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| Above, Cabela's Albuquerque ammo shelves on January 24. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
How is the supply of ammunition these days?
That is a question gun owners are likely to be wondering about.
1945 (19fortyfive.com) discusses the current state of the ammo shortage.
They begin it with:
The Great Ammo Shortage of 2022 just won’t go away. You might struggle to find ammunition for your pistol, rifle, or shotgun this year. Reasons for the shortage range wide, from supply bottlenecks to a copper shortage and the war in Ukraine. The best solution might be to make your own bullets.
People are buying more guns, and there are a lot of new gun owners. In 2020, 20 percent of American gun purchasers had never before bought a firearm. Thirty-nine percent of people recently polled in the United States own at least one pistol, rifle, or shotgun, according to the General Social Survey, and FBI background checks tracked a 41 percent increase in gun ownership from 2019 to 2020. That adds up to 8.4 million new owners. These gun owners need ammunition. So, the demand side of the equation is easy to see.
Supply of ammunition is also a concern. People stocked up on rounds during the Covid-19 pandemic amid panic about the dwindling supply. Imports of ammunition fell 34 percent during the worst days of quarantine in 2020. There were periods during the pandemic when gun and ammo production stopped. Gun owners sensed these shortages and snapped up firearms and ammunition.
There was also a lull in supply when ammunition-maker Remington went bankrupt. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018, and again in 2020. It was hard for Remington to produce enough bullets to keep up with demand until it got its affairs in order and sold itself to Vista Outdoors.
To read more, go here.
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