Posted on 05/20/2009 1:56:10 AM PDT by appleseed
FLORENCE - Every day, Darren Newsom's three Bitterroot Valley Ammunition facilities crank out 300,000 rounds of ammunition.
It's not nearly enough.
“I'm going about 100,000 rounds in the wrong direction every day,” Newsom said. “We probably have about six months of back orders right now.”
Newsom has been in the ammunition manufacturing business for more than 20 years and he's never seen demand this high.
Fearful of the Obama administration's potential to tighten gun control laws, people from all over the country are stocking up on guns and ammunition.
“I went through the Clinton years and there was a bit of a scare then,” Newsom said. “This is like the Clinton years on steroids. ? On the day of the election, our phones started going nuts. It hasn't stopped since.”
As a master distributor for ATK - the world's largest ammunition business - Bitterroot Valley Ammunition supplies other ammunition manufacturers around the country with the components needed to make bullets.
“I get a million primers in every other day and most are shipped out the very next day,” he said. “I have 100 million primers on back order right now. We just can't get enough of them.”
At a recent gun show in Salt Lake City, Newsom sold somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 rounds in the first two hours.
“It's just unreal,” he said. “Somewhere in lots of basements around the country, there are millions of rounds of ammunition being stored.”
(Excerpt) Read more at missoulian.com ...
I'm actually going the other way. I found a source for 357 SIG ammo and bought a conversion barrel for my 40 S&W. I figure the more different calibers I have, the better the odds of finding ammo.
Our shooting range now has a limit on one box per PARTY to be used only at the range.
Not only have sales been 30% higher, but remember too that one of the largest sources of brass - the military - had a policy for approximately a month of destroying it rather than reselling.
It demand has multiplied faster than production facilities, it makes sense.
And this is a very, very good thing.
Ditto, I started buying after purchasing my first gun in 50 years.
I posted on another thread an incident in the Phoenix area where three private citizens were sent letters from the BATF stating that they were now on their “watch list” for buying excessive ammunition. My friend who knows these people has a copy of the letter, and I’m hoping to get a copy for myself. According to her, these individuals also received phone calls from BATF agents. Scary stuff. As to how they knew about the purchases, I don’t have an answer for that. However, at the last gun show in April, my husband was required to show his driver’s license when he purchased some ammo. He used a credit card but said the guys paying cash were also told to show photo ID.
They are the same people as those who voted for OBambi....
Does anyone remember that just before the Bush Administration let out the huge new military contracts Congress banned import of some ammunition?
I don’t remember what class of ammo it was, but I thought it might be to clear the decks for the military contracts.
Doews nayone know when the military contracts will be fulfilled?
The reason for the lack of expansion is that the political risk is extremely high. One signature and the market disappears.
A second reason is that no one knows what will happen after this bubble pops and people start shooting their stores. Just how many round will you buy per month when you have 250,00 in the garage.
Lee Precision has doubled their factory size and labor and is seriously considering another expansion and they seem to be the only exception to the above.
Ammo manufacturers ARE all running 24/7. Adding more capacity is a whole different animal, as it requires long term capital expenditure. The back side to bubbles is a steep drop and a bad time to be carrying extra fixed costs. The one “good thing” here for the manufacturer is that Zippy guarantees demand.
My guess is that ammo will continue to be sold at the current rates until Lord Zero leaves office at the soonest. Increased prices and lack of availability have cut sales, or I think we’d be seeing 50-75% increases in sales of ammunition.
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