.22 ammo, where & why?

I enjoy plinking and keeping the chipmunk population in check.

Does anyone really know why the shortage? I’ve heard some hilarious “stories” but am curious the real truth.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Kurt, just one of the contributing factors. Tens of thousands of .22LR AR’s were sold over the last few years with guys wanting an AR style rifle, but wanting cheaper ammo for shooting paper/tin cans…. Considering you can easily shoot 1000’s of rounds through these having fun in a blink of an eye, it increased the demand by hundreds of thousands. That, is only one tiny reason why.

It is harder to make as well. The priming compound takes time to make.

There are a lot of hoarders out there.

You can find it you just have to look.

A .22 AR? Strikes me as odd…

Makes sense tho…

Just getting tired of the non-stop “nope, we are out” at all stores.

tucrs wrote:

You can find it you just have to look.

I don’t live in the TC’s and find driving many miles to buy .22 ammo slightly retarded.

Want to share some leads or will that open the door to more hoarding? PM if you have time. Thank you

Friendship added. I will PM once you accept.

Much appreciated!

Kurt,

Have you tried 4-Seasons? A fall trip to Pool 4 seems in order.

Dag nabbit! Just drove by there yesterday! Great excuse to get down there this weekend and fish shallower… Compliments of SLawrenz’s report.

Thanks for the reminder… The reason I steer clear of 4 seasons? Usually consumes a large amount of money when I was only going to get some crawlers and minnows.

It just pisses me off, too. I really miss the days of walking into Walmart and grabbing a box or two of 500 rounds for a decent price. I won’t pay $8 for 100 rounds. Sorry. Rationing .22LR rounds just plain sucks.

There are really two reasons:

1. Panic buying and hoarding.
2. Profiteering scalpers.

During the post Newtown gun panic, like all ammo, .22 RF were hit hard. This caused a downward spiral where the empty shelves made people fear a shortage, so when they did find some, they “stocked up” buy buying thousands more rounds than they normally would buy or shoot.

Which contributed to the shortage, which deepened the downward spiral. Less supply increased the demand which decreased the supply…

Enter the profiteering scalpers, who systematically stripped the shelves of the ammo that did arrive and tried to resell it for obscene profits. And so the cycle continued and got worse because much of this “scalped” ammo is just sitting in someone’s basement as he tries to sell it on Armslist.com for prices that no one will ever pay.

Randy points to an increase in the overall number of .22 RF’s out there, but that is a relatively small slice of the demand pie. While there might be more rifles out there shooting more ammo, the overall demand has shot up by hundreds upon hundreds of percent, so the vast majority of the problem lies elsewhere.

Keeping in mind, the biggest growth area in US firearms has been in the AR platform space, but yet there is no shortage of .223 or 7.62 fodder. So while demand is up, the supply has kept up, which shows the .22 shortage explanation goes beyond just increased demand.

Comments from ammo manufacturers indicate that they are making vastly more .22 rounds than they ever have and still the shelves are empty. Read this very good and objective Motley Fool article for more on the demand and production side:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/08/31/the-22-ammo-shortage-mystery-solved.aspx

The bottom line is it IS getting better, but now there is so much pent up demand, that supply will probably take 12-18 MORE months to catch up. And that’s if and only if some situation doesn’t set off another round of extreme hoarder panic buying.

Grouse

good info… bottom line? it still sucks an egg…

in the 70’s when my love of plinking took off you could buy a can of 500 round almost anywhere. and this was in the middle of nowhere (Hallock, MN)

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

The bottom line is it IS getting better, but now there is so much pent up demand, that supply will probably take 12-18 MORE months to catch up. And that’s if and only if some situation doesn’t set off another round of extreme hoarder panic buying.

Grouse

X2. Buy when available anywhere or you wont get it anywhere when you want it.
Luckily I have a nice stash and rarely shoot .22 anymore.

I can tell you the attitude is changing at the wholesale level….. We are not far from having the Demand = Supply. Buyers are being very cautious this year with firearms and ammo

Randy Wieland wrote:

I can tell you the attitude is changing at the wholesale level….. We are not far from having the Demand = Supply. Buyers are being very cautious this year with firearms and ammo

Exactly.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that manufacturers have gotten VERY good at forecasting demand and scaling production accordingly. So while no manufacturer can just turn a dial and increase production by 250% to make up for a huge demand spike, they CAN pretty quickly catch up.

Look at ARs. When the Newtown panic happened, there was a 6 month period where you couldn’t get any AR. Demand surged so far beyond capacity that even a 500% increase in production wouldn’t have filled all the orders.

But within a year, the system was already equalizing and 2 years later it was back to normal supply and price level.

The thing working against .22 RF ammo is that it is cheap. So therefore, people “stock up” because there’s no financial downside to doing so. It’s only a few bucks, so why not buy an extra thousand or so rounds?

By pure luck, I made it most of the way through the crisis. I had several 300-500 round bulk packs that I’d bought on sale over the years. Gander Mtn had a good sale on the 1500 round buckets and just on a whim, and thinking that I would probably finish off my existing supply within a few months, I bought 2 buckets.

Newtown was 2 weeks later and I never saw .22 rimfires on the shelf again until a month ago.

Grouse

I was in walker last week, bought 500, $62.00. AGGGHHHHHHH

Grouse, here is the funny part to the rest of the story that the general public will never see.
AR’s – There are hundreds of manufactures out there. The vast majority you will never see or hear about. Many buyers won’t look at them or give them much love because its not a mainstream name. Everyone knows S&M, Colt, DMPS,… so they gravitate to the name recognition and ignore other manufactures. Don’t take this wrong, if i was responsible for spending $1,000,000.00 of a companies’ budget, I would cover my rear end too.
Same goes for ammo. Lots of manufactures, but if you don’t have the name…you don’t get the love. Imagine being a manufacture of a quality product and a great price and no one will stock your stuff. Pretty dang hard to get a product on a store shelf

Problem solved, well kinda… Picked up a Savage .17 HMR left hand version and added the Redfield Revolution 2 – 7×23 scope. First shot, dead center bullseye. Chipmunk eliminator….

What .22 ammo shortage? LOL!