Target Sports is gouging .
You don't know what gouging actually is. Believe what you want, but I've seen the wholesale prices, and unobtainable ammo on the supply side. Most people selling ammo at this point have had to get it through non traditional means. Read
@CrackPot 's post earlier in this thread if you want the "inside baseball" view. One of my dealers basically has to use his "street cred" with his
reps on one of the bigger distributors to even get
any ammo. You can't just log into the distributor portal and press buttons and get cases of ammo sent to you, it's all done the old fashioned way because there is so little ammo to go around...
Also again, remember TSUSA is national. Regionally at the LGS level, as f***ed up as things are, there are less supply problems. Nationally, in other states, the supply problems "on the ground" are much, much worse. A well established long time gun shop on the VA side of the beltway area... I sent a friend of mine a gun to use, a transfer... when he got to the shop to pick it up.... they did not have a
single box of 9mm of -anything- in the store. And this store has been around for 15+ years at least.
So the fact that your LGS price might be cheaper than TSUSA is rather easy to explain, its regional vs national ammunition economics. There's a big difference between the two things, although eventually, if this bullshit continues with supply, it will flatten out and everyone will be mostly in the same pile of garbage.