And yes, the lack of ammunition that we saw periodically throughout the days of the Obama Administration involved speculators to a certain extent. In a 2015 article, Adam Weinstein wrote:
YouTube is littered with videos by gun guys grumbling about ammo made rare and pricey, a surprising number of which blame the opportunists who snatch up supplies and resell them online for a premium. In this sense, ammo is like crude oil; there’s a huge user demand, sure, but costs are driven as much by traders betting on future prices as they are by consumers. Time the market right, and an ammo trader can see his margin jump significantly. Amid the heightened demand for .223 rounds brought on by the ATF’s proposed regulations, one California seller netted $1,000 for a 1,000-count box, a dollar a round (a price that made the ammo-as-currency phenomenon freakily literal). After the agency scrapped the rule change, the same seller had to settle for $850 for a second box of the same size, as chronicled by Reveal News.I see that most of the larger chain stores regularly have .22 LR on hand, although, other than Dick's, the prices still seem to be unusually high. I've been buying the occasional box of .22 Federal Auto-Match, attempting to rebuild my stock. I still don't see .22 Short or .22 Long, though. I suspect that when I start seeing the latter two calibers will mark the end of the ammo drought in this part of the country.
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