I know, I was kidding - I probably have 2500-3500 rounds in my closet. I just remember reading 2 or 3 news stories where someone was found with a few hundred rounds and it was made to sound like they were planning a terrorist strike or something - as if it were extremely suspicious.
Why would you need 400 rounds except to kill 400 TODDLERS?!?!!?
The price of 5.45x39 is way up, and that can’t be accounted for by Iraq. Comes cheap from Russia.
Well, some mental BSing here, someone tell me if this is way off: Cost of NATO type rounds (ie: 5.56 and 9mm Luger, what the US Army uses) goes up because the Gov’t is having to use a lot more of it due to our fighting a war overseas. People, realizing this, begin to switch over to guns that use cheaper ammo, ie: stuff you get from Ivan’s Guns and Vodka Shoppe. As more people begin using the more affordable Russian ammo, the cost of that goes up due to S&D.
That said, I have no idea if enough people are beginning to use Russian stuff to drive those prices up.
On a related note, for my own hobby, Photography (which I have said in the past is similar in many ways to gunnery, except that people are more wary around photographers), my ammo of choice (for color, this would be Japanese-made Fujifilm, for black-and-white, American made Kodak) has gotten expensive enough that I’ve started importing my black-and-white film and paper from Eastern Europe.
I’ve also considered looking into buying scraps of unused movie film (a strip of film too short to be of any use at all to a movie maker is a gold mine for a photographer; the amount of film I go through in a month, a movie director will burn off during the few seconds it takes our hero to walk on screen).
Eh, in the hands of the right (wrong) person it only takes one round to be scary.
(anyway, don’t take me for some kind of anti-gun person. Just making a point.)
That would be a reasonable explanation for Russian exports in NATO calibers - but I’m referring to the Russian assault rifle caliber - something only found in the US among only the coolest hobbiests like myself. The Iraqis don’t use the round either, so demand isn’t going up there either. It seems like non-military pistol rounds are up in price too.
The Israeli army’s been rather busy lately; I guess they don’t have much surplus ammo at the moment.
Aim Surplus has .223 for about $.23 a round. In battlepacks, no less.
And, of course, if I’d bothered to check Crafter’s links, I would have seen that he’d already told you about them. :smack:
Never mind.
I recently got my first gun but for a while I thought that I was actually not going to be able to afford to shoot it. The .40 S&W ammo I could find cost between 16-18 dollars for a box of fifty rounds. Then I found I could get target-range grade ammo at Walmart for (tax included) about $19 per hundred, or 19 cents a round.
Side question: given a budget, do you shoot less frequently (save on range fees), or fewer rounds per session (save on ammo)? I currently spend per week $15 on range fees and just under $10 for fifty rounds of ammo. Would I be better off shooting double the rounds in half the sessions, or vice-versa?
I’d say - “depends”. Are you still doing quality shots after 50? By which I mean, are you scoring as good or better than you were at the beginning of the session? Are you getting tired? Is your hand getting sore? I’d rather have 50 good shots and leave, rather than 50 good, 30 ok and 20 “gotta finish this up so I can go home”.
I shoot until I start getting sloppy then stop rather than reinforce bad habits. Of course if I’m doing “training” rather than “practice” - I shoot after I’m exhausted and sore and etc. All the practice doing it right should kick in at that time.
I’d hate to drop more for the range than I do for ammo, tho. How often do you go? Twice a week - drop one trip and stock up on ammo. Once a month - get your 50 shots in.
/hijack