Interesting thoughts on ammo shortage from Cabela's employee

[ILoveCats]

In case you haven't seen it, here's an interesting post from a Nebraska Cabela's employee on the Ruger Forum.

http://rugerforum.net/ammo-dump/73630-thoughts-ammo-shortage-one-trenches.html

Nice to see a rational explanation from someone in the trenches, to counter the "da gubmint is buyin up all da ammo" conspiracy theorists. 

[Lmbass14]

Nice article.

[zofoman]

Yes, it was well written.   But, there will be those that will not accept the simple supply economics explanation.  I've gotten similar responses on separate occasions from employees at Scheels in Lincoln...their thoughts were that by May we might begin to see some relief and by June it should be even better.  At the Event Center gun show in Lincoln, one of the vendors I talked to said he & his partner are online sellers and they are stuck in the back order situation...whoever their distributor(s) is told them to be patient...their orders will be filled, just not sure when.

[A-FIXER]

Slavo apparently didn’t get the memo, however, from Hornady Manufacturing Company, the largest independent producer of bullets in the world. On February 12, the company issued a short statement on availability and provided some responses to rumors floating around the Internet:

 


The current political climate has caused extremely high demand on all shooting industry products, including ours. Empty retail shelves, long back orders, and exaggerated price increases on online auction sites — all fueled by rumors and conjecture — have amplified concerns about the availability of ammunition and firearms-related items.
 
If the information you hear doesn’t originate from Hornady Manufacturing, don’t believe it.
 
Here are some of rumors we’ve heard, and questions we’ve received:
 
•Have you stopped production, or has the government forced you to stop?
 
?Not at all.
 
•Did you stop selling bullets so you could only make loaded ammunition?
 
?Absolutely not.
 
•Since we can’t find your product you must be selling it all to the government.
 
?Nope, less than 5% of our sales are to government entities.
 
•Why can’t you make more? Ramp up production? Turn on all the machines?
 
? We’ve been steadily growing our production for a long time, especially the last five years. We’ve added presses, lathes, CNC equipment, people and space. Many popular items are produced 24 hours a day.
 
Several hundred Hornady employees work overtime every week to produce as much as safely possible. If there is any question about that — please take a tour of the factory. You’ll be amazed at what you see.
 
We are producing as much as we can; much more than last year, which was a lot more than the year before, etc. No one wants to ship more during this time than we do.
 
We appreciate everyone’s understanding and patience. We don’t know when the situation will improve, so please bear with us a little longer. And remember, when it comes to Hornady Manufacturing, if you don’t hear it from us, please don’t believe it.
 
This isn’t the first time that demand for ammunition has outstripped supply. Following the election of President Obama in 2008, there was an almost immediate shortage of small arms ammunition but by September 2011, ammunition supplies for the most popular calibers — .45 ACP and .40 S&W — were back to normal.
 
Here is a link to the full read.....

http://www.infowars.com/ammo-shortages-more-than-simple-supply-and-demand/

[GreyGeek]

Following the election of President Obama in 2008, there was an almost immediate shortage of small arms ammunition but by September 2011,

Oh, great.   Three years, September of 2015, before supplies are back to  normal?    But,  back then there wasn't a massive gun ban campaign by the Left taking place.  AND,  the DHS didn't have nearly a 2 BILLION round order for 9mm and .40 ammo outstanding, with  MORE orders to follow, and over spending wasn't as high or the Dollar as low as they are now.   A perfect storm for a  POTUS with dreams of dictatorial powers declaring an emergency and suspending parts  or all of the Constitution which, by the way, has been partially suspended in a zone 100 miles wide on the entire boarder of our country, putting 1/3rd of all Americans outside their full Constitutional Rights.

However, given the terms of a National Security Letter, who knows what the government has authorized arms manufacturers to say when asked by the public?   Also, nearly 2 BILLION rounds, with more to come, is a HUGE quantity.  When I checked that gov P.O. for the 2,700 "Personal Defense Weapons", a.k.a. AR-15's, I noticed that they had listed 132 ammo makers that had "permission" to submit bids, and several of them were foreign.  I'm going back to check that list.


On the good side, for us, the losses of 2nd Amendment rights in Colorado, Illinois and New York, and other states controlled by the  Far Left, will mean that supplies that would have been purchased by their law abiding citizens will now be purchased by law abiding citizens in FREE states, like Nebraska.

[ILoveCats]

... AND,  the DHS didn't have nearly a 2 BILLION round order for 9mm and .40 ammo outstanding, with  MORE orders to follow...

Thing is, you have to be really, really discerning with the amount of kook-group information floating around on the web right now.  Pretty much any pre-established conclusion that you want to “prove” -- e.g. that Elvis is still alive and sharing a cabin with the Abominable Snowman and Yukon Cornelius (…oh, and Yukon shot JFK by the way) -- can be found on the internet.

The DHS ammo buy is one case in point.  But, every time I find an article that actually has a link to the solicitation for contract bids, like this one, http://www.infowars.com/dhs-purchases-21-6-million-more-rounds-of-ammunition/ , the kooky author doesn’t even know how to read a solicitation.  In that one, if you follow the link to the solicitation then read the web version and the .pdf attachment, one finds out that it’s actually 100,000 rounds of .40 caliber being sought, and then further in that line item they spell out that they want pricing “per 1000 rounds including delivery”.  So when you multiply that by 100 in the quantity column, you get 100,000 rounds.  The “author” of the “article” errantly (or intentionally???) added in an additional factor of 100.

Then you can also see from the solicitation that the ammo is for FLETC.  Well…. Now this all kind of falls into the “Duh” category.  Exactly how many rounds of .40 caliber do you think FLETC would use???  As the primary law enforcement training center for many non-DHS federal agencies, plus state and local agencies, I’d imagine they could easily burn through that much ammo in a week or two just for their non-DHS customers. Heck, even I buy ammo by the 1000s sometimes, so 100,000 of .40 is nothing if you’ve got several classes cycling through each month.

Then you remember that DHS consists of 22 different agencies that President "Dubya" Bush merged together (wisely, in my opinion) because of the lack of information sharing and coordination that existed before 9/11.  Components include the US Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection and the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Secret Service; plus various other domestic nuclear detection, cyber-terrorism and law enforcement functions.  So, DHS has over 200,000 employees and even if the author’s math was correct (which it is not) the reported purchase of 21.6M rounds would be (get ready, here it comes.....) one hundred and eight rounds per employee!  Wow, surely Armageddon is near!!!

I don’t mean to sound disrespectful. Public policy discussions need people of all political persuasions, even the most extreme ones, pulling from the left and the right.  And it sounds like many here have admirably committed themselves to public service and national defense in the past, but I think the operative word there is “past”.  Being out of the loop, and having to rely solely on feel-good internet blogs that are journalistically shaky at best, does not a valid public policy position make.

[GreyGeek]

Oh, was that why they redacted the total quantity purchased?  It was too low?

Here is their latest  bid  for purchase:  21.6 million  rounds of 9mm and .40 ammo:
https://marketplace.fedbid.com/fbweb/fbobuyDetails.do?token===wBKxmaVGYR9Kcq5Ajq%2BRH6QAAAAAHeAAgAgTFCGg/FzzqQbJAAyVXBA0Or

You'll notice that the amounts are listed as 100,000, but the units column lists "100", ergo, 10  million.   Previous purchase  orders which listed the huge amounts and were often sited, and used to calculate the  total amounts being purchased, have been redacted.  Here is an example:
https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=4c35c09c9315981b2f82beee2fc6629d, take from this page: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=311eb3ee003671285de8db1036b2b255&tab=core&tabmode=list&=



I'm not a fan of Jones.  He is an opportunist playing on  people's fears  for monetary gain.

Many  other reputable sites are reported the nearly 2 Billion in purchase requests.
Here is the UPI reporting on 450 million  rounds: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2012/03/13/ATK-producing-ammo-for-Homeland-Security/UPI-91311331656764/
for which I couldn't find the FBO link to, but here is the PDF for a purchase of 750 million rounds of ammo: https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=500096e56b0d8362d91e93cf105309c3

Let's see   450 + 750 + 22 = 1.2  Billion so far, and none of it related to Jones or the tinfoil hat crowd.

Along with the ammunition, the DHS has recently purchased 7,000 automatic assault rifles, calling them “personal defense weapons.” I downloaded the purchase order for that one.  In a previous postings I documented 2,700 "light armored trucks", if you consider 6" thick windows "light" armor  proofing, or armored booths for roadside "inspection"  stations that include gun ports.   Need I say  anything about the recent joint training exercises with  the military and local  law enforcement in L.A.,  Huston and Miami?   They had Bradley fighting vehicles and  Abrams M1A1 tanks in L.A., along with Cobra  gunships.  Those in Miami even flow low over the Interstate highway  and fired blank ..50 cal rounds above the traffic.

Investor's Business Daily (a highly radical news source  ) asked:
http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/020813-643707-obama-homeland-security-vast-ammunition-purchases.htm

Why are the feds loading up on so much ammo?
In a puzzling, unexplained development, the Obama administration has been buying and storing vast amounts of ammunition in recent months, with the Department of Homeland Security just placing another order for an additional 21.6 million rounds.
Several other agencies of the federal government also began buying large quantities of bullets last year. The Social Security Administration, for instance, not normally considered on the frontlines of anything but dealing with seniors, explained that its purchase of millions of rounds was for special agents' required quarterly weapons qualifications. They must be pretty poor shots.
But DHS has been silent about its need for numerous orders of bullets in the multiple millions. Indeed, Examiner writer Ryan Keller points out Janet Napolitano's agency illegally redacted information from some ammunition solicitation forms following media inquiries.
According to one estimate, just since last spring DHS has stockpiled more than 1.6 billion bullets, mainly .40 caliber and 9mm. That's sufficient firepower to shoot every American about five times. Including illegal immigrants.

To provide some perspective, experts estimate that at the peak of the Iraq war American troops were firing around 5.5 million rounds per month. At that rate, DHS is armed now for a 24-year Iraq war.

But, we've moved out of Iraq, and we  are standing down in  Afghanistan.  That's a LOT of ammo just for target practice, even for the next 10 years.    So, who is  the DHS going to be shooting at?


Shall I go on or do you need more convincing?

[ILoveCats]

GreyGeek,

I'm sorry that you're not able to understand that the purchase orders are for 100 lots of 1000 including delivery, rather than 100,000 x 100.  If you ever were involved with federal RFPs, it was apparently a long time ago.  Also sorry that you're not aware of the scope of FLETC's role, or the tremendous scope and size of mission of the Border Patrol or US Coast Guard.

I'm very well aware of the armored vehicles with gunports because I have worked "up close and personal" with them on our southern border, which is literally spitting distance from a war zone.  I'm trying to give you a hint that you're out-of-touch, but you don't seem to be getting the hint.  The problem is, given the scope of *real* threats being faced and repelled by these armed forces and security agents daily, it's a bit of an embarrassment to have someone publicly identifying himself as a Nebraskan giving more credence to conspiracy theories than reality. 

I sincerely do regret to inform you that -- if you were ever in the loop -- you're now out of it, but that's simply the truth.

[UPCrawfish]

I'm going to go get some popcorn......    Anyone else want some ??  ;>)

[abbafandr]

I'm going to go get some popcorn......    Anyone else want some ??  ;>)

Mmm... popcorn

[Dan W]

TIME OUT! This is not productive