photo credit: sharpenedaxe.com
Before the ammo shortage, I used to pay $15.00 for a bulk box of 500 rounds. From the time I was nine years old until I was nearly thirty, the price rose from $10.00 a box to $15.00 a box. That's over a course of more than twenty years. On the day I bought this box, I paid $35.99 for 525. And that's a deal by today's standard. I saw it for as high as $75.00 a bulk box when I was in Maine last August, and have seen black market profiteers sell boxes of 500 for more than $100 a box. If you aren't buying your ammo at some sort of chain store, you're likely paying too much. I've seen mom and pop shops charge insane amounts for ammo because they were the only shop in town with supply on the shelf. The other thing I've seen them do is get boxes of 500 and break them down to little plastic bags with 25 rounds, charging $10 for each bag. That puts them at $200 for a box of 500. Now, I'm all about capitalism and I encourage people to make fair money on items that they sell, but when you blatantly screw people over by tripling, quadrupling or quintupling the price for an abundance of profit, it's wrong. These mom and pop shops are the same ones that cry when chain stores put them out of business. *sarcasm* Forgive my lack of loyalty.
Let's talk about what is driving ammo shortage.
First off, we've been living for seven years under the rule of the left. And by rule, I mean rule. Not that I like the right any better (I'm an Independent), but things have certainly changed in the past two terms. When Obama first went into office, it wasn't just .22lr that dried up. I had a difficult time finding any common calibers on the shelf. One caliber that I found plentiful at the time was .40 S&W, and that's when I started carrying in that caliber, but that's another story. Just before El Presidente's second term, supply started loosening up. That's when I started quietly buying. The day after his second election in 2012, I dropped $200 on my favorite calibers. By January, common calibers had dried up again. Over the past year, I've seen stock return to somewhat normal levels. However, in checking my normal haunts in the last week, I've noticed a suspicious lack of 7.62x39, .223, 5.56 and .45 acp. It could be coincidence, but I'm keeping my eyes open. Living with a hard-left president has made people nervous about new gun laws. As of now, there's been a lot of talk, but little action. I'm especially suspicious that there's been no follow up of the executive actions on gun control that he announced back in January. Here in Colorado, we already live under most of the rules he proposed. While I can tell you that it is a major pain in the south end of your north bound self, it is by no means monumental and will do nothing to solve our current issues. It's sort of like this:
The second reason also has to do with fear. We've lived under the bombardment of jihad reports since 2001. We all know that the world is changing, we just don't know how it is changing until we experience it in the present. Due to manipulation by the mainstream media, we've all become paranoid of people blowing things up, including us. I've heard a figure that you're nine times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist. And frankly, I don't know anyone that's been killed by a police officer lately, unless it has been nationally reported on by the mainstream media. I'm not scared that a cop is going to kill me and I'm certainly not scared of my life being ended by a jihadist, though I know that they're out there.
Thirdly, we, as shooters, have responded to being programmed. Who is programming us? I don't know. It happened to me today. I walked into Sportsman's Warehouse to look for some .45 Long Colt and I walked out with a few boxes of 7.62x39 and a box of .22lr. When we see it, we buy it. We're so used to not having it, that we have a knee jerk response when we do see it. I'm not sure how we mentally recover from that.
Lastly, we can thank the suckers and.....ourselves. People have scooped up ammunition to put it on the second hand market at a profit. The suckers, in turn, have gladly paid astronomical prices for the ammunition because they couldn't find it on the shelves. They couldn't find it on the shelves because we (shooters) and they (profiteers) won't leave it on the shelf if we don't need it. The profiteers have the supply, the suckers give the demand. We, as shooters, need to be at least somewhat charitable with what we have. I've given some away to kids that are learning to shoot and to people that are teaching other people to shoot. This is important. If shooting becomes an exclusive sport, bad things happen. Prices rise and close people that don't have the financial means out of the sport. Shooting has always been an accessible and somewhat affordable pastime associated with hunting, which provides for families. I firmly believe that more proper education leads to more responsible gun owners. It's the guy whose only exposure to guns has been through action movies that is the problem. We need more education and we need to teach responsibility along with it.
That's my .02.
Wheelgun
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Ammo Score & Ammo Shortage
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