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‘Where’s All the Ammo?’ a Former Liberal Asks
I’m a local property manager and I ran into my maintenance guy John, at a client’s house. We “had a discussion.” We chatted about the election, the weather, the large influx of new residents to our state, etc. He is a retired AT&T Exec and I met him working in real estate with his wife. She and I share the same birthday. His retired side job is fixing anything that’s broken and he does it well.
Back to our brief chat – he mentioned that he had to go across the bridge for a couple of supplies and stopped into the “ammo store”. John is a veteran and owning a gun or two is not unusual. So he told me there’s no ammo – everyone’s out. The place he popped into said they’ve been sold out for weeks and no supply available. He was told that Walmart is sold out, as well as the big chain Bass Pro Shop.
Ok, so the former liberal asking where’s all the ammo is me. I’m not a big gun fan, no one in our combined families are, yet we’re all now conservative. I like the cute deer that chew on my plants (I hate that part), and up until George W. Bush was elected, I was a bleeding-heart liberal. Well, not really. I grew up in a blue dog Democrat family (long gone), at some point shifted to Independent, then took a look at my paycheck one day, and listened to the latest liberal talking points, and went into political rehab, emerging a conservative Republican. Can you imagine?
Getting back to “ammo”… I didn’t care that there was no ammo, but I do stand by the Second Amendment, and the rest of “those Amendments” that our Founders found worthy to put into a document called the United States Constitution. I may like the adolescent deer with the baby antlers wandering my yard, but I respect the right to bear arms and so did our Founders. So my ears perked up when John told me his story. Was it all purchased when Biden “won” the presidential election? When did it start disappearing? Is this new?
I feel funny even writing about this subject – ammo. I don’t want to tip off the ultra-liberals ( I hesitate to use the word progressives because there’s no progress here), or Biden to sign one more order, than the 40-plus executive orders he’s already inked, after saying we all need to come together and “heal”. (Why can’t that cheap ink pen run out when you need it to?)
Why? Well, there’s this freaky Draconian, Orwellian censorship now sweeping our free country. There’s suddenly censorship gone wild, with Big Tech silencing what we can see, read and hear. Did average Americans arm up or is there an availability issue, maybe due to COVID? Is the military stocking up the pantry (or is there something going on that we don’t know about?). I’m asking for a friend. The censorship thing is real – so is the lack of ammo real?
We went to Walmart today and as we walked past the ammo section to get a new keyboard and mouse (don’t buy the cheap one – it’s garbage and had to exchange), we found the ammo section was empty! Wow! So was the rack with mousepads. I needed a new mouse pad. “We’ve been out for weeks”, said the clerk. Everyone working from home bought up all the mousepads…. and now they’re well-armed. I also got the last pack of 9×12 mailing envelopes too, so if you need office supplies, you better stock up now.
If you need ammo, I can’t help you. Regarding the “censorship”, I like the Glenn Beck daily news stories emails, and he did a parody with his sidekick Stu, on Anthony Fauci’s new suggestion to wear two masks. It was a three-minute funny where they thought, well maybe since two masks will protect us, how about ten masks? That would do it. Wait! Since 25 come in a box, maybe wear 25! Forty seconds into the video, it said “content no longer available on Facebook” – what?? I looked it up later today and again and it’s so slow and won’t play. It was a joke – humor?! Was it censored?
Federal troops in DC, erasing the online accounts of conservatives, the sweeping changes that are pouring over our free country faster than Niagara Falls, affecting Western Civilization and the world, are no laughing matter.
Published in General
Is it hard to make ammo? I mean, didn’t past generations make their own ammo? A person needed the molds and also a way to liquify the metals used. Also a steady hand while pouring the molten metals. And a place for all of it to cool down undisturbed.
Of course there would still be the matter of the gun powder, which is a key ingredient.
Your essay encapsulates where my household now stands on this issue. We also both came from an adulthood spent being liberal, then indie, and now conservative. (Although given what huge sell outs so many elected conservatives now openly allow themselves to be seen as, it might be time to go back to being indies.)
Flintlocks didn’t use any kind of shell or casing. That makes it harder to “roll your own” these days.
“Everyone” is a misleading term. In residential terms, there are places that are stocked rather well. I’d say, per capita, Parker County in near the top of the list. But you may already be aware of that…
Weird that the market has not corrected after a long shortage. It almost seems like there is an artificial constraint on supply.
Once it looked like Biden was going to be the next president there was a run on ammunition and firearms, it had picked up even before election day. Once it looked like Trump wasn’t going to get a second term though everything started getting bought up. There are multiple reasons for it. Some people think that it’s going to come down to shooting at one another, other people were first time firearm owners and wanted to stock up. Still others purchased new caliber firearms and had to purchase certain type of ammo they didn’t have already, and lastly (and probably the majority) were people who already owned firearms that saw the writing on the wall. Even if the new administration can’t pass the leftist wet dream legislation regarding firearms, they can easily level high taxes and fees on ammunition, magazines, and other firearm related items to the point that it becomes impossible to afford. “Reloading” is possible, but it takes experience, special tools, and some newly manufactured items that can also be highly taxed. America’s public is arming itself, it remains to be seen where it will be pointed.
Ammo has been hard to come by since easily last summer.
What is the supply chain?
Does supply chain involve china?
Did all the federal agencies (now armed) put a strain on availability?
Here in the Low Country there is a very large building that makes 9 mm ammo with a bunch of machines. They run day and night. If you get there later than 10am the last 24 hours worth is gone. Their retail hours are 8am until 10 am. They load trucks all day.
I figure in a real emergency we can use ours as barter currency.
I take it back – the everyone is out of ammo comment. We sat down to brisket sandwiches with a side of slaw and my husband said, “Do you hear the gunshots? Somebody’s shooting deer or blowing up stuff”……Ya I heard it, so someone is stocked up….
At least part of the ammo issue is the several million people who have bought their first gun in recent months. If each new gun owner buys even just a box or two of ammo to start practicing with this new tool they have acquired, that is collectively a lot of ammo.
It’s definitely a demand issue. The big ammunition companies are running as hard as they can. They also reduced production during the Trump presidency as demand has gone down. Gun and ammo sales are cyclical, and the ramped up demand from the summer of BLM was followed by the Biden election. Reloading is just as affected as anything else – primers are very hard to find right now
Is government intervention preventing investment in increased primer production capacity?
If not, then supply should increase after a wait time (the period of production) until there are no shortages.
Your comment reminded me of how when I moved into a low income neighborhood in San Rafael, Calif, I tried to not think about the number of times that people had mentioned my folly in doing so. A half dozen people might have brought up the subject that there were many hoodlums and gangsters in the neighborhood.
My second night there, there was a 20 minute period when it sounded like a huge gun battle was in progress maybe half a mile away. I was glad I had no reason to leave the house that night.
I mentioned the gun battle to my new neighbor the next morning and she smiled and said, “Didn’t anyone tell you that the local rod and gun club is not far from here? Any gun battles you hear in the future are fine, as long as they are coming from that southward direction.” I made further inquiries and found out that many of Marin County’s prominent citizens had memberships there.
My remaining months in that neighborhood were extremely pleasant. I might have stayed much longer than the 18 months I did, except for having a cocaine snorting landlord who wanted me to pay for a $ 30,000 bathroom plumbing upgrade.
I only had one of those landlords, at least that I knew of at the time. The guy would do stuff like sell off the laundry room machines to support his habit. The rent money that didn’t go up his nose, usually wound up in the underwear of hookers. After he hadn’t been paying the mortgage for a few years, he lost the properties. At various times he would complain about stuff like the water bill, and would start ranting about how he would separate the water lines for each unit so each tenant could pay theirs separately, completely ignoring how much it would have COST him to do that.
How to make your own gun powder (“Science knowledge” purposes only)
So here are the instructions on the various powders an individual needs to make their own gun powder. A normal old blender will get the powders down to extremely small particles. (When you are done with the blender, please scrub it thoroughly.)
There are traditional ratios for gun powder: 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal and 10%.
My main advice, note that this guy recommends making sure you have a fire extinguisher on hand while dealing with this process.
Full description of what you need to do, in under nine minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm-7WzUrmzo
According to the CEO’s of the big ammunition companies, no. And gun owners were burned so badly with ammunition shortages after the CT school shooting that many made a habit of stockpiling ammunition. I don’t see the demand curve changing any time soon, now that lefties are just as concerned and finding that owning firearms is maybe just a good sensible precaution. In the interview I saw the CEO discussed just how hard it was to make large scale increases in production without sacrificing quality.
Modern firearms don’t use “gunpowder”, but smokeless powder, a whole different animal. I would guess impossible to make at home.
The same ammo restriction signs were at Walmart so they were rationing and the supply hasn’t been replenished. I’m not sure we’ve seen this before.
Yes, when I buy ammo I’m diversifying my retirement portfolio. The gains I’ve realized over the last two decades, well exceed the market.
I expect stockpiling to be the norm out of concern that Democrats will succeed at some point in making new purchases of ammunition impossible.
I also read that firearms and ammunition manufacturers were burned when they increased production capacity during the Obama presidency, only to see demand retract during the Trump presidency. Hence, they were reluctant to increase production capacity during the riots of 2020 and the election campaign since demand might retract again had Trump been reelected.
The market should be raising prices to ensure that ammo is always in stock. That is not happening and I wonder, if retailers/manufacturers are afraid to be seen as gouging. Being a price gouger can hurt sales in the future. I wonder if manufacturing is hampered by the Dems proposing to license the possession of ammo. I would be very reluctant to build a factory with that kind of regulation being floated. That is probably intentional on behalf of the Dems. For example, one reason why nobody builds a coal-fired power plant is that nobody is going to risk that regulators won’t shut it down before it is paid for. Regulation is the silent killer.
I mistakenly bought a bunch of steel cased FMJ 9mm that I cannot use at my range (they only allow brass, because they make money on collecting the casing for reuse). I paid $0.50/round which is quite cheap compared to the current price of >$0.70.
But I have a friend who is teaching #7 the violin. He asked to be paid in lead instead of cash – one box of steel-cased 9mm per lesson. It feels post-apocalyptic, but it works for us.
Win-win!
Went to the first local Gun Show of the Xi Biden Regime this weekend.
Jammed.
And everyone ( yours truly included ) was scrounging what ammunition and full size magazines were available for sale.
not been robbed.
FIFY
The secondary market has absolutely raised prices. (I can’t comment on the retail market as I haven’t bought anything since this started.). You can buy reloading components all over the place at various on line forums, but the pricing is a where from double to an order of magnitude from pre-rush pricing. Most long term shooters will just ride it out but first time buyers are feeling the shortage panic and paying the high prices.
When a security guard was stopped outside of the DC security zone prior to the inauguration, they made a big deal out of the fact that he had over 1,000 rounds of 9mm in his trunk. (He wasn’t carrying.) Someone on Twitter asked, “Why would anyone need to buy 1,000 rounds of ammo?” My answer, “Because he probably couldn’t buy two.”
My wife is in retail and her store cannot keep it in stock.
Is it better to be a formal liberal than a former liberal?
I thought all that dignity stuff went bye-bye when Trump was elected.
Friends of mine used to buy 1,000 rounds at a time regularly, particularly if it was on sale. Not unusual to go through 200+ rounds in a session at the practice range. So a few practice sessions there goes 1,000 rounds. Most of them are no longer using live ammunition for practice, out of concern that they won’t be able to replace it. Practice still OK, but not the same as live fire, so skills may be degrading.
DonG made three excellent points, from the point of view of scientific economics. (Formatting added)
I particularly appreciate the bolded sentence. The fear of regulation is an example of “that which is unseen” (Bastiat). Bravo.