices for sure moved product, but the inventory was still massive. ALMOST nothing was out of stock. Ever. Almost.

This continued for the entire four years of Trump. But then something started to change in late 2019-early 2020, even before the plan-demic. The sales started to be not as great. No more 10% off. No more free shipping. Black Friday and Christmas sales were disappointing in 2019. My guess is they finally started to get through the backlog they'd been sitting on for the past couple of years. The manufactures were obviously still producing and firearms were arguably still as popular as they had ever been, but something was for sure changing.

I think most people in the gun community (manufactures included) thought Trump was going to win again, so it was just status quo as 2020 started. But then the plan-demic hit and it all came to an end. Almost overnight.

There were two distinct cycles in 2020 where things spiked. They spiked in March when people were scared as hell and had no idea what was going to happen. Shelves were bare. But that passed. I distinctly remember the shelves being empty in early 2020, but then they started to get restocked and everything (in the gun business at least) stabilized. THEN the riots started and things spiked again. But this time they never stopped. It's been pretty much OOS on everything firearms and firearms related since late last summer. And it seems as though it's just getting worse. At a fevered pace. Millions and millions of new gun owners. Everyone buying everything in sight. Guns store shelves empty. People waiting in lines out the door waiting their turn to try and buy something. Anything.

The firearms industry had been lulled to sleep with four years of trump and the prospect of another four years of trump. No one was, or could have possibly been prepared for what happened. Even before the plan-demic prices were naturally starting rise, but instead of being absorbed as old product was purchased and replaced with the new more expensive product, everything went of stock literarily overnight. And it was replaced, all at once, with the new more expensive product. Same product, but everything was just now more expensive. This created the appearance of prices being jacked up. Which they probably were to some extent. But some of that was due to inventory turn over at such a rapid pace. Economics is like gravity. You can cheat it for short periods of time, but gravity always wins...as does economics. Supply and demand is about the only part of our economy that is actually "free market".

Prices were going to go up regardless of the plan-demic. Everything is becoming exponentially more expensive. Labor is more expensive, raw materials are more expensive. Real estate is more expensive. Shipping costs have gone through the roof. Prices were going to go up.

Lots of small business have been and will be forced out of business by the draconian measures of their states tyrants, decreasing supply. The big business are running at reduced capacity in order to comply with the their tyrants mandates, decreasing supply. But probably one of the biggest hinderances, especially to ammo and reloading supplies is the influx of millions and millions of new customers. Combine that with the afore mentioned enthusiasts who never left buying everything in sight, it has just utterly and completely overwhelmed the system.

It's going to be a long, long, long....long time before things return to any state of "normal". Things will stabilize. Prices will come down. But I don't think we will ever see prices and availability like we did from 2016 to 2020. Like I said. It was the perfect storm.

[Uni-Vibe]

For what it's worth, I've been watching the price of the Smith Sport II AR on Grabagun. I admit that it's too small a sample to be significant, but they were at $949 a while, and apparently selling. they bumped it up to $999, but only briefly, because the brought it back down. Now it's $899 which it hasn't been in a while. So we may be passing a peak of some sort. Maybe.

[The_War_Wagon]

Was reading my new "Shooting Illustrated," where Jason Hornady stated, they have a 2 1/2 year backlog of ammo orders. So if NOBODY ordered so much as a single round from them going forward, it would still be late summer of 2023, before they're caught up on what has BEEN ordered.

For a LOT of us, what we've GOT, is what there IS.

[Bret]

The backlog is at the distributor and retail level, not at the consumer level. Just because they have placed orders, that does not mean that the ammunition on order will sell at the current market prices. To the contrary, we could end up with a glut of ammo if the orders are filled and consumer demand declines.

[Ironman8]

The backlog is at the distributor and retail level, not at the consumer level. Just because they have placed orders, that does not mean that the ammunition on order will sell at the current market prices.

Not to be a d*ck, but this is kind of a "duh" statement. You also have to factor in any Mil/LE orders that take priority and IF anything new comes in from those .gov groups due to a new war or whatever, they will jump the line.

The other problem is that some manufacturers have started going outside of normal distribution channels and are essentially selling to the highest bidder (new distributors or brokers), which is also happening from the distributor to retailer level. Some manufacturers have even started selling direct online. Lots of market shifting happening.

To the contrary, we could end up with a glut of ammo if the orders are filled and consumer demand declines.

Disagree with this...as mentioned above, ammo manufacturers (and several companies up and down the supply chain) got caught with their pants down (glut of ammo) after Trump got elected, and I don't think they're keen on doing that again. The risk for them is a legislative change that makes ammo hard to sell...in which case they would have a glut of ammo if they forecast it wrong.

Another market factor (in terms of pricing) is the cost of copper. It's rising and forecast to continue. As that goes up (and I'm sure other metals/components are as well), then that will inherently make ammo more expensive.

I definitely don't have all the answers, but I think prices will stay elevated for quite a while.