Target Sports Delivering Again - Megathread

Noice! I had terrible luck with M22 in my AR22 and SR22. Just wouldn't feed - I think the bullets were oversized? Could have just been a bad lot I had. But the price of M22 is dirt cheap.

I had about 2500 rounds of M22 sitting around for a few years, finally broke 500 out last month with no issues between SR22, MK IV, Marlin 60.

🐯
 
TSUSA had some .45 Blazer Brass this morning. I got the text at 8:50. By 8:55 they were gone. I got half a case. Also got a case from CMP so I'm good, but now TSUSA is like some kind of high stakes video game and I have to sit here and hit "reload" on the ammo page that I want until I get it, at which time I yell in joy and smash my glass on the ground.

A couple minutes later they had about 24 boxes in stock, so they must have found more or an order got rejected or something. Really gets your heart rate pumping! Or, well, I did have 2 pots of coffee before 9 a.m. so maybe it's that.
 
... but now TSUSA is like some kind of high stakes video game and I have to sit here and hit "reload" on the ammo page that I want until I get it, at which time I yell in joy and smash my glass on the ground.
Hey, think of it as a replacement this year to constantly sitting online / on the phone trying to get Sox playoff / WS tickets.
 
Ahhh, NH, our wild and wooly cousin to the north, where there is still *some* freedom. :) you saved about $83 over what was up on TSUSA earlier (6cpr versus 11cpr is 5cpr x 1675rds). Sweet, provided it works for you. I wish I could trek up to NH for some savings on a regular basis, but it never works out that way.

I'm south of Boston. A ride up to NH is 2 hours each way for me. Plus gas in a not-very-efficient-but-this-is-murica vehicle. I'd be out about $20 there. Plus another few bucks in tolls. So now the savings for me is like $50. For 4 total hours of driving, plus waiting in line. We are talking me paying myself $10/hr to get ammo.

And that's where my math overcomes my need for the deal. I have a threshold below which I would pay to not have to leave my cozy abode and that's below it. :)

Which isn't to say I wouldn't go to NH for a deal, but it would have to net save me a couple hundred to remove all resistance on my part.
Lol, it’s cute that you’ve rationalized this, more ammo for the rest of us, I approve.
 
Lol, it’s cute that you’ve rationalized this, more ammo for the rest of us, I approve.

Meh, it's not food. I have my stock, because I'm not a noob and I didn't wait for COVID. All it means is fewer range trips for me.

I respect anyone who is enjoying the hunt for ammo. It's like 'Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego,' but with ammo! I root for your giant scores. :) That pic of Scorpion Enbloc posted yesterday was droolworthy.

But spending hours cruising around is just not my idea of fun. I have extremely limited time between work and family, and the calculus of losing most of a Saturday for $50 in potential savings just... exhausts me.

I am fortunate, I just don't really need it right now.
 
***Warning — Rant Advisory***

ok, WTF is with the ammo shortage??? Alright, I get the fact that there are a bazillion new gun owners due to all the craziness... but seriously with the ammo???

Fine, I totally get the fact that panic buying has people willing to pay HIGHLY inflated prices— demand is high, I get it...

But supply? TSUSA is not getting in new inventory. Many LGS aren’t getting in inventory either. When there was a TP shortage at the beginning of C-19, I read someplace that manufacturing works at a constant production rate to balance profits versus production, so there would not be a huge storage of inventory, since demand is relatively constant.

While ammo purchasing tends to fluctuate more than TP, even at a baseline production rate, I would imaging supply to be constant, but demand to be high resulting in a perceived shortage. BUT —there have been very few manufactures brands on TSUSA or Cabelas shelves, or the LGS, so where is the supply???

Tinfoil hat time — is there a huge up-tick in government purchasing of ammo where it’s shifted away from the civilian market? Why has supply diminished so drastically? Are the political powers-that-be squeezing manufacturers threatening higher regulations in a Biden-run administration post-election, so the major manufacturers have caved-in to the political pressures???

I know there have been ammo shortages in the past, droughts if you will. The salty, seasoned old-timers say stock-up before the panic buying and I, like many, have listened only to avoid $1.00/rnd pricing at the rate things are going... but this is ridiculous.

I find it hard to believe that all of the woke have stocked up on ammo so deep that “regular” pre-panic shooters can’t find ammo. This FEELS off...

***Rant Over***
 
But supply? TSUSA is not getting in new inventory....

A day or two ago, they had a bunch of Frontier 5.56 in stock for something like .32/rd. I thought it was a mistake, and reloaded the page. My cart was empty by the time I went to pay for it.

But... My recent orders for a couple boxes of 45-70 or 12ga slugs have shipped within the day they were ordered, and received the following day. That wasn't happening a few weeks ago - it would take at least a week for me to receive oddball orders.
 
But... My recent orders for a couple boxes of 45-70 or 12ga slugs have shipped within the day they were ordered, and received the following day. That wasn't happening a few weeks ago - it would take at least a week for me to receive oddball orders.
Both of my recent orders from TS have come within 2 business days of order. Hell, they've got so little stuff in stock that the shipping guys are probably spending more time playing bocce than working.
 
***Warning — Rant Advisory***

ok, WTF is with the ammo shortage??? Alright, I get the fact that there are a bazillion new gun owners due to all the craziness... but seriously with the ammo???

Fine, I totally get the fact that panic buying has people willing to pay HIGHLY inflated prices— demand is high, I get it...

But supply? TSUSA is not getting in new inventory. Many LGS aren’t getting in inventory either. When there was a TP shortage at the beginning of C-19, I read someplace that manufacturing works at a constant production rate to balance profits versus production, so there would not be a huge storage of inventory, since demand is relatively constant.

While ammo purchasing tends to fluctuate more than TP, even at a baseline production rate, I would imaging supply to be constant, but demand to be high resulting in a perceived shortage. BUT —there have been very few manufactures brands on TSUSA or Cabelas shelves, or the LGS, so where is the supply???

Tinfoil hat time — is there a huge up-tick in government purchasing of ammo where it’s shifted away from the civilian market? Why has supply diminished so drastically? Are the political powers-that-be squeezing manufacturers threatening higher regulations in a Biden-run administration post-election, so the major manufacturers have caved-in to the political pressures???

I know there have been ammo shortages in the past, droughts if you will. The salty, seasoned old-timers say stock-up before the panic buying and I, like many, have listened only to avoid $1.00/rnd pricing at the rate things are going... but this is ridiculous.

I find it hard to believe that all of the woke have stocked up on ammo so deep that “regular” pre-panic shooters can’t find ammo. This FEELS off...

***Rant Over***

Its demand overload. Have you seen the number of people taking LTC classes, the retail stores selling 12 guns when they should have 75? All of the manufacturers are churning out guns/ammo as fast as they can in spite of coronavirus induced delays. Theyre in the business of making money..
Add in: The "Just in Time" distribution protocols have no way to absorb demand when EVERYTHING (not just guns) are being bought out. Think about how long it takes to get decking materials, washers, refrigerators, your Amazon Prime delivery right now. The supply chain for everything is broken. The distribution networks are at max capacity.

From Vista outdoor (federal cci blazer speer etc) parent company ER:

Mark Smith

Okay. And then last one for me. Can you talk at all, especially within Ammunition about backlog or maybe a different way of looking at it if we shut off all sales today? How long would it take just to refill channel inventory?

Chris Metz

Yes. So Mark, it's an insightful question. And I think if you talk to our retailers, which we talk to them all the time, they said, hey, listen, if everything were just to come to a screeching halt right now, it would take us months just to stock our shelves, to stock our warehouses to get back to a point where we feel comfortable that we've got the supply that we need. So that - there is - so that was kind of the first part of your question. What was the other part of your question, Mark, I want to make sure I address it?

Mark Smith

Yes. Just anything on that backlog, anything that you can quantify or help with on kind of how long you think maybe this goes just to try to catch up?

.

Chris Metz

Well, here's the interesting thing about backlog. So we had our strongest order writing month back in March, followed by our second strongest order month, which was this past month, July. So July, which is the beginning of our second quarter, was our strongest order writing month. So it certainly hasn't slowed down at all.[/QUOTE]
 
***Warning — Rant Advisory***

ok, WTF is with the ammo shortage??? Alright, I get the fact that there are a bazillion new gun owners due to all the craziness... but seriously with the ammo???

Fine, I totally get the fact that panic buying has people willing to pay HIGHLY inflated prices— demand is high, I get it...

But supply? TSUSA is not getting in new inventory. Many LGS aren’t getting in inventory either. When there was a TP shortage at the beginning of C-19, I read someplace that manufacturing works at a constant production rate to balance profits versus production, so there would not be a huge storage of inventory, since demand is relatively constant.

While ammo purchasing tends to fluctuate more than TP, even at a baseline production rate, I would imaging supply to be constant, but demand to be high resulting in a perceived shortage. BUT —there have been very few manufactures brands on TSUSA or Cabelas shelves, or the LGS, so where is the supply???

Tinfoil hat time — is there a huge up-tick in government purchasing of ammo where it’s shifted away from the civilian market? Why has supply diminished so drastically? Are the political powers-that-be squeezing manufacturers threatening higher regulations in a Biden-run administration post-election, so the major manufacturers have caved-in to the political pressures???

I know there have been ammo shortages in the past, droughts if you will. The salty, seasoned old-timers say stock-up before the panic buying and I, like many, have listened only to avoid $1.00/rnd pricing at the rate things are going... but this is ridiculous.

I find it hard to believe that all of the woke have stocked up on ammo so deep that “regular” pre-panic shooters can’t find ammo. This FEELS off...

***Rant Over***

Ive been getting more alerts from TSUSA and some others recently. There Are resupplies coming in.

The main problem with the ammo manufacturing is primers. I believe there are only three companies in the US making primers. They’re holding everyone else up, and it’s likely why you don’t see as many of the smaller manufacturers resupplying much. Because they’re probably low man on the primer distribution chain.

But I’ve thought about the same thing you posted. It seemed like things weren’t getting in stock fast enough. But I think it’s just perception. Before the craziness, when a place like TSUSA would get 100 cases in of a particular load, who knows how long that would last. Maybe they’d stretch it out over a month between shipments. So a 1x resupply per month wouldn’t even be noticed. But now, those 100 cases are being bought in 5 minutes. So the rest of the 43,195 minutes in the month before resupply feel like an eternity.
 
TP demand hit critical mass. Guns/ammo demand is still accelerating. How long does it take to apply/obtain an LTC. Weeks, months? THAT new demand hasn't even been taken into account yet.
 
According to the most recent Gallup poll, 30% of the US adult population owns at least one gun. Note: This doesn’t take in account of the recent surge of +5 million new gun owners. There are about 209 million adults ( people over 18) in the US so that means about 63 million gun owners. Another study says their are about 7.7 million “super gun owners”. (their definition of a “super” gun owner is one owning 8 or more guns:D). I would think that we so called “super” owners would be the only ones who normally have a fairly deep stock of ammo, the other 55.3 million probably only buy one or two boxes at a time. Even if just half of these owners start panic buying (say 5, 6 boxes, maybe even a case). you’d see a big spike in demand. Going with the 5 boxes scenario (not unlikely given the absurd run on TP) you might be looking at an addition 138 million boxes of ammo. Thats a lot of demand.

That's just back of the napkin scratching, but I think it shows that there is no “plot” to limit ammo, just a prodigious increase in demand

Edit: last year total ammo output for the entire year was 8.1 billion rounds, or 162 million 50 round boxes. So you might be looking at an increase in demand close to one years total output.
 
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Both of my recent orders from TS have come within 2 business days of order. Hell, they've got so little stuff in stock that the shipping guys are probably spending more time playing bocce than working.

Same. Ordered a box of Aguila .22lr 2 days ago, it will be here this afternoon.

I think part of the issue is the intermediate supply chain. TSUSA doesn't buy directly from manufacturers. They have to buy from wholesalers, who may also be buying from importers.

Those guys probably have customer lists, who gets it first, etc. TSUSA does great volume in the northeast- which is smaller than the midwest, where not only are there more current gun owners, but a greater percentage of new gun owners. So if you are a certain distributor, you might prioritize the 5m-round order over the 1m-round order.

I honestly think more ammo is flowing in the red states, but I tend to think it's a result of market dynamics, not political action.
 
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