I sold some of my reloading equipment on eBay earlier this year... a couple presses, quite a few molds, dies and other equipment. It was a little insane... none of it was available from the usual suppliers and mostly still is not. I assumed things would be getting back to normal for this stuff by now. But it has mostly gotten worse.
“ rooted in the extraordinarily high number of firearms that were sold over the past 18 months”
Personally, I don’t believe this is the case. It just doesn’t smell right to me. For the last 20 years we had an overseas war, a robust military, and the FEDGOV LEOs, buying by the ton. The long term trope has been that normal people but guns, but never really go out to shoot. Now that the GWOT is over, the cops are defunded, and the FEDGOV doesn’t seem to be disrupting the supply. I don’t believe that a couple million first time buyers are training like they should be all of a sudden. The regulars have been hoarding ammo forever. So, I just don’t believe it.