I managed to find the relevant Dead Tree issue of USCCA’s Concealed Carry Magazine, where Tami Keel (in a piece entitled “Stay Stocked”) talks about the vagaries of ammo supply, and keeping yours at a decent level.
Establish A Buffer: work out how much ammo you typically shoot off in a month or so. The higher the amount (duh), the more critical it is to replenish that ammo while it’s there to be had. Tami’s experience is that a 3-6 month stock level should be enough for you to ride out most ammo shortages in that caliber. Mine is somewhat higher (especially in .45 ACP, of course), but while gritting my way through the Great Covidiocy Shortage, I did manage to emerge with about a 4-month “forward” supply simply by shooting smaller amounts per session. (The old days of 300-round sessions with the 1911 are well in the past anyway, because Olde Phartte Wrysts.) Obviously, if you only pop off a box of .30-30 a year, whether hunting or just keeping in practice, your 100-round supply will last you (uhhh carry the three) 5 years. It will be a totally different scenario with your AR-15 (5.56mm poodleshooter), of course, but an adequate supply of said ammo will take care of most shortages — and it helps that most AR-15 owners keep a boatload of ammo on hand anyway. Like I with my 1911, if you manage to keep your range session to (say) four mags’ worth instead of the usual six or eight, your 1,000-round reserve (“buffer”) supply will last a long, long time.
Conversions And Duplicates: I covered this topic in Part 1. Tami notes, however, (and I absolutely agree) that if an ammo shortage drags on and on even these offbeat cartridges will start to disappear from the shelves. Get ’em while they’re hot — or rather, before they start getting hot.
“Die Time”: Ammo suppliers typically set up their production lines with a bias towards the more-popular calibers (e.g. more 9mmP than .380 ACP), but when demand surges during Covidiocy-type panics, they’ll retool their .380 lines to produce more 9mmP, which in turn will lessen the supply of .380 ACP. If you have both — say, for primary and backup purposes — you may need to have a proportionately larger stock of .380 ACP than the shooting of the latter may justify, because its supply is going to run short for a lot longer than the 9mm P. All part of the balancing act.
Reloading: I don’t have to tell any reloaders about the shortage of primers during the Covidiocy, nor of the hostile intent of the anti-gun set towards people having the means of self-sufficiency in general. Suffice it to say that in future Dark Times — and we’d be foolish to assume there won’t be any such ever again — I can see anti-gunners trying to restrict the sales of bulk powder because all that Eeevil Explosive Stuff is dangerous, don’t you know, and we need to Protect Innocnt People From Huge Explosions. So stock up on both primers and powder during the Good Times of strong supply and lower prices; those 5,000 small primers in your workshop are going to evaporate quicker than you think.
Rimfire (or, as Tami terms it, “Embacing Rimfire“): Running out of rimfire ammo is as foolish as running out of salt, flour and sugar. Having a few thousand rounds of .22 LR may sound like a lot, but if your fun plinking time with the kids / grandkids burns through a 500-round brick per session — and it probably will, or should — that’s not a whole bunch of plinking time to go by before the cupboard is bare. So the next time you’re at Bass Pro or wherever and you see a decent price on .22 ammo, imagine the Ghost Of Kim standing behind you whispering “Do it, do it, my son” and fill your basket thereof. Or if you’re doing some online purchasing of your regular .45 or 9mm, spare a thought for rimfire, and add a brick or two before you click “Buy Now”. (This is not a brag, but someone did ask me the other day exactly how much .22 ammo I had on hand, and I didn’t have the faintest clue. So being a conscientious sort, I did a quick inventory the next morning and discovered that I had just over 10,000 rounds of plinking ammo, and 12,000 rounds of the serious kind — CCI Mini-Mag, my go-to feed when I’m trying for the “o” in the Coca-Cola can as opposed to just the can itself when plinking. I need more plinking stuff.)
According to a recent search on AmmoSeek, I see that Aguila is having something of a sale at the moment, and it’s going at under 4 cents / per round at several outlets. CCI Mini-Mag is around 5 cents, and all the others are between those two. Eley, by the way, is under 10 cents per, for probably the first time since the early 2000s (but frankly, that’s only for the ultra-serious target shooters; the Son&Heir does perfectly well in competitions with Federal Gold Match for about the same cost as Eley, AND Federal is made in the USA).
Now off on a semi-related tangent, as is my wont when talking about guns and such.
During that inventory, I also saw that I had a few hundred rounds of CCI Green Tag left (20 cents per, ugh), which I need to test against the Mini-Mag in a couple of my rifles acquired since last I did the comparison (executive summary: the Green Tag was not appreciably more accurate in my guns* than the Mini-Mag at the time, but I’ve acquired a couple different guns since then).
Is that a range session calling me in my little (tinnitus-afflicted) ear?
I believe it is. Hello, ladies:
*Your experience and guns may vary: rimfire guns (rifles and pistols) are notoriously picky about which ammo they shoot the best — even guns that moved consecutively off the same assembly line will likely be different in their preference — so get out there and do some testing.
