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The reality of gun availability during ECR

drgrant said:
Over time if a skinflint/johnny one box simply bought an extra box every time he or she bought ammo, most of those whiners would have thousands of rounds in reserve. It's not rocket science nor does it require a lot of wealth. We had two plus yeara in the trump slump when 9 and other ammo was cheap. Basic math says a 2 year johnny one box reserve would be 2600 rounds. Not a ton of ammo but all of the whiners i know don't even have 1k around right now... wtaf.
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When I was in my twenties and didn't have money I would always buy an extra box to put aside. I always felt good going home Saturday after shooting knowing I had some extra put away.

Then on Sunday I'd wake up and grab the extra box and immediately fire it. Sometimes in a mag dump. Your advice didn't work for me when I was a noob.
 
My parents were both born in 1925. The lessons of the depression left a mark on their souls... particularly my Dad.

I heard these stories growing up. To a much smaller degree it's always in the back of my mind. That is until I experienced the great ammo and firearm shortage of 2008.

HOLY CRAP! I was relatively new to the firearms world and discovered what a shortage felt like. Truth is I could get ammo and reloading supplies if I kept my eyes open. Enough to keep me going.

And then there was 2012 with the Newtown shootings. That was a doozy! Worse than 2008 in my experience and it lasted a lot longer.

After 2016 with Trump in power it felt like people became more complacent. Ammo and reloading supplies dropped in price. There was lots of supply with lower demand. No one was worried about hoarding.

And now we're back to serious shortages. I think this one is worse than both 2008 and 2012. And if Biden is elected it will become the new norm.

Back to my parents. Their depression era mindset likely caused me to pick up some extra supplies when there was a sale. And I'm grateful for that. But I don't see this changing anytime soon. It's ugly out there.

But this too shall pass. There will be ample supplies again one day. And once the shelves are stocked those with some inventory we will begin to use up their surplus knowing they can replace it at will. And when that happens put away some ammo and reloading supplies for a rainy day. No doubt there will be another shortage in the future. It's become cyclical although not predictable.
 
richc said:
My parents were both born in 1925. The lessons of the depression left a mark on their souls...
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My folks were a little older than yours, but the worst thing was going to a restaurant for a family gathering..
Every salt, pepper, napkin, ketchup and marmalade packet made it into a purse or suit-jacket pocket... Cannot comment on silverware at this time...
3.gif

Green Ridge Turkey Farm in Nashua and Hilltop in Saugus were the worse. God I miss those days...
 
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OP- so what is your recommendation as to when we should place an order? If I don’t approach you with my order, how will it get on someone’s radar to build and distribute? Was going to pull the trigger on a high end 45 this year..how long do I wait? Not trying to be a wise-arse, just trying to plan..
 
pewpewpew said:
Something that I still don't understand though is what would prevent an FFL from calling up the distribution account manager and asking if a gun is on allocation and requesting one.

If guns are disappearing from open inventory because they are being moved to allocation, surely there must be some request mechanism in place? It would be really awful if every gun on allocation is only distributed at the sole discretion of the distribution account manager and cannot be requested by the FFL.
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It sounds like allocation means they don't have enough stock as a distributor. Every dealer wants 100, but the distributor can't even come close to fulfilling that. Therefore they split stock up based on volume. Your LGS can't order the gun for you because every other LGS also wants 10 more.
 
connor said:
It sounds like allocation means they don't have enough stock as a distributor. Every dealer wants 100, but the distributor can't even come close to fulfilling that. Therefore they split stock up based on volume. Your LGS can't order the gun for you because every other LGS also wants 10 more.
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Which is how rare bourbon works as well.
 
Quite_Exasperated said:
OP- so what is your recommendation as to when we should place an order? If I don’t approach you with my order, how will it get on someone’s radar to build and distribute? Was going to pull the trigger on a high end 45 this year..how long do I wait? Not trying to be a wise-arse, just trying to plan..
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I'm not OP but have had experience with distribution chains in different industries. I don't think the point is to tell you not to order, but rather to tell you not to get butthurt about it if you can't immediately get what you want at your price.
 
pewpewpew said:
Something that I still don't understand though is what would prevent an FFL from calling up the distribution account manager and asking if a gun is on allocation and requesting one.

If guns are disappearing from open inventory because they are being moved to allocation, surely there must be some request mechanism in place? It would be really awful if every gun on allocation is only distributed at the sole discretion of the distribution account manager and cannot be requested by the FFL.
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The mechanism is to ask your account rep who will distribute based on value or how much single malt you have sent him over the last year. If they had enough to allow any FFL to request and receive, the gun would not be on allocation. When demand outstrips supply, you have to have a mechanism to determine who gets the limited supply. Raising your prices to let the person with more money purchase is one method. For ammo that is definitely happening. For firearms the prices have not changed at my distributors. Instead they "reward" good customers or give to other customers who take what they do have in open inventory (what no one typically wants).
 
Well, 28 years ago with the winds of the first so called assault rifle ban, I ordered my first from Bushmaster Firearms in Windham Maine. I placed an order mid October for a 20 inch barrel fixed stock AR15. On November 3rd, 1992, I got up early, voted for George Herbert Walker Bush and went for a drive to pick it up, about 2.5 hours away. While at the Bushmaster factory paying and doing the paperwork, I asked if they would happen to have any lowers for sale. Things AR were on allocation and back order even then, but they were nice and sold me a lower for something like $50.

Fast forward to 1998(?) when the noise started about MA approved handgun list, I can remember driving up to Carl's and buying 3 Glocks handguns, I bought high cap mags for 21s and 17s back in 1993 even though I didn't have the guns. I remember this well because the expense of 3 Glocks at once was too much for me to hide from my wife.

I've been a "need one so better buy two" gun guy ever since, and boy do I wish I bought a few more lowers for Bushmaster in 92
 
Quite_Exasperated said:
OP- so what is your recommendation as to when we should place an order? If I don’t approach you with my order, how will it get on someone’s radar to build and distribute? Was going to pull the trigger on a high end 45 this year..how long do I wait? Not trying to be a wise-arse, just trying to plan..
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You have a couple choices

- call up and ask what is in stock that meets some wide set of criteria. I am looking for a high end 1911, 45ACP 5" barrel, stainless.
- decide what you want and ask to be put on the waiting list understanding that the list may be infinite in length or the wait may be infinite

I am a Nighthawk dealer. In January they had ~100 guns in stock at the factory and the wait time for a custom order was ~12 weeks. Right now the factory has nothing in stock and everything in production is already committed. The estimated wait time for new orders is 9-12 months. These are guns that start at $3,800 and go up over $10,000 a piece and they have a 9month+ backlog. If people are buying nighthawks like this, what do you think the practical backlog is for a glock 19 gen5?

I am not saying to not call up your dealer. I am saying it would be good if you had the right set of expectations when you do.
 
Thanks for posting this. While I suspected some of it, there's some new information here. It sounds like it actually makes it hard for a dealer to make money. So while everyone in the supply chain is doing ok, there's a lot of money being left on the table. In other words, it's not really a feast or famine situation because you can't capitalize on the "feast" when everyone and his brother wants to buy a gun. And the real tragedy is that we can't mint new 2a supporters faster.
 
Personally, I think the run on guns and ammo is a great thing. More guns, more gun owners, more shooters etc.. will only help the cause of ALL gun owners moving forward. Eventually the rush will slow down and there will even be a supply glut for a period, and that is when you stock up for the next few years.
 
PappyM3 said:
I did 😂. I saw the toilet paper shortages in I think it was South Korea. I thought it was rather odd that COVID would be causing a run on TP, but decided to stock up just in case.
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Glad I'm not the only one. I walked into the grocery store on March 12th and put two 12 packs of toilet paper in the cart. I didn't need them, I already had a stockpile at home, but they were still fully stocked. I didn't have to buy toilet paper until August, and even then it wasn't critical and we still hadn't even completely gone through the original stockpile.
 
I wish I had more "assault weapons" to sell. Me and Carl made a pretty penny off of some safe queen 10 or so years ago.
 
enbloc said:
My folks were a little older than yours, but the worst thing was going to a restaurant for a family gathering..
Every salt, pepper, napkin, ketchup and marmalade packet made it into a purse or suit-jacket pocket... Cannot comment on silverware at this time...
View attachment 405181
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My Mom and Dad went to dinner at Anthony's Pier 4 one night with her maid of honor. They had not seen one another in decades. The maid of honor and her husband were in town and they made sure to get together.

On the way out of Pier 4 the Maître D' stops the other couple as they were walking over the short bridge over the lobster tanks. He politely, and rather loudly, asks the other couple to please return the silverware. OMFG... my Dad was in tears laughing telling me the story. The maid of honor quickly emptied the contents of her oversized pocketbook and then scurried out. Dad said he's never seen someone's face so red.

The moral of the story... you can take the kid out of Dorchester but you can't take Dorchester out of the kid...

:)
 
Love it!

Makes me wonder how many steak knives have been pilfered from the Longhorn Steakhouse over the years... [rofl2]

1604000254858.png

They show up on eBay from time to time... usually in ones and twos.
 
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kevblah said:
Well the fact that there have been four prior lessons on the issue in the past 15 years doesn’t really make it incredible foresight in my opinion.

Now if you had a shitload of toilet paper stocked up prior to 2020.....
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"Incredible" is not the operative word......FORESIGHT is.....and those that had any amount of it most likely are sitting on plenty of ammo.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that a lot more people will have both foresight and hindsight next time around.

TP is a commodity that most people with a prepper's mindset have had well stocked forever. The people that were panic buying it were just scared reactionary sheep who didn't even know WHY they were buying it......they were just following another crowd.....which is basically how they live their whole life.
 
richc said:
But this too shall pass. There will be ample supplies again one day. And once the shelves are stocked those with some inventory we will begin to use up their surplus knowing they can replace it at will. And when that happens put away some ammo and reloading supplies for a rainy day. No doubt there will be another shortage in the future. It's become cyclical although not predictable.
Click to expand...

If Biden wins and Dems get more control, I do not believe it will pass, it will only get worse until there is another "reversal", but by then it may be too late (i.e., constant shortages and/or very high prices are normal).
 
Uzi2 said:
TP is a commodity that most people with a prepper's mindset have had well stocked forever.
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This ^

I had (5) 20-roll Scotts TP's in rotation on March 1st. (and had it well before The Panic) 250 n95 masks and more bleach and disinfectants than would fill a kiddie pool.
These things I've stocked for years...

Some of us are Deathly Serious about this level of 'Prep'...
 
enbloc said:
This ^

I had (5) 20-roll Scotts TP's in rotation on March 1st. 250 n95 masks and more bleach and disinfectants than would fill a kiddie pool.

Some of us are Deathly Serious about this level of 'Prep'...
Click to expand...

Same here, people should always be prepared for a natural disaster, sometime of "upheaval", a pandemic, etc. just like you should buy ammo when it is available at reasonable prices.
 

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