Loe..... It Has Come To Pass.... Ammo Is Gone

  

Not surprisingly, folks are a bit nervous these days. The reasons are many, and this post isn't really about politics or even about folks being just plain foolish.

But, the fact is; the 1st is just as important as the 2nd Amendment. That being said, all this "stuff" in combination with Covid-19, and everything else has created a run on gun stores the likes of which hasn't been seen for quite some time. 

Remember, these are "new" gun owners, meaning they don't have any ammo. It's not like me buying another 9mm with quite a lot of it put up. You combine all that with today's consumer going to Youtube for information and what you get is a bunch of new to the gun-world people watching videos telling them they should have at least a thousand rounds of ammunition for every caliber or every gun and there you go! Did I mention that it's also an election year with the results being very iffy regardless of which side you're on.

To give you an idea how bad it is out there; here's a little story. First, in case you haven't heard; nobody has ammo (other than pure hunting stuff like .243 Winchester). The big retailers are all out. The only places that have any are the small "mom & pop" gun stores like the one in my town. I was in there the other day, and sure enough, he had a case that he'd broken open and selling by the box instead of the whole 1000 rounds. A guy came in and wanted 2 boxes. THEY WERE $45 EACH!!! These were the normal 50 round boxes....

So, what do I do? More correctly; what did I do? The last 3 years after President Trump was elected, the firearms industry has experienced an epic slump. Everything from ARs,handguns, to ammunition was cheap. AR's between $400 and 500, $200 9mm semi-autos and 100 round boxes of 9mm at Walmart for less than $17. 

I filled up a 50 Cal ammo can with 14 boxes of this stuff, bought one or two at a time from 2017 to 2019 at about $17 per box, making it 17 cents per round. Over this same period, I bought close to 1500 rounds of .223/5.56 ammo at about 25 cents per round. The same goes for .22LR, 12 gauge shot shells of various types and some 300 Blackout as well. This is just the stuff that's sealed up in ammo cans waiting for a rainy day.

Just as, if not more importantly, I picked up several pounds of powders for each of my main calibers, several thousand primers and over a thousand projectiles. 

I'm not telling you all this to brag. What I'm saying is that I can still shoot because of the preparation work I did when times were good. I can shoot reloads because I have the supplies and equipment to make them. I have 22LR versions of my main guns (AR and Walther PPQ), so I can shoot that as well. I'm betting that, this too shall pass and prices will once again drop, but it's going to be awhile and I'll keep on shooting till then! 

Ammunition Accumulation In Overdrive

For whatever reason a person wants/needs to accumulate a stock of ammunition, it's a tough proposition if (like me) they are on a normal person's budget. In my world of 2 teenage children and a wife who isn't on board with extensive spending on gun related items, it's not easy. So I've taken the age old strategy of a slow steady month by month route. What that means is, that one or two times (sometimes more) a month, I pick up a box of ammo. For the first few months of this, it was the ubiguitous 9mm. Conveniently, Walmart has the Federal 115gr FMJ in 100 round boxes for less than $19 which is as low as you can get on a per round basis for brass cased ammo. 

Then a month or so ago, I finish my AR build. That was great, but set up another problem. Now, I needed .223/5.56 as well as 9mm. It turned out to be a good time (Nov-Dec) as retailers were running "Black Friday" and Christmas sales and manufacturers ran rebates. For a time, Academy was a frequent haunt as they had occasionally had sales on first the 223, then the 556 Federal American Eagle 20 round boxes for $6 each. On top of that, Federal had a rebate for those chamberings till Dec. 31st of $1 per box. This ended up making these rounds cost 25 cents a round! And when the sales were off, Walmart had Federal 100 round boxes for $33 for which there was a $5 rebate bringing those down to $28. So, by the end of December, I had picked up 700 rounds. Then, things got really interesting.....

Every area has some sort of trading website kind of like a Craigslist for firearms. In Texas, the most active I've been able to find has been the "Texas Gun Trader". I became familiar with it by trading and selling some handguns via ads in the last month or so. Texas being a relatively free state still makes it easy to use and get things done. Then, one morning while waiting for my son to finish swim practice I came across an ad selling ammunition of various calibers. Of particular interest to me was the 556.

The seller indicated that he had some larger capacity 556, so I checked in on it. It turns out that he had 2 Hornady "Black" Ammo Cans of 247 rounds each for $65 which is a good price, but a better price was the 5 Federal "Mini Ammo Cans" of 120 rounds for $25 each. I bought 2 from him at first, then reconsidered and bought the other 3 as well. I know; it seems crazy, right? ......ah, lets look at it. Starting with what is it really. Well, this stuff is essentially, military surplus ammo from the Lake City plant as evidenced by the annealing of the case shoulders and the staked primer pockets. Most likely, a contract overrun which is why they "loose-pack" it in these little miniature ammo cans. These things typically sell for somewhere between $55 and $60 making it 50 cents a round! I just paid less than 21 cents! Now, I did pick up one for a friend, but picking up 480 rounds total all at once pretty much completes my needs.

No, my storage doesn't look like this, but it gets me to roughly where I want to be. Where is that exactly? I'd like to have about 1500 rounds of factory loaded 9mm and 1000 rounds of 223/556 on hand. Am I expecting a Zombie Apocalypse or North Korean Invasion!?! No, I consider this my buffer zone. If there's a short-term price spike..... for whatever reason (whether economic or political), I'll be able to weather that without having to take a big financial hit just to go to the range. That's only one part of my plan.

The other is to have enough handloads on hand that I can shoot without having to go out and buy factory loaded ammo. How much? About as much as I have of the factory stuff packed away. 

 

 

However, this also means that if I follow my own logic to insulate myself from outside factors, I'll need to do this with my reloading supplies as well! I start that today by answering another Texas Guntrader ad for 3000 "small pistol" primers for $20 per 1000 box. If you didn't know, that's half the current retail price! Are there more steps? Next time, we'll talk bullet casting!