If you called around in the Great Ammo Shortage of 2020/2021, you’d get the same answer from the guy at the firearm counter, “Oh we don’t know when its going to come in.” Bullshit. Ammunition is the most in demand item you’ve ever seen, you damn well know when your livelihood is coming in. At Theisen’s its Thursday, at Sportsman’s Warehouse its Monday morning, at JAX its Friday/Saturday, Fleet Farm I don’t know, but the interesting one is Bass Pro on Saturday morning.
A friend told me about Bass Pro, the clerks never would have. And they did have ammo. Not much, and the ding-a-lings were letting people buy 5 boxes a caliber. That’s nuts during a shortage. 2 max should be the limit. The one primer size I saw? Small rifle magnum. WTF? If I ever score some primers I’ll never have to buy from these clowns again. But there we were, a bunch of rednecks standing in line at a Bass Pro on a Saturday morning salivating over a few pathetic boxes of ammo. Its embarrassing. What is this, Russia??
I finally got the truth from Walmart. None of those people seem to know what’s going on. The Boone Walmart 2 months ago told me they were getting .22 LR in so I’ve been checking the 3 stores (2 in Ames, 1 in Boone). A complete waste of time. I recognized the gal in the sporting goods today, “We no longer sell .22.” Well then why in hell have I been wasting my time walking to the back of the store?
I’d asked the South Duff store a couple a weeks ago if they were still carrying it. “Oh yeah, yeah, we just don’t have any right now.” My ass, the security glass had been taken off the shelves, I wasn’t buying her answer then. So after weeks and weeks of walking back to the sporting goods counter, I find out I’ve been wasting my time. Its a real shame about Walmart. A year and a half ago I was buying a box or two every time I went in, I knew they were going to quit selling pistol ammo. Now they’ve quit selling .22 LR also.
Everybody seems to be of the opinion we’ll never see $9 for a box of 9mm ever again. Just 2 years ago you could pick up a thousand rounds for $160. Now if you can even find a thousand rounds you’re going to pay $800 for it. I’ve resigned myself to the fact I’m going to be spending my time pulling the lever on a reloading press. F them. I’ll roll my own. I can’t believe I had the God given sense to buy primers 10 years ago after the last shortage. Actually I think it was in the middle of it but for some reason primers were available.
And remember, why aren’t they importing ammo? No excuse. For some reason the Sellier & Bellot pipeline from the Czech Republic has been turned off. Same for the Aguila from Mexico. Likewise the Armscor from the Philippines. Why? They don’t have a surge in sales, they don’t have a civilian market. Why aren’t they clamoring to get into ours? (I just found another overseas brand from Bosnia called ‘Igman’ at 2A Warehouse out of Houston. If I get the 200 rounds of TulAmmo 9mm I ordered from them, I’ll order 200 rounds of the Igman brass case.)
[Literally 3 days after writing this, when I was told Walmart no longer carries .22 LR ammo, they had comparative boxes and boxes of it on Wednesday. Now they have less.]
Politics and Religion 