Thursday, December 11, 2014

Is ammunition becoming more available?



I read an article in the business section of a national newspaper ta few weeks ago that said the demand for and sales of guns and ammunition had been slowing down. Coincidentally, I received an email from Sportsman's Guide saying they'd just gotten in a big shipment of Wolf .22 Match ammunition. I thought about it, and decided to buy a few brinks, just to be on the safe side. A week later I saw this in a number of papers:
"Despite overall Black Friday spending down 11-percent nationwide, gun sales increased that weekend and Montana store owners report they just keep rising."
I went back to Sportsman's Guide and saw they were out of the Wolf, along with just about every other .22LR with the exception of some of the more expensive Ely and RWS match ammunition.

Surprisingly, they did have a lot of ammunition in stock that's been difficult to find. They've got a few dozen varieties of .380ACP, and not just the premium stuff- they have PMC (50 rounds/$15.95) GECO, Federal and a few other under-$20 boxes. I counted 36 different varieties of .38 Special in stock, and several other calibers that have been in short supply. The biggest shortages were in rimfire ammunition of all sorts. There was zero .22Mag, .17HMR or .17Mach2.

Over at Midway, things looked a bit better, with several non-match .22LR varies being available- although not my favorite, CCI Standard Velocity. But reloading powder is still in very short supply, with only 17 differ t smokeless powders in stock- and none of my old standbys, Bullseye, Unique, 2400, and Trail Boss.  I have a few bottles of each of these on hand, which should get me through a year or so. There's one bright light:  Midway appears to have plenty of small pistol primers from Winchester, CCI, Federal and Remington, none of which could be found a year ago. Maybe supply is finally starting to catch up with demand.

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