You guys are aware that I own a sporting goods store and gun dealership?
Things are not quite as bad as they were a year and a half ago but we are still years away from normal. My distributors are backed up for weeks and even months and prices are still unreasonable.
I have a brother-in-law who works for Federal Cartridge up in Anoka. They’ve been hot dogging it day and night for a couple of years now.
Thank goodness Biden is not (at least for now) going to get the gun control laws he campaigned on. If you think supply and prices are bad now, they would rise to astronomical levels if he actually got any of those things.
Fortunately a good friend has all the gear and he’s stopped loading for a while. His press is in storage and I can borrow it for a few months. And he has some products that I can use while my to-be-ordered products come in.
For many years I was running it in the lower level of my parents home. Doing mostly internet and gun show sales and some by appointment sales at the house (Perfectly legal. I got inspected a couple of times by the feds there and they had no issues. Although back in the 90’s Janet Reno and the ClInton administration tried to shut down kitchen table dealers I survived without a scratch).
When Obama got elected shit got real and it got nuts. I took on a partner and he insisted on setting up a store front. I wasn’t for it at first but I was wrong. It has been very profitable. I will probably retire as a LEO for good in the next 2 years and we are negotiating for him to buy my majority share out completely.
Sorry, if it wasn’t clear, we were responding specifically to @Bullitt 's comment that he was considering loading his own. To which I mentioned the difficulties in getting quality powder or primers. And sure, it may not be as bad as it was, but if you’re ordering from national chains, it’s quite bad.
Now, an additional comment about the OP, the 9mm, AND reloading.
Back in the before times, my FiL reloaded his .45 acp, .38 special and .357 mag, and .44 mag, which were the calibers he shot (my wife and I at the time did our practice shooting on 38/357). When I got my first 9mm (for carry), we looked at it, and while he had the equipment, we never bothered because 9mm target ammo (WWB or the like) new was fundamentally at reloading cost anyway, especially when it was on sale.
One more reason it was and is one of the most popular rounds out there, but at least in part becomes chicken/egg issue.
Towards the beginning of Covid, the Federal CEO or president made a video saying “we’re doing this as fast as we can, we’re not artificially creating shortages so stop calling!” And went into a pretty good explanation about how it’s not as simple as “hire more people” or “buy more tooling.”
I use Winchester Ranger T-Series RA9T in my 9 mm CCW. In December of 2018 I paid $35 for a box of $50. It’s now $46 for a box of 50. A 31% increase in a little over three years.
I forgot where I read it but either TFB or TheTruthAboutGuns had a good article about how ammo manufacturers actually can make more ammo but it’s in their best interest to just keep things running the same as has been for past decade despite all these ammo spikes because they took a giant bath when Trump got elected and ammo prices and demand dropped significantly and they don’t want that to happen again which it eventually will if they ramp up production. Instead it’s the “slow but steady” approach.
They can build another factory but then when things slow down they’re left holding a gigantic lease, million dollar machines, and so on. Plus they’re making a product that needs high quality control, Bubba’s Pissing Hawt Loads can have questionable quality control but they can’t.
When Obama first got elected lots of dealers bought pallets of ammunition. I bought some but nowhere near as much as I wish I had. I had not foresaw ammo prices and shortages being the thing that it was.
Instead we warehoused a bunch of “assault weapons”. The ridiculous 1994 ban made me an insane amount of money. People were buying shit I couldn’t previously give away and they were paying a kings ransom for it. I had gambled that the ban would return during Obamas administration and that this time it would not have a sunset clause in it.
Has the lack of ammunition affected your gun sales? I have not bought a gun in years, but if I wanted one now I would hesitate - why buy a gun you can’t get ammo for?
I suspect @pkbites would answer the same @Dag_Otto, but from the buyers perspective, it’s not that you can’t get ammunition, but that it’s hard to get quantities, and you are paying much higher costs.
In, say, 2018, if I went to Basspro, there would be shelves and shelves and shelves of 9mm, differentiated by weight, Standard + P/ +P+, defensive/expanding, and on and on and on. So if I wanted a Hornady 9mm Critical Defense XTP in 115gr weight, well, they’re’s plenty of boxes, or if it just happened to be out, I’d get it in a different weight or a competing but equally viable brand.
Go now, and you’ll probably be able to get some basic target ammo, but a fraction of the selection of any specialty ammo, for which you’ll have to order with an expected 4+ week weight.
So if you’re a new buyer, and you just want some basic practice ammo, you can as of right now (not so much 18 months ago though) be assured of getting some ammunition, but you are likely to see purchase limits, low selection, and much higher costs.
I’ve been to 3 different stores to buy ammo (the 3rd one was this morning). I’ve been unable to find ball ammo in 38sp, 44sp, and 44mag. I’ve found JHP and JSP which is a little more expensive. In 44mag I found FTX Hornady and that’s starting to get pricey. Most places are limiting the # of boxes you can buy.
There’s always online ammo, without limits in many cases. It’s still expensive as heck. It’s really dampened my enthusiasm for engaging in my new hobby.
I’m just being an idiot, though: I specifically bought the 0.22 pistol so it would be cheap to shoot in case I wasn’t having fun, but the other guns (purchased afterwards) are much more fun to shoot.
Anyway, it’s a lot easier to check ammo prices online than to run around to 10 different stores.
