Posted on 01/23/2021 3:47:32 AM PST by Mr. Mojo
Are ammunition companies hoarding their supplies? Have they stopped making ammo altogether? In short, no. Here’s what’s really going on
Last week I was riding around South Texas with Jason Vanderbrink, the president of ammunition for Vista Outdoor. In other words, he’s the big boss for Federal Premium Ammunition, CCI, Speer, and now Remington ammunition. This is a pretty wild time to be running an ammo company: There are an estimated 7 million new gun owners in the U.S. this year, consumers have been panic-buying rounds in everything from .22LR to .300 Win. Mag., and retailers are backordered for months; plus, there’s the global pandemic complicating supply chains and workers’ safety.
So, we know the question that’s on the minds of every hunter and shooter: Where’s the ammo?
Frustration over the ammo shortage has created some pretty fun conspiracy theories. These are probably the top three: 1) Companies are stockpiling their product to drive up demand; 2) Ammo plants have shutdown completely; 3) Ammo companies are in cahoots to stop selling to civilians and are now selling only to the military. It’s worth noting that similar conspiracy theories cropped up during the panic buying and ammo shortages of 2014. It’s also worth noting that none of these conspiracies are true.
There’s No Crystal Ball for Ammo Sales
The reality behind the ammo shortage is a lot less provocative. After a few years of tough sledding, ammo companies now simply can’t keep up with the unprecedented demand.
“It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback,” says Vanderbrink. “During the Trump Administration, for all ammunition companies, it was a tough business. The industry was over capacity and that leads companies to not invest in expansion or refrain from capital expenditures that may be needed.”
During the Obama Administration, some consumers feared stricter firearm regulations and bought as many guns and as much ammunition as they could. That tailed off significantly when Trump was elected. (Folks in the firearm industry call this the “Trump Slump.”) The FBI tracks background checks before firearms purchases through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is the closest measure we have for tracking firearm purchases. Firearm background checks have increased almost every single year since 2002, except for Trump’s first year in office, when they decreased from 27.5 million in 2016 to 25.2 million in 2017. Federal had to lay off 200 employees in 2017. In 2020, there were 39.7 million firearm background checks.
“So when the market turned in March, we were coming off of a tough three-year business cycle.” Vanderbrink says. “[At the time,] the furthest thing from our mind was expanding capacity. So when the market tuned so fast you had two problems: There was certainly not the labor available and, two, it takes time to train people...You just can’t turn on a dime. You can’t go hire hundreds of people overnight, train them and boom, on Friday you have more ammo. It just doesn’t work that way, it’s impossible. The key takeaway is that the business had been tough for three years and we had to right the ship, if you will. And then when demand exploded, it’s impossible to react that fast.”
Raw Material Shortage
Accessing materials has been another challenge for all ammo companies and for individual reloaders. Primers are hard to come by since there’s been such a surge in factory ammo. And brass is another challenge, Vanderbrink says.
“The brass market for the most part is seeing unprecedented demand not only in the ammo market but the national coin shortage and that is certainly driving brass prices up and availability down,” he says. “Brass is a hard commodity to acquire right now and every round that any ammo company makes, for the most part, has brass in it.”
But manufacturers are making ammo, and lots of it. Vanderbrink has taken to YouTube to put some of the conspiracy theories to rest. His first video, shot inside the Federal factory in Anoka, Minnesota, has more than 1.7 million views.
“I’m tired of all the hate mail, I’m tired of people showing up at our factories, I’m tired of reading the misinformation out on the internet right now about us not trying to service the demand that we’re experiencing,” Vanderbrink says in the beginning of the video.
In a follow-up video, he answers the common complaint: Where is all the hunting ammo? “Federal has been around for 99 years and we’ve made more hunting ammo this year than we have in [any of] the 99 years of our company. Certainly that wasn’t enough, we understand that.”
Vista Adds Remington Ammo to the Fold
Besides turning out rounds at the Federal plant, Vista is focused on getting the Remington ammunition plant running at full capacity in Lonoke, Arkansas. Vista purchased Remington ammunition and its assets and the Remington trademark in October after the Remington Outdoor Company filed for bankruptcy. Currently, Vista is bringing back furloughed employees and hiring hundreds of new ones to get Remington Ammunition back on its feet.
“Ultimately the consumer wins with this acquisition,” Vanderbrink says, who got his start in the ammunition business as a salesman for Remington. “We’re going to invest heavily in the brand, we’re going to invest heavily in the facility, and we’re going to modernize it. At the end of the day, the American worker wins, and the end consumer wins… We will get production up and going and that will help [ammo] availability.”
No one is quite sure when the ammo shortage will end, but it likely won’t be any time soon. In November, Vista reported a year’s worth of backlogged ammunition orders in excess of $1 billion.
“It’s going to be awhile,” Vanderbrink says. “All the shelves are empty, so we’ll have to fill the shelves. Understanding the political climate in our country and the social unrest…all of those factors create demand. So I won’t speculate, but getting the Remington factory up at max production will help the end consumer for sure.”
So this dumbass of an executive has ONE BAD YEAR in an ongoing trend of fifteen years, and he cuts production and lays off employees?? This asshole shouldn't be in charge of a company...he needs to be cleaning toilets.
Sharing this on Gab and bookmarked (but not the forum since the goal here is to be secret I guess).
Biden unites us more than he knows.
Huh. Didn’t this happen under Obama? We were told that Homeland Security needed the ammo. Maybe the Government doesn’t want the people to be able to fight back and rather than confiscating guns they are limiting the ammunition.
Federal laid off employees during a slow period so they wouldn’t go bankrupt like Remington.
It was three years of market decline until the pandemic hit then demand skyrocketed. You can’t predict the future
Maybe they should halt shipments to state and federal agencies for a while.
I just purchased my first rifle - an M1 Garand. As an amateur WWII historian, I’ve wanted an M1 for 40 years. I finally took the plunge.
Not being a shooter (well, not for many, many years), I need to take a few NRA courses, and learn every bit, piece, and part of my M1. Also, I need to refinish the furniture (I’m catching up with the lingo) before I load the clip.
I found one source for ammo right away - Ammoland, but they want $2.00+ per round. I have the feeling I can do better than that if I’m patient.
Well the stockholders and board of directors likely think otherwise. The guy would have been fired if he had done the humane thing in keeping the workers on. A CEO's job security depends on his EBITDA and balance sheet. That and a contrived shortage keeps prices up.
Until the pandemic hit AND a low-life drug addict scumbag was killed by the police in Minneapolis. The marxists saw an opening, took it, and launched their communist revolution country-wide. Then the Big Steal happened.
The article says different.
I didn’t see any slump in ownership or buying during the Trump years.
Under Obama there were massive amounts of ammo buys by most of the government agencies. There should be multiple fr threads about it.
There were.
Lots of room for FResearch here.
The main website of "Vista Outdoor" has lots of interesting links, but none to the corporate structure (board and foreign connections).
I started reloading all my hunting rounds years ago ( get that perfect bullets thru the same hole with my mark Vs ), so I don't imagine I'll be buying any supplies for the rest of my days on this earth.
I see people making their own bullets and using dillons to fill the void. I really enjoy reloading too, but takes time and don't figure it's worth doing it to sell rounds for 40 cents apiece.
still reloading is what winters are for I guess.
They will not invest the in new capacity when they have no idea what legislative changes may occur. With no rule of law manufacturers could well find their business regulated to the point of destruction.
How many will invest in new pipelines in the future when permits are retractable?
Trump was great for giving the populace a sense of security and sense of well-being. Lost time.
If I become a serious shooter, I think I’d enjoy reloading. I’ll look into the necessary tools and equipment, and the necessary supplies, etc.
My Mom’s uncle was a serious hunter. His living room was full of trophies. He reloaded all his ammo. He’s long gone, and so is his equipment, so I’ll have to start over.
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