Ammunition and Fear

If you don't know by now, I am a firearms owner. I am a die-hard defender of the 2nd Amendment. I am also a member of several pro-2nd Amendment groups, including the NRA. As a gun owner, I speak to other gun owners gun dealers regularly and have noticed a growing rumor mill that is running overtime.

Have you tried to purchase ammunition lately? Aside from the price being greatly increased over the same time last year, the scarcity is what bothers me most, particularly the calibers that are most popular and mostly military. The military calibers have been a little hit or miss for some time because of the two on-going wars but this is different.

Everyone I know that shoots has the same story. They can't find more than a box of twenty rounds anywhere. When a box of twenty 7.62 rounds costs around $30 a box and you are attempting to replenish your stocks after a day at the range, you're going to go broke financing your purchase. If you can find any.

While it is true that Obama is driving this fear of increased gun control and can be seen as the best gun salesman of all time because of increased sales of guns and gun related accoutrements, it still does not explain why ammunition is becoming so hard to find. (Note: While the rest of the economy is tanking, the firearms industry is booming and all of these unemployed factory workers should be lining up to work 2nd and 3rd shift so the manufacturers can keep up with demand!)

So why is ammo seemingly running out? I was in Mississippi recently and, per my custom, I visited a local sporting goods store to look at ammo. Same story. The shelves were bare of military cartridges and some of the more popular handgun and rifles calibers. I spoke to the guy behind the counter and he said he's heard all kinds of fearful rumors from his customers. He also pointed out that the bad economy and fear have caused many people to steal the ammo off of the shelves and they have since relocated the military and popular cartridges behind the counter. That being said, the shelf behind the counter was also largely devoid of the desired calibers.

One of the rumors he had customers tell him was that the Obama Administration was paying ammunition makers to not make ammunition. Another was that the administration was forcing the manufacturers to make a primer that only lasts 90 days, thereby preventing people from stockpiling ammunition. There were others but these really struck me.

Despite the fact that I know the administration does have designs on our 2nd Amendment rights, I do believe that they are not in a financial position to offer compensation to ammunition manufacturers to idle their plants. That would be all over the media right now because that would be a victory for the anti-gun lobby and some of these idle workers would be out there talking about why they aren't working right now. I don't give this rumor any credence, especially since the ammunition manufacturers would have cried foul as soon as the administration approached them with it.

The second rumor, defies all logic. Even if it were possible to make a primer that only lasted 90 days, what company would take on the potential liability of providing a product that might fail if used to save a life on day 91? And don't forget the consequences of those primers ending up in military rounds. Imagine soldiers in a firefight with cartridges that have expired primers. No, this rumor is patently false.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the NRA has made no efforts to investigate the source of these rumors and attempt to dispel them. The supply of ammunition had been sketchy since the onset of the Global War on Terror and really became scarce starting in the fall leading up to the election. Fear is driving the demand up to the point that the manufacturers cannot keep up. The military cartridges are scarcer because the military uses them and the Defense Logistics Agency has denied the sale of surplus spent brass, so the reloading manufacturers have been affected as well in producing commercial military cartridges.

That's not to say that the fears are not unfounded because we are faced with the most anti-gun administration in American history and an administration that owes its existence to the virulently anti-gun George Soros. But we gun owners need to look deeper than the stupid rumors being floated around and need groups like the NRA to use its resources to get to the bottom of these allegations.

By the way, does anyone know where I can score five hundred to a thousand rounds of 7.62 x 51 168-grain for a decent price? I have cash. I don't want my purchase to get me on any government lists...