Article concerning ammunition shortages

[mr.72]

$4/gallon gas caused people to change their buying habits, change their car selection, and caused demand to recede. Less demand, the manufacturer has to lower prices in order to continue to sell inventory.

Simple supply and demand economics.

[Liberty]

$4/gallon gas caused people to change their buying habits, change their car selection, and caused demand to recede. Less demand, the manufacturer has to lower prices in order to continue to sell inventory.

Simple supply and demand economics.

Exactly. Once the panic buyers have had enough, and the economy goes so far south that the unemployed start selling stockpiled ammo to buy groceries.
Unfortunatly I don't have enough ammo to wait it out. I will have to buy some real soon.

[03Lightningrocks]

$4/gallon gas caused people to change their buying habits, change their car selection, and caused demand to recede. Less demand, the manufacturer has to lower prices in order to continue to sell inventory.

Simple supply and demand economics.

Exactly. Once the panic buyers have had enough, and the economy goes so far south that the unemployed start selling stockpiled ammo to buy groceries.
Unfortunatly I don't have enough ammo to wait it out. I will have to buy some real soon.

I have around 75K rounds of ammo at this point and no food. I am hungry. So I can't wait it out either. You may just be right.

[mr surveyor]

I agree that the current "demand" for ammunition has accounted for the massively reduced market supply, and do understand cause and effect of supply and demand. My point is that ammunition prices started jacking up in September of 2007, long before the current political climate caused such a stir. Lot's of people tried to blame the majority of the price increases then on the military needs in the sand box. It's funny though, if you follow the market prices of semi-precious metals, i.e. aluminum, brass, copper, lead, you see a direct corelation to the trend in escalating prices of finished goods. No doubt that the last 6 months of hoarding ammunition has artificially altered the prices by severely reducing the available supply, but there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that cost of raw materials to produce a product, with a built in profit margin, is a major factor in the value placed on the finished goods. From the sharp decline in the value of copper, brass, aluminum, etc., in recent months, it would be safe to assume that China, India and the other "developing nations" have maxed out their storage capacity or desire for obtaining more of those metals.

If you take out the recent fear factor induced shortages, ammunition prices would have still been increasing through September of 2008, and possibly seen a small reduction in prices by Spring of this year.

But, since I am a surveyor/mapper, and not an economist, my opinions are based solely on my perceptions and observations.

surv

[lrb111]

that you are presenting a basis. But going ofrward I expect those tens of thousands of new gun owners to make purchases. We all saw buyers lining up to buy guns, with no ammo on the shelves. So, demand could be higher, still.

Personally I think ammo manufacturers are going to take advantage of profits, right now. Obama wants huge taxes on ammo. That would hurt consumers, but would really hurt everyone in the supply chain.
Lastly, the manufacturers are probably going to be spending a large amount of money on lawyers soon, fighting whatever new rules come from the new executive. I'm sure they are girding their loins.

[mr.72]

I agree that the current "demand" for ammunition has accounted for the massively reduced market supply, and do understand cause and effect of supply and demand.

Demand more than likely resulted in an increase in supply, as well as an increase in price. However there is a finite limit to the supply. The lack of ammo on the shelves at Wal Mart is not a decrease in supply, it's a result of depletion of supply, or more importantly, the rate of demand is faster than the rate of supply and therefore there will be shortages. There is not enough supply to keep up with the demand at the present time. The manufacturers can either increase their manufacturing capacity in order to keep up with current demand (this will take time, and money on the part of the manufacturers), or new manufacturers will find it profitable to begin to compete (will take even more time), or the prices will increase in order to slow down demand.

Please, somebody try and bring up price gouging right now.

My point is that ammunition prices started jacking up in September of 2007, long before the current political climate caused such a stir. Lot's of people tried to blame the majority of the price increases then on the military needs in the sand box. It's funny though, if you follow the market prices of semi-precious metals, i.e. aluminum, brass, copper, lead, you see a direct corelation to the trend in escalating prices of finished goods.

Well I don't know if this is a thread hijack or not, but this is a classic case of mixing up cause and correlation.

If I have to use copper to make widgets, then when the demand for widgets increases, then I will ramp up my production of widgets, which increases the demand for copper. The price of widgets will go up, and so will the price of copper, because in both cases the prices are responding to an increase in demand.

The prices of these metals increased as a result of the same increase in demand that is increasing the cost of ammo. The price of the metals is not the CAUSE of the increased cost of ammo, in fact it is not even a FACTOR, at least not in any market that is doing anything other than going down the tubes.

In all cases, in any market that is not regulated in some way by either government price controls, contraband pricing or other external price-regulating factor, then the price of each and every piece along the chain from raw materials to the customer is a result purely and only of the ratio of supply and demand for that item.

[old farmer]

Morn'

"... In all cases, in any market that is not regulated in some way by either government price controls, contraband pricing or other external price-regulating factor, then the price of each and every piece along the chain from raw materials to the customer is a result purely and only of the ratio of supply and demand for that item....." So, Is the answer is stop buying for 2 months? What would the price be after 6 months? The price of lead and copper has decreased in the last 4 months.
Have a good day.

[Captain Matt]

$4/gallon gas caused people to change their buying habits, change their car selection, and caused demand to recede. Less demand, the manufacturer has to lower prices in order to continue to sell inventory.

Simple supply and demand economics.

Exactly. Once the panic buyers have had enough, and the economy goes so far south that the unemployed start selling stockpiled ammo to buy groceries.
Unfortunatly I don't have enough ammo to wait it out. I will have to buy some real soon.

The higher prices caused me to change my habits. I switched to shooting mostly 22. I'm limiting myself to 50 rounds of centerfire a month until ammo prices drop. Or my take home pay doubles!

[mr.72]

$4/gallon gas caused people to change their buying habits, change their car selection, and caused demand to recede. Less demand, the manufacturer has to lower prices in order to continue to sell inventory.

Simple supply and demand economics.

Exactly. Once the panic buyers have had enough, and the economy goes so far south that the unemployed start selling stockpiled ammo to buy groceries.
Unfortunatly I don't have enough ammo to wait it out. I will have to buy some real soon.

The higher prices caused me to change my habits. I switched to shooting mostly 22. I'm limiting myself to 50 rounds of centerfire a month until ammo prices drop. Or my take home pay doubles!

That's the way it works!

plus .22LR ammo uses less metals...

and BTW, probably the primary driver of price (demand) for copper and lead is not ammo... it's electronics manufacturing.

[NuBer92]

Howdy all, i went to Carters Country in Spring and they had WWB Val Pack for 9mm for 28.99, i thought that was one hell of a markup. But I went after i finished punching some paper, and i found wwb val pack for 22.99. i jumped on that and bought the last three boxes. They also had a val pack of remington 45 acp for i think was righ around 40 bucks. Not too bad, My shooting buddy picked up 4 50 rd blasers brass at 15 a piece at wally world before the shoot. I wish we would have went to gander first.

Now i know.

[stroo]

I just spent a bunch of time online trying to find 9mm bullets for reloading. Can't find any. Everyone seems to be out of stock of115 grain.
Then I looked for smelters. Almost everybody is out of those as well.