No ammo, no primers, no powder

Gatorshooter · Post by **Gatorshooter** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 5:46 pm

What is causing ammo, powder and primers to disappear? I have never seen such a run on them.

greener · Post by **greener** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 6:44 pm

Might have had something to do with last national election. After that it has been a self-sustaining panic.

Post by **Bullseye** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 6:47 am

Powder is becoming available but primers are still in short supply. There's lots of speculation as to why but with most of the manufacturing down to just a few suppliers they are having trouble keeping up with government and commercial demands.

R,
Bullseye

greener · Post by **greener** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 8:06 am

Locally, at least, it looks like the shortage is easing up. Green Top went from plenty of primers to a couple months of zero to a limited supply with sales limits. Some powder brands are still limited. The gun show vendors have been limiting quantities. Georgia Arms either wasn't showing up at some gun shows or was selling out quickly. Last week, I could have carried all the handgun and rifle ammo at the local Gander Mountain out in a shopping cart. We all know about WalMart's limited supplies. That seems to be easing up a bit. The folks at Green Top thought things would be better in July.

I'd love to see one of the bright business or economics academic types study of this. You have a very high demand between military and panic/speculative buying. Between QC, safety and the very specialized nature of the equipment, it has to be horribly expensive with a long lead time to install new manufacturing capacity, especially when you don't know how long the demand will remain at this level. The best business decision probably is to make as much as you can of the most profitable lines, raise prices due to demand and sit back and wait for the demand to drop. It doesn't help much when I'm looking for stuff to shoot, but it is one of those things we will just have to ride out.