I’m guessing that the shortage is caused by people buying up available supplies faster than manufacturers can replenish them, and manufacturers seeing this buying spree as a short-term phenomenon that does not justify their adding a shift to increase production capacity. They figure that once the hoarders have a sufficient supply, that demand will drop to normal (or below normal if there is no new anti-gun legislation in the first six months and hoarders decide to just use up their stash rather than buying new stuff)
Partially correct - a lot of ammo manufacturers shut down lines when the price of lead went skyrocketing upwards, pushing their costs too high. When the price returned to relatively sane levels, they started manufacture again, but that hiccup is being combined with increased demand. They’re churning them out as fast as they can, distributors are parceling out their shipments, and the end result is fewer and fewer boxes on the shelves.
For us in California, it stinks even more - we had a huge bunch of cheap ammo in the state from distributors that went out of business, then shell shock when the price skyrocketed for new orders coming in (whee high shipping charges..). The few distributors left got hammered by dealers going out of state for sales and deals, causing yet another distributor to shutter it’s doors.
What’s left is doing as much business they can, but they also were hammered by high shipping costs over the summer, high ammo costs when they bought whatever they could to fill demand, and we just didn’t have the ammo storage we normally would in California.
Walmart’s decision to curb ammo sales in ‘city center’ stores was partially a nod to gungrabbers in the state, but mostly a nod to outlying stores which sold the product faster and more reliably.