Why is there still a .22 ammo shortage?

[Bob R]

A lot of this echos what I have been thinking is the cause, hoarders, scalpers and uncertainity.

http://sierrabullets.wordpress.com/2014 ... mmunition/

bob

[The Mechanic]

I wonder how much .2r ammo was on that Maylasian flight that disappeared

[magpulsam]

Extremely insightful!

[scrappy]

Good post Bob. That makes a good deal of sense. Somewhat depressing, but it makes sense.

[ron]

I wonder how much .2r ammo was on that Maylasian flight that disappeared

Well, supposedly entire ships have disappeared in The Bermuda Triangle but on the other hand, there's some piracy in that area as well, where crew and passengers might get thrown overboard and the ships disappear but possibly end up getting sold as other ships.

And then there are Black Holes. A black hole is defined as a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping.When an object falls into a black hole, any information about the shape of the object or distribution of charge on it is evenly distributed along the horizon of the black hole, and is lost to outside observers.

And if it's true that ammo manufacturers are working 24-7 around the clock to try to keep up with the demand, then where is all the ammo going??? The possibility that it must all be getting sucked into outer space seems to be as good an explantion as anything else I've heard.

But then again I found this on the internet that gives some of the numbers that are involved:

"There are about 80-100 million American gun owners. Millions of them are new, thanks to the Obama administration. A majority of them own a .22, and Rimfire ammunition is not practically reloadable (yes, there were a few kits sold in the 1980′s). Most people prior to the presidentially induced panic did not have 5,000 rounds as a strategic reserve. Most probably had a few boxes on hand. Suddenly, tens of Millions of people became aware and thought that at least a thousand rounds of .22 for personal use would be nice to have. Maybe a couple of thousand. Demand for .22 has historically run under 4 billion rounds a year in the United States, and the US market is by far the largest market in the world. My friend Alan Korwin reports that the U.S. manufacturing capacity is 4.2 billion rounds a year.

Suppose 50 million Americans decided that they would like to have 1,000 rounds of .22 on hand for a rainy day. That is 50 billion cartridges, or about 12 times the annual manufacturing capacity for .22 ammunition in the United States. My observations show me that virtually every .22 manufacturing plant around the world is running flat out making .22 ammunition for the American market, and it all gets snapped up as soon as it becomes available, even at prices about three times the rate of even a year and a half ago.


Read more: http://www.ammoland.com/2014/03/ammunit ... z2zMwcNdPr

[ron]

There is still another factor that I just learned about. And that is that manufacturers have a very low price margin on 22 rimfire ammo and manufacturers don't want to invest in new production facilities to keep up with what they think is a temporary demand. Here's an article that mentions it briefly but I read another one that I can't find again that went into greater detail explaining that rimfire ammo is actually somewhat more difficult to manufacture than boxer-primed centerfire ammo and still have it be accurate, and that this is indeed the situation that manufacturers don't want to be stuck with expanded manufacturing facilities that may have to be closed down in a few years.

The company bean-counters may have penciled all that out to the last penny but it seems to me that they could pay for expanded facilities by making it up in sheer volume of sales even if the had to add a dollar a box and five bucks a brick to the ammo to make that money, but that with the demand that exists, they should be able to pay for new equipement and then even sell that equipment and vacant facilituies after things settle down or use some of the mavchinery to replace their older machinery as theirs wears out.


February 20, 2014

Rimfire Ammo Shortage Continues

http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/gun ... -continues

By Phil Bourjaily

While supplies of centerfire and shotgun ammo seem to be catching up to — or maybe we’ve just reached the new normal — rimfire ammo remains scarce. And it goes fast when it does make it to dealers.

A friend of mine is on the waiting list for .17 Mach 2 at several online ammo retailers. The other day he received an e-mail at 4:05 from MidwayUSA telling him the Mach 2 was back in stock. By the time he logged on at 4:10, it was sold out. It literally didn’t last five minutes before it was all gone.

I asked an ammo industry inside about the rimfire shortage at SHOT. He was honest with me.

“Everybody is loading rimfire as fast as they can with the machines they have,” he said. “The problem is, the margins on rimfire are so low it doesn’t make sense to invest in new equipment and expand production. We’ll catch up eventually.”

His best guess? Ammo makers hope to be caught up sometime later this year. What I want to know is where this ammo is all going. Are people shooting it, are they hoarding it or speculating?

What I do know is that it’s not good for the shooting sports when the ammunition that’s traditionally the cheapest, easiest to find, and most fun to shoot is in short supply.

[Coug91]

there is quite a bit of 22 ammo available - at inflated prices, and the stuff that is at normal retail disappears as soon as it's posted. I've had laerts pop up and by the time I see them and get to the website, it's already sold out. I've scored some in the past month, but I check multiple times a day and several sites, just waiting for a decent price. Shipping is what usually makes me drop the ammo back out of my cart.

[MisterB1]

there is quite a bit of 22 ammo available - at inflated prices, and the stuff that is at normal retail disappears as soon as it's posted. I've had laerts pop up and by the time I see them and get to the website, it's already sold out. I've scored some in the past month, but I check multiple times a day and several sites, just waiting for a decent price. Shipping is what usually makes me drop the ammo back out of my cart.

I have a pretty good amount of Remington 22 that I bought a few years back. If you're in need of some, I suppose I could sell you some. I'm not looking to charge these insane gunbroker prices, but at the same time would deserve more than I paid back then.

Let me know

[WTB]

My Mark 3 misses me .