The main reason your can't find any .22 ammo (Just my opinion)

vanity | 1-13-2014 | vanity

[servo1969]

Let me tell you why you can't find any .22 ammo.

Yes, people are buying it and selling it online. Yes, people are hoarding it. But these alone are not enough to make the supply at gun stores as low as they've been. The manufacturers are cranking out .22 as fast they can. 24/7. Wide open. Some are still backlogged for over a year. Where is it going? Why isn't it reaching the smaller stores like it used to? Here's the secret: IT IS.

You see, when your local gun dealer tells you he only got a few boxes of .22, there's a chance he's lying right to your face. He didn't get just a few boxes of .22; He got a whole case. He even might be getting a case a week depending on his back-orders. But he knows he can't charge you 300-500% retail for ammo and have any customers left. So, he only puts maybe 25% of what he received on the shelf. (If it's high quality .22 like, say, CCI Mini-Mags he doesn't put any of it out! It's too hot a commodity to waste on you.) The rest he posts for sale under a fake name on GunBroker. He makes 10 - 30 cents a round from the suckers buying .22 there. And why are they buying it? Because they need .22 ammo and their local shops just can't seem to get any. Isn't that weird?

Now that's capitalism and that's how things work. If he can get that much and he doesn't care about anything but his bottom line then so be it. But capitalism works both ways. If people stopped buying .22 ammo at auction sites there would be no incentive for local FFLs to put their shipments online. They would start putting their .22 back on the shelves and tell their store customers 'Man, it sure is nice that the .22 is finally coming back in, huh?'

So this will go on until people stop buying .22 on auction sites. Let the people on these sites sit on their .22 ammo long enough and they will put it back out on the shelf to move it and make some money. That's the main thing that needs to happen.

If you're buying .22 from GunBroker or some other auction site try to stop. Tells everyone you know not to buy from these places either. Stores like W-mart and Academy are getting .22 regularly but you have to get there early to get any. There are limits to how much you can buy at one time but they are still selling it at the regular price. I haven't seen them price gouging.

Just my 2 cents.

[peyton randolph]

My local Walmarts are always out of stock because the employees buy and resell online instead of putting on the shelves. There is a shortage.

[cpdiii]

I am not buying this line of reasoning. Walmart, Academy etc. are slowly getting more stock and selling them at a reasonable market price. Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply and is probably about 50% more than two years ago relative to price.

This is good as it means supply is getting close to demand. What one must really worry about is when there is NO SUPPLY!

Do not blame Walmart, Academy etc. The blame for elevated prices is fear of government.

[smokingfrog]

Federal allocated 20 million rounds for BSA and other youth organizations.

Federal Premium® Ammunition and CCI® Allocate 20 Million Rounds of .22 LR Ammunition for Youth Shooting Sports Programs

[TheRhinelander]

I haven’t even looked, I have plenty.

[sockmonkey]

You see, when your local gun dealer tells you he only got a few boxes of .22, there's a chance he's lying right to your face.

My best friend owns a gunshop. You are wrong.

[smokingfrog]

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/01/gun_show_vendors_discuss_2014.html

[Kirkwood]

Less people shooting centerfire for enjoyment because they can’t afford it any longer, so it naturally puts a heavier demand on the rimfire.

[smokingfrog]

In 2000 the U.S. Department of the Interior reported that excise taxes on ammunition generated $68 million, whereas in 2012 that figure was $207 million. With inflation taken into account, that’s approximately a 129 percent increase in 12 years. A lot of that growth has taken place in the past few years. Between 2007 and 2012 excise tax money generated from ammunition sales almost doubled from $108 to $207 million. Tax dollars from ammunition sales were stable from the mid-1990s through 2006, but then started to climb fast as gun sales began surging.

To understand what $207 million represents, it’s helpful to know that in 2012 the NSSF estimated the size of the consumer rimfire, center-fire and shotshell market at about 9.5 billion shells and cartridges. That includes U.S. production in addition to imports minus exports. Last October the NSSF predicted there would be more than 10 billion cartridges and shells made for the American consumer market in 2013 as manufacturers attempt to keep pace with consumer demand.

Obviously this massive increase in demand has made it difficult for ammunition makers to keep up. Can you imagine what would happen if the demand for your other favorite products doubled in five years? Wouldn’t they likely be more expensive and harder to find? Also, ammunition production can be difficult to increase quickly because it takes investment in expensive machinery and additional personnel to increase production. Making more ammunition also requires companies to purchase more raw materials in a competitive and international marketplace. Manufacturers also must worry about overinvesting in a market bubble and thereby getting caught overextended in coming months or years.

http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/why-weve-had-ammunition-shortage

[RC one]

I haven’t noticed a shortage of ammo for several months. Certain reloading components remain difficult to find however.

[Zhang Fei]

Making more ammunition also requires companies to purchase more raw materials in a competitive and international marketplace. Manufacturers also must worry about overinvesting in a market bubble and thereby getting caught overextended in coming months or years.

These are valid concerns even in areas that are relatively unregulated such as raw materials (aluminum, copper, iron and so on), where a significant number of companies are losing billions due to overcapacity. Given that state-by-state or federal gun or ammo bans could crater demand very rapidly, it's understandable that ammo-makers are being cautious.

[Greysard]

There is no difference where the ammo is sold, in stores or on the Internet. If there are 10 million rounds for sale but buyers want only 5 million, what will happen to the other 5 million? You think the gun shop will be sitting on unsold inventory? Unlikely; it takes very deep pockets to execute such an operation. And if the gun shop stops reordering, the supplies pile up, and all other shops get unlimited ammo for sale - which will bring customers to them. The original "hoarder" shop cannot afford that.

What happens in reality is that the sellers are lowering the price, and some buyers decide to buy some more for those lower prices. In the end the natural market forces bring the prices to some sensible level - no matter where the ammo is sold, in stores or on Web sites.

The shortage can be only explained by demand that is higher than production. But I do not understand where would higher demand come from. I haven't bought .22LR in couple of years; it's not a good hunting round, I use .17HMR for that. Limited availability should automatically reduce the demand among those who cannot reach far and wide in search of the ammo. I also do not see people around me who, out of the blue, would get a .22LR firearm and start practicing like mad. The only feasible explanation is that production is reduced, or bought out right off the assembly lines. There are government-level players with deep pockets who can afford such an operation. They can even pay good money for shutting those lines down, and they can order the manufacturers to be silent about that.

Still, it would be weird that .22LR got subjected to such manipulation. It is not a very useful round for anything but training at short distances. If the government wants to disarm the population, it would first try to undermine serious rounds, like .223 and above - and the easiest way to attack those is by restricting availability of primers.

[The KG9 Kid]

I have a single .22 rifle. It’s from the 1930s and is a manual-load single shot bolt action. It’s the only thing I have that fires .22 rimfire.

Still, I have a few thousand rounds of Aguila SSS Subsonic for it, and can’t ever imagine shooting it all up in my lifetime.

When I saw it was selling for $0.30/round, my wig almost flew off. Who on Earth needs .22 rimfire so much that they’d be willing to pay that price for it?

[Fran B]

Son works at “Shoot Straight”. There is definitely a shortage of 22 ammo. A friend visiting from Kentucky was visiting South Florida. He can’t get any at home and son’s store has some but can’t get a lot!

[fireman15]

My best friend owns a gunshop. You are wrong.

I always get a chuckle from this type of post. Does the original poster think that anyone who is willing to pay exorbitant prices for ammo online is going to pay any attention to his wishes that they stop doing it?

I have my own theory... a bunch of newbies who haven't been through this type of thing several times before have bought cheap rimfire guns and are now willing to pay a premium price to stock up on ammo that doesn't kill a bunny or crow any better than a decent pellet gun. A shortage of .22 ammo is far more funny than crisis.

If you need a cheap firearms like experience just shoot pellets or bb’s until the supply catches up with the demand. I have friend who has an air rifle that shoots home cast 180 grain .45 caliber “pellets” at approximately 800 fps. He charges it with a high pressure scuba tank. One slug split a 2 inch thick piece of wood in half that he was using for a target when he came to visit.

Hog taken down with large bore air rifle.

[Southack]

Instead of theories, you need math.

Prior to the ammo crisis, the U.S. had spare manufacturing capability for an extra 2 Billion rounds of ammo.

Well, what if 100 people in each state were buying a single brick of .22?

That’s 100 people * 1,000 round brick * 50 states = 5 million rounds.

Times 365 days = 1.825 Billion rounds.

Poof! There goes the entire spare manufacturing capability of .22!

It just takes 100 people in each state buying a single brick of .22.

100 people buying a single box of .22, per above, and you’ve got yourself the ammo-equivalent of a bank run!

Math is an amazing thing...

[Vendome]

Shuddup....

I hate math....

[Spartan302]

I traded 5 rifles last year for motorcycles, got some outstanding deals, I have 12 now, 4 Goldwings, one is a 95 the other an 85, a 95 Yamaha Virago, an 89 Yamaha Venture Royale. They all run.
Would have cost me over $10,000, maybe more if I paid cash, instead I just traded some guns I have not fired in a decade, now I have several calibers of excess ammo.

[Wingy]

Math is an amazing thing...

Yeah, math is something, but so is real life. First, a brick in my world is 10 boxes of 50. 500 rounds that used to sell for $14-17. If you bought more than one most dealers would throw in an extra box for a total of 550 rounds. I could go into Walmart and find 20 to 30 bricks on the shelf at any time. I could go into a typical gun store and find maybe double that. If they were out of your favorite brand, tell the nice man on the desk and he could get what you wanted by Monday.

That was then. Since Sandy Hook, if you wanted anything, he would tell you that it's on backorder. .22LR, .45, .223, .38, .40 or 9mm didn't make a difference. If you wanted it, it was on backorder.

So what you're telling me is that because some nut shot up a school in Connecticut, everyone thought at the same time that now would be a great time to open a website and sell ammo over the internet? Gee, I wonder why these same folks didn't think of this in any of the highly publicized gun incidences in the past?

Something doesn't smell right about this and I don't think it's a case of 10,000 people that just got this great idea at the same time...

[Jim Noble]

I’ve been able to buy all the .22LR I want at Dicks Sporting Goods for the past 6 weeks or so, but I get CCI Stingers online from Midway.