On 8/2/13 8:11 PM, Eisboch wrote:

The government purchases have had some effect but the major cause of the
ammo shortage was private citizen purchases and hoarding in response to
economic and political uncertainties. A concern that stringent new gun
laws would be successfully lobbied for and enacted by the current
administration and/or Congress drove both ammunition and new gun sales
through the roof in the past year. The DHS doesn't buy supplies for
reloading and muzzle loaders yet there is a serious shortage of those also.

Ammo manufacturers can only increase capacity by so much because their
suppliers can't increase the needed materials by much.
One supplier says he doesn’t have a shortage of ammunition, but a
serious surplus of customers.

Point is, despite rumors to the contrary, there is no evidence of a
government conspiracy to buy up all the available ammunition.






Best part of the looming end of the ammo shortage is the large number of
speculators who got burned buying up boatloads of rounds to resell on
the gun auction sites. Now they are sitting on that ammo and unable to
sell it at the super high prices of yesterday, such as $29.95 for a box
of 50 rounds of name brand 9 mm ball ammo.