What is REALLY causing the ammo shortages?

[atv223]

I realize that there is a lot of panic buying, but am struggling to believe that the ammo shortages we are seeing at most places is completely caused by consumer purchases. You have to believe that every ammo manufacture is running 24/7 making it as fast as they can and distributors are pushing it through their channels as fast as they can, yet many gun shops have been out of ammo for weeks and get very little in.

Does anyone else think that somewhere along the distribution chain, the ammo is being diverted to some government agencies to keep it out of the hands of citizens?

I have a brand new Glock I have yet to fire a single round through, because the range I use is out of ammo and I don't want to use up what little I have shooting paper targets.

[Shadowline]

The government has been "panic buying" over the last couple of years, so its simply a supply issue.

[ALS]

It isn't hard to see how ammunition shortages can happen as we're experiencing right now. Take your gun shop all of a sudden five hundred people who would normally buy two 50 round boxes of 9mm once a year just walked in and bought ten boxes each. So over a year they go from selling 1,000 boxes of 9 mm to in the last three months selling 5,000. Multiply that by how many retail establishments across this country? There is a lot of ammunition hoarding going on right now and it will settle down with in a few months. There will be lot of ammunition back on the shelves because those same people who bought up every thing they could get their hands on, will not be adding to their stock pile of ammunition.

Same thing happened back in the seventies when we had gas shortages. Yes gasoline was a little tight but it was made worse when people who were down a 1/4 tank were topping off several times a week. 30 million people buying four gallons of gas every few day just to make sure the car was full caused a major shortage for a few weeks.

[streaker69]

The government has been "panic buying" over the last couple of years, so its simply a supply issue.

1.7Billion rounds for "domestic" use.

[625]

Does anyone else think that somewhere along the distribution chain, the ammo is being diverted to some government agencies to keep it out of the hands of citizens?

.

No. That's a conspiracy that would need to involve a ton of people.

[zeroflat24]

1.7Billion rounds for "domestic" use.

Good thing i have my tin foil hat to save me from all those rounds

[625]

1.7Billion rounds for "domestic" use.

Lot's of hollow point pistol rounds that can't be used for killing enemy soldiers. So, who do they plan on using them on? Has anyone from the .gov ever answered these questions? If not, why is this not hugely important?

[internet troll]

Considering that I know people who are buying as much as they can, whenever they can, and I have read countless stories on line about people buying doing the same. Not to mention I have seen one person in a walmart buy about $400's worth of ammo, (a few weeks ago), I can buy that the shortage is based on panic buying.

I don't think it is a case of just immediately ramping up production in factories. Assuming that factories already aren't pumping out as much ammo as they can, the factories have to get more raw materials, (gunpowder, metals, packaging etc....) hire more workers, so forth which I would imagine would take a while to do.

[wa3ra]

A billion rounds plus, bought by the gubmint for plinking cans.


Ameri-cans.

[M&P Chris]

I think it's just hoarding.
I know personally I have stockpiled for awhile. If you count the ammo just us on the forum have bought presently or in the past I bet it would be TONS.