Walmart I can understand. Their On Time To Store Inventory System is so dysfunctional they likely only order One-five bricks a month if that. The other stores? No! I bet it never arrives or if it does just a few boxes with the rest going elsewhere "hidden load delivery" like a warehouse government owned.
“Walmart I can understand.”
One of the clerks at my local Walmart said that soon as they get some .22 in it happens: First guy spots it; out comes the cell phone; in a short while the shelf is cleared.
Some of it is the “buyers” for the gun shop in the next town over.
Customers are buying it.
.22 is, relative to other ammo, _cheap_. I may balk at getting 1000 rounds of 5.56 (whadayamean it’s $0.50-$1/round?!?!?), I’d still think nothing of picking up 1000 rounds of .22 - _if_ I happen to see it. It’s the new plinking round, cheap to run thru the AR15 when I just feel like putting holes in paper.
As such, between relative affordability and increased demand, supply is overwhelmed by demand, and as the lead article notes it’s real expensive to increase supply with no guarantee of long enough demand to amortize that expense properly.
Why would the government care about siphoning .22 off? It’s not a strategically important round, they don’t use much of it, and denying it to the public won’t have significant sociopolitical effect.
BTW: the notion that the gov’t is buying up ammo to keep it out of civilian hands is like the notion that the FDA is trying to solve obesity by buying up potato chips.