Ammunition purchases and Homeland Security

So in other words..they are "locking the price" for ammo for 10 yrs.

Gee...I wonder how many other government agencies get a 10 yr lock in price.

Fascinating indeed. So if they are not buying all that ammo and stock piling it...where the hell is it?

Gunner

Good question.

It appears that what we are talking about is more in the nature of a commodity futures contract or call option rather than any physical quantity of ammunition, i.e. it has not yet been produced and the "contracts" (with unknown terms and conditions) are for future production/delivery.

The major reason for the current consumer ammunition/component shortage appears to be panic consumer buying and hoarding, although this does not explain the apparent lack of imports such as Russian/Chinese 7.62X39, other than their stocks of outdated/surplus ammunition have been exhausted on the one hand, and these countries no longer are in such desperate need of foreign exchange they feel the need to dispose of assets at fire sale prices on the other.

The recent domestic consumer price hikes appear to be the capitalistic pricing practice of getting what the market will bear in action, and there does not appear to have been any additional governmental government ammunition/component import restrictions imposed.

The domestic ammunition/component manufacturers are to be commended for refusing to expand production capacity in a de-stabilizing knee jerk reaction to meet what is sure to be a one time demand spike, although most likely running at

100% of existing capacity.

To put this in perspective it is helpful to recall the great US toilet paper shortage of 1973.

2 years ago every shop in my town building shot gun molds suddenly got them dropped, many in mid production. Up to that point its been a mad rush to build as many high cavitation molds at as many shops in town as possible. I knew of 6 shops building them, now there is none.

Maybe its related, maybe not. We got no explanation of why this mad rush suddenly stopped in mid production.

I think that Gunner is asking about where all the ammo is *now*.

First, the ammo that DHS is contracting for hasn't been manufactured yet.

Sceond, the ammo that's not on the shelves is being hoarded by paranoid gun nutz from sea to shining sea.

I spoke with one of the plant managers at Remington's Arkansas plant about two weeks ago. She said they're running three shifts, making ammo like never before. And, as far as she's heard, the wholesalers are not sitting on it. It's all going to retail, where gun nutz are buying it up as fast as it hits the shelves. Some retailers aren't getting any of it. That appears to be a matter of how the wholesale distributors are rationing it to certain retailers.

Actually, pretty much all of the current shortage is due to new first time gun owners who have been pushed off the fence by the attacks from the rabid anti-gun minority and are now joining the ranks of the pro-gun majority. No long time gun owners I know have been buying anything recently and indeed some have been selling some surplus for a profit.

The US consumer has not..not swallowed up the 70 yr inventory of the Communist blocks surplus ammo. We may have put a small dent in it..but given that the x39 caliber hasnt been their major cartridge in over 20 yrs....there are literally trillions and trillions of rounds in warehouses and storehouses and so on and so forth. Mountains of the stuff.

Hell...it took 40 yrs to consume all the Nazi surplus after WW2..and most of that stuff was destroyed or buried.

Odd that Walmart still hasnt raised their prices on ammo...but gets so little of it..that one wonders where the hell it is all going. Walmart would sell all it can put out on the shelves..but its putting so little out on the shelves..that one wonders. The manufactures have NOT raised their prices. Fact...so where is it all going?

Most are running 3 shifts a day...and yes..are running at 100% of capacity. So where is the output going?

Yes yes and it ended quickly.

We are well into our second year...so where is all the ammo being produced 24/7..... going?

Gunner

Shotgun molds? Slugs and shot?

Most of the ammo being produced ....according to my sources..is in "war" calibers. Shotgun slugs are not in that arena.

Now granted...guys are buying cases of ammo..but few are buying cases of commerically made ammo. Its simply too expensive even during the normal times. Its like everybody owns a machine gun and has bought everything on the market that will go into one. And there arent that many legal machine guns in private hands.

It is indeed..interesting

Gunner

Just to venture a guess, there are probably a lot of people that see that the left wing lunatics are set to destroy this country if not the world. So, in response, people like Adam Lanza's mom buys guns hoping to be able to survive the Obama/liberal holocaust and we all saw the tragedy that took place because of it. It's typical of left wingers to cause a problem and then blame it on someone else, hell, Obama's first term failure was Bush's fault, even though the economy went to hell after the Democrats took over in

2006.

Lanza's mom bought guns because of left wing crazies, Sandy Hook Elementary was a safe place for nutz to kill children because of left wing crazies, NRA's been telling them for decades that criminals will have guns in your "gun free zones" and "Criminals don't obey your laws", but then when what they have been warned about happens, it's the NRA's fault. At least the idiots aught to be descent enough to admit they were wrong and take the blame for what they did, but they are not, they blame others. So what is their solution? More of what caused the problem in the first place, more laws that criminals won't obey. Let's make sure law abiding citizens don't have guns so the next Adam Lanza can be safe killing many more children! Then let's blame the NRA for what the lefttards did. That's the way it works, we have all seen it first hand, and the liberals still lie about it with a straight face.

RogerN

This seems very unlikely:

Do you have some data that supports these ideas, or is it anecdotes?

I have more data than they have to support that bogus propaganda claim. I have the various former non gun owners who have asked me for advice on what to buy. I have the reports from other gun owners I know who have received the same questions from former non gun owners. There are also reports from gun shop owners indicating the same.

I'd be willing to bet that fewer people are letting others know that they have a gun in today's increasingly Fascist society. Most of the new gun sales are going to previously gunless buyers.

Ditto here. Even a (waning) pro-Obama Democrat family member asked me about getting a pistol for their safety. I recommended that they also look into prepping for the worst. They don't like the signs, either. I'm waiting for weather to warm enough to plant the largest garden I've ever had. Heirloom seeds, so I can save them year after year.

A friend of mine recently sold some of his ammo and paid off his house with the proceeds.

Fascinating that one could get $100 a box..or $2 a round for 9mm JHPs from the 90s. That was in the LA area.

Im certainly glad Ive got sufficient quanties of reloading components and a "fair amount" of surplus ammo laid in.

Its rather fascinating to watch the Canadian Gun Registry being attempted here in the US...and knowing full well its going to fail like the Canadian registry did...and knowing that Americans are going to finally say f*ck it...and take out those who pushed that attempt.

We do live in interesting times, dont we?

1,600,0000,000

-------------------- = 133 (a little more) 120,000,000

So, why do they need 133 years of ammo in a five year period?

solicited bids for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next five years.

Department's historical average. DHS buys approximately 120 million rounds of ammunition per year

^ oops!

13.3 years at most.

Oh, that's impressive, Pete. Pew Research Center is generally considered the least-biased, and one of the best, research organizations in the world. For you to have more data than they do, and to have the skills to project from your buddies and the people who ask you for advice to the entire country is quite a skill.

Not.

The data is crap. When the data is crap the bias or lack thereof of the researchers is irrelevant.

Fix your decimal places and try again, Chris.

I knew I missed a couple decimal places. ....

Gunner