Posted February 25, 2021 / by Newbury
The year 2020 was, as everyone knows, a giant dumpster fire. Wild fires, a new virus, international incidents that almost caused global war, civil unrest are some of the reasons why it sucked. This series of unfortunate events impacted the gun industry like nothing else. It is normal to see an increase in overall sales when you have events like mass shootings, terrorist attacks, political bullshit, etc. But 2020 was the worse anyone has ever seen.
The COVID-19 virus is in my opinion the largest contributing factor to what happened to all the ammo. In December 2019 the virus was first discovered in Wuhan, China. From there the virus spread across the world. By April 2020, 3.9 billion people in over 90 countries were in lockdown. These lockdowns basically shut down the world and that includes ammo manufacturing companies.
What was said to only be a few weeks ended up lasting months. Eventually governments (local, state, federal) began to start allowing people to return to work with heavy restrictions. For example, a major distributor of all things firearms could only have 1/3 of their warehouse staff return to work due to the restrictions put in place. Despite many people being out of work, the demand for ammo only increased. Demand went up, staffing did not, production was cut down, prices began to climb.
As if a new virus, mass unemployment, and stay at home orders were not enough. The United States started to experience wide spread protests that resulted in rioting and other forms of violence. Beginning in May of 2020 after the police involved death of George Floyd; millions of people in major cities across the country ignored COVID-19 restrictions and went out to protest everything from racial injustices, police brutality, President Trump, and so on. Many of these protests devolved into riots where private property, businesses, and federal property were vandalized, looted, and/or burned down.
With all this violence and destruction happening everywhere, the police could not do too much to prevent it. Law enforcement was stretched thin and 62,000 National Guardsmen were mobilized in 30 states and the District of Columbia. People began to feel unsafe given the national state of civil unrest. People feeling unsafe lead to people going out and buying guns at a staggering pace. 7 million people bought a gun for the first time and with all those guns, 7 million people started to buy ammo. Now this new wave of gun owners were not alone in their desire to purchase guns and ammo. People who were already gun owners were buying more guns and more ammo too.
Who can forget the 2020 Presidential election? To be honest I wish I could but along with COVID-19 and seemingly unending protests; the election was shoved down our throats by both the media and our social media “friends”. For gun owners, Biden was a major threat to the American gun culture. Biden ran on an anti gun platform and his Vice Presidential choice, Kamala Harris is also an enemy of the second amendment. Many gun owners believed (and still currently believe) that the Biden administration would enact a metric shit ton of gun control. One piece of gun control that Biden demonstrated fondness for was imposing a tax on ammo that would be so high it would make ammo unaffordable. As you can imagine, this only made the already bad ammo situation worse.
Something that many people did not know about was the primer shortage. As many of you may know, the primer is the small “button” on the bottom of a cartridge that when struck by a firing pin causes the round to be discharged. While there are a myriad of ammo manufacturers there are only a small number that also manufacture primers. In the U.S. there are only 4 manufacturers of primers. Federal, CCI, Remington, and Winchester. Remember when COVID lockdowns/restrictions impacted staff levels of manufacturers which resulted in diminished production output? Well these 4 companies were not exempt.
U.S. ammo manufacturers started to look outside the country for primers. However the U.S. was not the only country with COVID restrictions/lockdowns. Many companies that produce primers around the world had also been affected. So in short, the limited amount of primers meant a limited amount of ammo being produced while the demand for ammo has only increased.
So lets do a quick recap, COVID-19 comes out of China and through the domino effect ends up causing ammo manufacturers to shut down for a period of time or to operate with a severely reduced amount of employees. This caused ammo production to fall.
Now with ammo production reduced due to lack of people working to make it; we also had a primer shortage which further limited the amount of ammo being produced.
So a fraction of the amount ammo that is normally produced is making its way to the market. Meanwhile, the election, civil unrest, and millions of new gun owners were scrambling to buy whatever they could get. The people who normally bought 100 rounds here and there started to buy thousands or more per month.
This is essentially why no matter where you are in the country, the ammo section of almost all stores is either empty or limited and prices are 8-10 times more than what they were in January/Febuary of 2020.
The effects we are seeing from 2020 will most likely last through this year too. COVID restrictions are still in place for the most part (except Florida, they are partying). Ammo manufacturers have ramped up production and companies such as Federal have been making ammo 24 hours a day. Despite the efforts of Federal and other companies doing similar things we are still not seeing ammo like we used to. This is because the demand has never gone down.
Because the demand has never gone down, people are still feverishly buying ammo like the end of the world was tomorrow. Companies have recognized this demand and have started to increase the prices even more. For example, many gun shops in Massachusetts have been buying 9x19mm ammo from online retailers for .50-.70 cents per round ($500-700 per case of 1000). Recognizing the high demand for this caliber, they are turning around and selling those cases for $800-900. While it is their right to sell their inventory for what ever they want, this is essentially a form of scalping.
Why is it scalping? Well these stores are buying the same ammo available to you. They are buying them from places like Target Sports USA, SG Ammo, Sportsman’s Guide, etc. and then increasing the price by almost double. This is no different than all the scalpers who bought up a shit ton of PS5 gaming systems and then put them on Ebay for double. The unfortunate reality of it all is gun shops all over the country are doing this and people are desperate enough to be paying these prices.
Well this is the million dollar question. Capitalism 101 tells us that the availability is going to stay low while the prices only increase because the demand and willingness to pay these prices has not decreased. People are still buying anything and everything they can get their hands on. In the past you would see the popular calibers such as .223/5.56×45, 9×19, .308/7.62×51, etc. get hit with price increases and shortages. Today every caliber is getting hit even the odd ball calibers that no one used to shoot.
The prices and availability will not change until there is a decrease in demand. So until that happens we will still see sky high prices, morons sprinting towards the ammo section of stores like it’s Black Friday at Walmart, and empty shelves. Lets hope that things calm down soon because if this trend continues, ammo that used to cost .15 cents per round will average $1+.
So ask yourself; where do you draw the line when it comes to the price of ammo?
