The .22 LR bubble is well and truly over. With the Trump presidency now almost a year old, gun owners are no longer worried that ammunition might be hard to find in the indefinite future.
I visited the WalMart in Northern Dallas on the corner of Marsh Lane and Frankford Rd recently. It’s had more ammunition available, at lower prices, than the others I have visited in Arizona and Texas.
As seen in the photo taken on December 20, Federal bulk packs of 550 rounds of 36 grain high velocity .22LR cartridges were priced at $19.94. According to my calculator that’s 3.62 cents a cartridge. And that’s the lowest price I have seen in a store since the end of 2012, when the great .22 ammo bubble began inflating after Sandy Hook.
The Obama administration’s attempt to use the tragedy to enact strict gun control ultimately failed. But for years, with tens of millions of gun owners determined to stockpile a few hundred or a few thousand rounds of .22, the shelves were bare and middlemen made a killing as the price of .22 ammunition doubled, redoubled, and redoubled again.
At the height of the bubble, 500 rounds of .22 LR ammo went as high as $100, or more. That is 20 cents a round! Just before the bubble I purchased bulk Federal .22 LR on sale at 2.6 cents a round.
I predicted that with the election of Donald Trump, .22LR prices would go below four cents a round by October of 2017. Many scoffed at the idea, saying that manufacturers would conspire and never allow prices to fall that low. Online sources showed multiple outlets selling .22 below four cents a round in October.
The question now is, how low will .22 ammunition prices go? Stockpiles of .22 ammuntion have been accumulated millions of gun owners over the last five years. And millions of new gun owners have been created. My hunch is that most gun owners won’t continue to build their stockpiles, but will keep some “just in case.”
On the other hand, at a recent gun show in Yuma, Arizona, I saw 10,000 rounds of .22 ammunition for sale for $420, or 4.2 cents a round. The price was reduced from six cents a round after I told the sellers that WalMart had plenty on the shelf locally for 4.2 cents.
In the mean time, production of .22 LR production has been increased by about 20%. There are bound to be ups and downs in the market. Metal prices and energy prices are considerably lower now than they were in 2008.
Here’s a new prediction: Before the end of the Trump presidency, we’ll see .22LR on sale for 2.5 cents a round or less. It may not be common, but it will happen. I’ll report it here when it happens so we can all say the “good old days” are back.
©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included. Gun Watch
I guess it’s time to start burning through some of the 20,000 rounds I loaded up on in the summer of 2012, BEFORE Obama was re-elected.
And replace it, of course.
Bunch of Bi-Polar Loonies , and Hysterical housewives!
So, we are no longer so desperate that we even buy Thunderbolt/Federal , and the price is dropping. Woo buddy!
Still, the only CCI product that’s on the shelves, is the low-line/ sub-sonic stuff. The Velocitor and such? Gone within hours of being stocked. Same as it has been for recent memory.
People are still stockpiling, and desirable .22LR ammo is still tough to find. It’s just priced a little less rapey when you do find it.
Oh well, Merry Christmas.
Yeah, for the premium ammo like Velocitor or Aguila SSS, I would buy a thousand rounds of each even though I’m pretty well stacked with .22 ammo already. Just that those types of ammo disappear when a panic hits, while the cheap stuff is so mass manufactured it doesn’t get affected by panics as much.
I mean, even during the panic, I was able to find bulk Winchester and Federal .22, it just wasn’t cheap. I even paid $75 for a brick of Armscor at one point.
Maybe someone will panic at the sight of a Ruger, S&W or (even worse someone think of the intersectionality) Savage box, hit the gas in their car instead of the brake and it will careen into a gasoline tanker causing a huge explosion next to a bus full of small children. No, seriously it could happen.
I considered the .22 LR shortage/crisis over when I was finally able to buy Speer .22 Mag Short Barrel Gold Dots from MidwayUSA. Until then, I had spent years looking for defense .22 Mag ammo for handguns and couldn’t find jack.
Hornady and Winchester .22 Mag short barrel I still can’t find, but I believe they’ve discontinued them.
The only .22 LR I’m having trouble finding right now is Aguila Supermaximum HV. Been wanting to get a box or two to see how it shoots.
Loosen up a bit if you are a slave to the Calicommies. What happens in Vegas and Reno stays there and black market ammo is on the rise. Unless there is a manufacturing date on each cartridge it will be hard for the state to prove in court when you purchased your stash.
Santa being somewhat dismayed at the mass exodus from Illinois decided to drop in to see what condition my condition was in…..being the jolly old elf that he is and with his surplus of guns on hand due to the many empty houses he visited he saw to it that I would have the new Smith and Wesson M&P M2.0 semi-auto in 40 caliber and a Savage Model 110BA “Law enforcement” 300 Win mag long range tactical rifle for Christmas…I thanked him and off he went….Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
I’ve had the PRO for a year. I love the Mount, like the caps. I have a friend who is a cop who has one and fell in love with his and bought one.
The funny DL1 battery is the only weak point. All other factors make the a good choice and I might buy another for a new AR I bought.
Ya’ll may want to save yourselves from some aggravation. Spend $9.95 at Amazon.com on the Kindle version of Andrew Branca’s The Law of Self-Defense. You’ll discover some critical information as to, well, the Law of Self Defense. 90% of this thread is bullshit as to that information. (E.g., OH does indeed require that Defendant prove his innocence). I get no $ for recommending Branca’s material. YMMV
Pretty gay….
As a gift I received a 20 round box of 45-70 black powder rounds. My gift to me was a Bond Arms Bullpup I wasn’t expecting until mid January that showed up Friday. That gun is fun, reliable so far and surprisingly accurate, so I am quite pleased.
Laughing at the hoarders and profiteers out there.
Build up around 3000 rounds and rotate it accordingly. Holding 10s of thousands isn’t necessary. I look at how many rounds I shoot a year and go 5x on what I hold.
YMMV
The first officers on scene failed to declare an MCI (mass casualty incident). They literally, to a man, did not tell their dispatcher they had discovered rooms full of injured people. Mark these next words carefully:
Many children had survivable wounds. They died, 17 minutes from a first-class trauma care facility, because they were not transported to it.
The men who failed to declare an MCI were not CSP — they were Newtown police officers. For 30 interminable minutes, Newtown dispatcher Bob Nute thought there was “one woman with a foot wound.” By the time he found out third hand, via an EMT, that this was a mass casualty incident requiring mass casualty protocol, victims had been bleeding for half an hour; it would be another half hour before Nute’s now-hastily-summoned mutual aid (regional ambulances) began to arrive. The Golden Hour, as it is referred to in some medical circles, was gone.
*Why* Newtown officers went into virtual radio silence instead of making their most important transmission of the day is another story, but it is sufficient, for the purposes of understanding Governor Malloy’s 5 year cover-up, to grasp that the state police, upon insisting that they “overtake” the emergency response, unwittingly inherited 27 wrongful death suits. That is why Danbury States Attorney Stephen Sedensky, in compiling the state’s one and only “report” on Sandy Hook acted not like a genuine investigator, but like a defense lawyer for the state (which was in fact his exact, though secret, role for the next year).
Several holsters for different handguns. Needed a few options.
Santa needs a firearm?
Political corruption? I expect nothing less from a slave state.
My wife got me a Mossberg shockwave and a Cobalt Kinetics matched billet Receiver Set.. In my stocking she got me a stripped Spikes Tactical “Snowflake” stripped lower.
I guess that would be a good question to ask your attorney…. do you still have the right to use your gun in self defense if you cross into another state knowing or not knowing if your state issued CCL is NOT recognized in that state?…..should that state NOT recognize your CCL will you then automatically be charged with and most likely convicted of murder even if all the elements of self defense(ability, opportunity and jeopardy) show it was a righteous use of deadly force to repel an attacker?…. I am sure that depends on what jurisdiction you are in and for our friend from Indiana who happened to be in “Madiganistan” at the time ….the situation may not bode well for him….I wish him the best of luck and if he has any of the firearm insurance policies I hope they will still go to bat for him.
I know the left hates data, but concealed carry people do not go around opening up on casual carrying of long guns. You are far more at risk from mall security and law enforcement and even more so from the psuedo law enforcement crowd of park rangers national park rangers.
I didn’t think America had any wild elephants (except in political office, of course), so how can the “government” have an “elephant policy” that involves actual elephants?
Too bad almost nobody seems to be the least inclined to mind their own damned business.
First, this seems like the wrong blog for this. What does this have to do with guns?
Second, statues like that should be in museums, not on public property as monuments, but certainly not destroyed.
Can we all just agree that this entire post was Robert trolling TTAG. You know, for the clicks.