What bothers me is that we’ve gone since the 2012 election without being able to buy 22 ammo easily while shotshells have been easy to find. 22LR Is the ordinary simple stuff which people use to put food on the table in hard times and somebody in our government is bothered by that possibility for some reason. By the same token, shotgun sports are a pastime of the well-off and Bork obunga has to know that the fat cats who back him would come down on his hiney like a ton of bricks were he to mess with shotshell availability. That’s despite shotshells using far more lead and powder than 22 ammo.
.22 Ammunition takes dedicated, extremely expensive machines to manufacture. The manufacturing capacity cannot be increased easily and quickly. The political crises created by the Obama administration have bumped up the demand for .22 ammunition for the reasons that you have mentioned.
The demand for ammunition stems from a fairly new awareness of multitudes of the American public about what my father passed on to me about 1960. Ammunition shortages happen, and it is a good idea to have a stockpile. The uncertainty of the Obama administration, the attack on second amendment rights, and world wide conflicts escalating with the current administration channeling a combination of Neville Chamberlain and the Muslim Brotherhood make it hard for any but the most obstinately polyannish to be unconcerned.
There are about 80-100 million American gun owners. Millions of them are new, thanks to the Obama administration. A majority of them own a .22. Rimfire ammunition is not practically reloadable (yes, there were a few kits sold in the 1980’s). Most people did not buy 5,000 rounds as a strategic reserve. Most probably had less than a box on hand. Suddenly, tens of Millions of people became aware and thought that a thousand rounds of .22 would be nice to have. Maybe a couple of thousand. Demand for .22 has historically run under 4 billion rounds a year in the United States, which is by far the largest market in the world. My friend Alan Korwin reports that the U.S. manufacturing capacity is 4.2 billion rounds a year.
Suppose 50 million Americans decided that they would like to have 1,000 rounds of .22 on hand for a rainy day, rather like I did in the 1970s. That is 50 billion cartridges, or about 12 times the annual manufacturing capacity for .22 ammunition in the United States. My observations show me that virtually every .22 manufacturing plant around the world is running flat out making .22 ammunition for the American market, and it all gets snapped up as soon as it becomes available, at prices about three times the rate of even a year and a half ago.
Basic economics: when demand outstrips supply, prices go up until the demand drops to supply levels. This puts money in the hands of suppliers, who then ramp up production to increase supply. It is happening, but it will take a while.
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2014/03/ammunition-availability-shortages-and.html
You can always go to gunbroker.com and buy all the .22 ammo you want ... at vastly inflated prices.
I think that when demand is high (or crazy high as it has been during the 0bama panic) the manufacturers are going to prioritize whichever product lines give them the most profit. I can’t say I blame them — if they are going to ramp up *everything* and paddle like crazy to try and keep up with the raging current in the market, it has to be darn well worth the increased supply costs and having to hire additional labor and/or run extra production shifts.
A big part of the problem, if not “The Biggest” (my stinky personal opinion) is we “The Consumers”. It’s funny this topic came up because just yesterday I was in Wally-World for the first time in well over 6 months (I try to avoid the place) and their ammo case was *well* stocked with centerfire of all flavors at lower prices than I last remember — except for rimfire. They didn’t have a single round of .22LR rimfire in the cabinet. I asked the lady about it and she said that whenever they get .22LR in, they limit it to 3 boxes per customer but it makes no difference. A crowd will show up and buy it as quick as they can put it on the shelf.
Another (purely anecdotal) clue: My local gun store told me they were talking one on one with a manufacturing rep for “one of the big three” rimfire manufacturers (wouldn’t say which one). The rep told them that if he went into a company meeting and urged his company to ramp up .22 production, he’d get fired on the spot. Basically, they know full well that folks are hoarding it and causing the increase in demand and they have no incentive to try to satisfy the demand and decrease their profit margin on a product that normally has a relatively thin margin. They are prioritized on centerfire, centerfire, centerfire. Or an over-simplified way to view it is that the rimfire ammo producers are responding rationally to an irrational consumer demand for a low-margin product that will eventually return to normal demand levels.
I don’t think there is an easy answer other than to get that jackass out of our White House so that the hoarders who continue to eagerly buy from fokls RE-Selling at jacked-up prices on gunbroker and the like, will regain their senses and knock it off. So, I agree the govt gets a big chunk of the blame for driving the prices up, but I believe it’s more due to merely instilling panic and fear in folks who are too easily prompted to over-buy what they would otherwise normally buy, skyrocketing the demand to crazy levels. I can empathize with their fears, but I just wish they would stop once they hit 10,000 rounds, or whatever gawd-awful amount of ammo they have stored up.
I was reading some forum the other day and a guy (could have been a girl - who knows nowadays) was talking about having 100,000 rounds of .22LR stored up. Now, he could have been full of bull-mess and just trying to sound impressive, but I really, *really* hope that there are very few like him (even if hoarding half as much), if we ever want to see .22’s return to pre-panic price levels.
You really don’t understand the point of the article do you?
You are so intent on making conspiracy theories about every thing that the idea of a market response is beyond you.
Out of curiosity how much 22 ammo do you stock pile?
Are you aware that all ammo becomes less effective with age?