3 ms·

It seems like ammo has been in experiencing semi-perpetual issues for the past 12+ years

by cascom 5y ago

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
That’s not unfair. The biggest “real” one I can think of was Sandy Hook, the biggest “fake” (consumer caused and perpetuated) was the 2016 election, after Trump won, 22lr ammo was impossible to find. Gun store talk is always bad (said as a gun guy that doesn’t like gun store bullshit) but this was on a whole different level. This latest… similar, but worse obviously. At least there is a real world event tied to it. It’s coming down, but I feel like between inflation and commodity prices we aren’t going to see pre-panic prices ever again. Extremely skeptical I’ll be able to get 1k of 9mm delivered to my door under $250 going forward let alone the previous $160. It’s a larger condition that there is distrust of government, the spread of bullshit at light speeds, diminishing personal freedoms, and a media cheering it all on. So I get why people are hording bullets a bit, but it’s funny that actual good defensive ammo isn’t more sought after. Just the cheap training stuff.
- newsclues 5y ago
  Ammo is weird because you have the government and consumer markets. We only see shortages for consumers. High prices and a larger market should attract increased manufacturing capacity. Could be interesting for a new highly automated robotic factory to bring down costs?
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Ammo is a government first market, not a parallel market. Factories generally have to fill their government orders first, then sell govt runs 2nds/rejects (in military calibers) to consumers, and then manufacture consumer specific rounds with surplus factory capacity. Automation at factories to this point has generally resulted in lower quality products. People still want it because it's cheap, but there's a balance between price and how bad of a product people will tolerate.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    As far as automation and larger throughput, the machine exist, but at the scale of the market under normal conditions, it doesn’t make sense to plan on panics. At least it didn’t traditionally. If Federal or Sellier invest in a n% more machines now, they will be a year or two out, and who knows what the market will look like then? Under Trump, the market was fairly slow and these companies would have had too much capacity for their sales. Normally, I’m told the ammo companies like to plan perfectly filling one shift. Then on panics being able to run 3 shifts a day (which they all are now). Being set up to run your 10 big machines for 24hr at a time is a better plan than 30 machines and 20 normally sitting idle, because in the scenario you COULD run 30 machines at 24hr, you are going to run out of components anyhow. That is another issue, it isn’t the assembly that is the ultimate bottleneck, almost powder comes out of maybe four places in the world, same for primers. Right now as I understand, it’s really a primer shortage, but no on is sitting on mountains of spare powder either. I’ve had 20k primers carved out on order of 200k for 9 months now. I don’t expect to see them anytime soon.

It seems like ammo has been in experiencing semi-perpetual issues for the past 12+ years

by cascom 5y ago

It seems like ammo has been in experiencing semi-perpetual issues for the past 12+ years

That’s not unfair. The biggest “real” one I can think of was Sandy Hook, the biggest “fake” (consumer caused and perpetuated) was the 2016 election, after Trump won, 22lr ammo was impossible to find. Gun store talk is always bad (said as a gun guy that doesn’t like gun store bullshit) but this was on a whole different level. This latest… similar, but worse obviously. At least there is a real world event tied to it. It’s coming down, but I feel like between inflation and commodity prices we aren’t going to see pre-panic prices ever again. Extremely skeptical I’ll be able to get 1k of 9mm delivered to my door under $250 going forward let alone the previous $160. It’s a larger condition that there is distrust of government, the spread of bullshit at light speeds, diminishing personal freedoms, and a media cheering it all on. So I get why people are hording bullets a bit, but it’s funny that actual good defensive ammo isn’t more sought after. Just the cheap training stuff.

newsclues 5y ago
Ammo is weird because you have the government and consumer markets. We only see shortages for consumers. High prices and a larger market should attract increased manufacturing capacity. Could be interesting for a new highly automated robotic factory to bring down costs?
- beerandt 5y ago
  Ammo is a government first market, not a parallel market. Factories generally have to fill their government orders first, then sell govt runs 2nds/rejects (in military calibers) to consumers, and then manufacture consumer specific rounds with surplus factory capacity. Automation at factories to this point has generally resulted in lower quality products. People still want it because it's cheap, but there's a balance between price and how bad of a product people will tolerate.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  As far as automation and larger throughput, the machine exist, but at the scale of the market under normal conditions, it doesn’t make sense to plan on panics. At least it didn’t traditionally. If Federal or Sellier invest in a n% more machines now, they will be a year or two out, and who knows what the market will look like then? Under Trump, the market was fairly slow and these companies would have had too much capacity for their sales. Normally, I’m told the ammo companies like to plan perfectly filling one shift. Then on panics being able to run 3 shifts a day (which they all are now). Being set up to run your 10 big machines for 24hr at a time is a better plan than 30 machines and 20 normally sitting idle, because in the scenario you COULD run 30 machines at 24hr, you are going to run out of components anyhow. That is another issue, it isn’t the assembly that is the ultimate bottleneck, almost powder comes out of maybe four places in the world, same for primers. Right now as I understand, it’s really a primer shortage, but no on is sitting on mountains of spare powder either. I’ve had 20k primers carved out on order of 200k for 9 months now. I don’t expect to see them anytime soon.