Rossignol said:
Sorry, I dont intend to hijack the thread or turn this into political debate. Just offering my perspective on what is driving up demand.
I don't think this is hijacking at all.
This happens every election year. Folks start buying up guns for fear of potential changes in firearm legislation and then immediately begin stocking up on ammo. Without a planned, well timed increase in production and distribution from the manufacturer, any widespread surge in consumer buying patterns will create inventory pressures and supply shortages are inevitable. This situation will cause retailers to raise their prices. The first and most obvious reason is simply to take advantage of potential added revenue, especially on a commodity item like ammunition. A substantial price increase will also slow down consumer spending thereby making the retailer's inventory to last longer. If a retailer knows they don't have more inventory coming for a while, the only sensible thing to do from their standpoint is to raise the price. Folks will still buy ammo, but likely not in their usual quantities. I know when the prices go up at my local Wally World I find myself buying one box at a time instead of the usual two or three to add to the safe.
This is all compounded by production cycles at the manufacturer level. You may have noticed that stores like Wal-Mart will have a full stock on one caliber, but are usually sold out of the others. Most ammo factories are set up to run only a few different calibers at a time. They may run production on 9mm for an entire month before changing out all the dies and equipment to produce .45acp or other calibers. The amount of each caliber produced at a given time is based on a forecasted demand that may not account for an increase in consumer buying habits based on political factors.
The massive urbanization effort in both India and China have put a SEVERE strain on the copper supply here in the us and prices have skyrocketed in the past few years. Being that much of our ammo is copper jacketed and brass is a copper alloy it makes sense that production costs are increasing as well. Increased fuel prices have caused a rise in costs across all foreign and domestic shipping which will also raise retail prices. Add the current and unfortunate fluctuation in our dollar value and it's no surprise that we're seeing an increase in ammo prices at our local store level.
Sorry for the long winded rambling, but it's my feeling that what we're seeing is caused by a combination of factors that are affecting a wide variety of consumer products, not just ammo...
