FWiedner wrote: ↑Fri Jan 04, 2019 8:59 am
wm wrote: ↑Thu Jan 03, 2019 7:00 pm
Trump has little or nothing to do with either the price of ammo or firearms. Prices for AR's peaked in 2013 and declined rapidly and have leveled off to current pricing since 2015. As for rimfire ammo it was always a case of supply and demand. Once rimfire hoarding and huge military contracts which took up production capacity were fulfilled, the price has returned to near what has been normal rates (adjusted for inflation).
Presidents get way too much blame and way too much credit for what happens in this country. They are convenient targets for praise and jeers for events that often out of their control.
Wm.
So you're saying that Obama didn't authorize his Homeland Security agents to purchase 1.6 billion rounds of ammo, thereby contributing to, if not causing, the ammo shortage?
OK.
I believe I addressed that when I said "Once rimfire hoarding and huge military contracts which took up production capacity were fulfilled, the price has returned to near what has been normal rates (adjusted for inflation)." Perhaps I should have said government instead of military contracts.
Just for a sense of perspective the Lake City, Missouri ammunition plant produces approximately 4M rounds of small arms ammunition (5.56, 7.62, .50 BMG and 20mm) every day. That’s 1.46 billion rounds of ammo a year. That's their normal yearly out put without necessarily running weekends or 3 shifts per day.
Ammunition is a huge market with US and foregin manufacturers (Federal, Speer, Remington, Winchester, Black Hills, etc domestically but we import a lot of ammo from Russia, Germany, Czech Republic, Israel, Brazil, Taiwan, Italy, etc.) all of whom are operating below maximum production capacity ...... 1.6 Billion rounds is a lot of ammo but it isn't enough to cripple the market.
If you index ammo costs to oil costs you will see a much closer cause and effect relationship. Also the needs of the military has receded significantly with the scaling back of operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan 5 years ago.
http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/Se ... _ammo.html
And as to the reason why Obama adminsitration did that ..... well all I can say is darn near every federal agency has a armed law enforcement component. Posta Office/Postal Inspectors. Energy Department/Armed security for Nuke plants. USFWS, NTSB, Parks Dept, USDA, FDA, IRS, BLM, MSHA, etc. And they have all expanded their numbers in response to concerns about terrorism. The more armed guys you have guarding stuff, the more ammo you need for training and for duty.
Arming of federal government employees now shows the number of non-Defense Department federal officers carrying firearms (200,000+) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000) according to a Wall Street Journal op-ed penned by former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (17 June 2016). For comparison federal officers with arrest-and-firearm authority numbered 74, 500 in 1996; over 200,000 exist today.
And one last thought is did that expenditure for ammo save any of those manufacturers? Certainly they were stung by the recession as much as any other part of the manufacturing segment of the economy. That purchase might have staved off a round of contraction and consolidation that we have seen off and on in the firearms and ammo industry. I certainly would have preferred the government making a large purchase of ammo, to seeing Remington ammo 'saved' by a foreign investor like Winchester Repeating Arms was. I can't prove that this happened but it is worth contemplating.
Wm
After those years of seeing NO .22s on the shelves, I just like to see them there even if I'm not buying.