Gary Reeder
22 Mag is hard to find anywhere. Gun shops can't
Wednesday, May 19, 2021, 17:02

order anything. Our distributors are jam packed with orders they can't fill and won't take any more orders. We can order things off gunbroker if we want to pay 3 times retail or get screwed by all the shysters on there. Some guns are coming out to the distributors, but very few as opposed to normal. They call us every morning and say things like "we got 10 guns in last night and we can let you have 2" or "we got a case of 9mm in and we can let you have 5 boxes". That is how things are going. Gun shops are at the mercy of the distributors and they are at the mercy of the manufacturers. So it is a vicious circle with the customers pissed at the gun shops because they limit them to 1 or 2 boxes.

Every day I get 3 or 4 people who know it all and start yapping that Biden is keeping the ammo and guns from us. They say it is a government scheme to keep us from being armed. That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. There are 200 million gun owners in this country (probably more) and as of 2015 we had over 300 trillion rounds of ammo. These shortages started during Trump's last few months in office and I am sure Trump wasn't keeping guns and ammo from us. The problem is every person that owns a gun is scared of what might happen down the road and if they have 10 boxes of ammo at home they think they need 20, just in case. So they come in every day looking for ammo.

One of our dealer magazines said that the average gun owner comes into his favorite gun shop 1 or 2 times a week and buys something about half that time. But we have over 10 million new gun owners who are listening to their friend who knows everything and is telling them they need to have 1000 rounds of ammo for that new gun they just bought. So those new gun owners are coming into the gun shop every single day buying as much ammo as they can. If everyone of those new gun owners buys 5 boxes of ammo per week (250 rounds) that adds up to a lot of ammo being moved off the dealers shelves every week. I think that is 2.5 billion rounds of ammo the new gun owners are buying or trying to buy each week. And that doesn't count the hoarders and those that are buying to put it on gunbroker at 3 times retail. So there is where your ammo is going.

The ammunition manufacturers are 1.2 billion rounds behind and the gun manufacturers are 1.2 million guns back ordered. The folks that know said if everyone stopped buying ammo right now and didn't buy more until Jan. 1st, it would still take 2 years for them to catch up.

The new owners of the Remington plant in Lonoke Arkansas are cranking out ammo as fast as they can but that is just a drop in the bucket.

I wish I had a solution for the folks that are pissed off at the gun shops but there is no quick fix. Just get the ammo you need and leave the rest for the next guy.