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What is your $ bullet limit?

Why is they're this assumption that a political party is controlling the production of components and ammunition. From what I see on tha shelves, ammo manufacturing is focused on high volume shooters not hunters and reloaders and that makes money sense. I don't see any shortages of 9mm and 5.56 ammo anymore. I guess a bunch of grumpy old men don't really set the market demand.
 
We have been at the manufacturing for a short 8 years. Cost of raw material has risen about 50%. Much of that is the cost of having it delivered. Cost of material is pretty inconsequential when it comes down to the final price of the product. The costs of doing business are by far more influential to final product price. The price of equipment, insurance, facility, facility maintenance, electricity to keep the lights on. How bout the cost of labor? Not sure what you all think an entry level highschool drop out costs, if you can find one? I'll give a clue, you can't hire for less than $20/hr. At $20/hr there is no way that worker can afford to rent an apartment and get themselves to work. Since we can't find employees that would do the menial labor at a rate doesn't increase the overhead too much, we are forced to look at pieces of equipment that cost as much as my home is worth. I can continue to go on, but I think you all get it.

It sounds like the answer to keep prices where many of you think it should be, would be to move manufacturing to China, where most of the things I listed don't exist.
I can't speak for everybody else but I get what youre saying- your costs have risen, especially at this point. I can only imagine what copper costs these days. I'm a machinist and metal fabricator and I can't afford to have much stock on hand anymore.

The thing is, many of us know that costs for 'everything' had not not risen just a short time ago. There were a few 'rather convenient' things that happened and they all transpired to drive the cost of everything else, including labor, up with a snowball effect. It was an intentional hijacking of the American economy.

Labor shortage was started by the 'vid, exacerbated by the stimulus checks, and the nail in the coffin was the the vaccine and mask mandates making prople not want to work for those that imposed them. Now that all that has passed, you're starting to see unemployment drop. Its easy to see.

The shipping crisis was started by the ship that got turned crossways and plugged the suez canal. There were other ingredients at work causing shipping to come to a standstill in the ports, such as vaccine mandates. Another snow ball got started down hill.

The fuel price hikes were stated by the hacking of the oil pipeline back east and the vaccine mandates. That was another snowball started.

The housing crisis was caused by the mad exodus from liberal cities and states to places that are less like California. They were used to paying astronomical prices for housing and land and our cheap prices spurred the panic buying and corresponding price hikes from greedy realtors. Real estate in my area has doubled to tripled in the last few years.

The final puece of the inflation puzzle was the Russian invasion. Any sector that hadnt already raised their prices, used this as an excuse to do so.

I've been through enough of these scenarios to be able to see the patterns, and to see the initial triggers, and how that affects the whole economy. Our frustration comes from the instant knee jerk price hikes.

I took a leisurely road trip throigh colorado a few weeks ago, and dropped by quite a few sporting goods shops- from mom and pop shops to chain stores. What I saw was price gouging at its best. Dusty 20 year old stock with price stickers crossed out (or not, in some cases) or covered with a new sticker with the new, 2x or 3x higher price on it. I even saw a store that had what looked like 40 year old primers selling for $130 per thousand! The extreme price hikes are ususlly only on goods that are most in demand such as ammo and reloading supplies. This is where our frustration lies- the retail level gouging.

We've seen big box sporting goods stores posting record profits, beacuse of how they've increased their margin percentage over and above what guys like you are charging because, as this thread well illustrates, rich hunters and sporting goods "investors", as I call them, will buy at any price when it looks like we may get stuff taken away.

The investors are the worst. They buy in the anticipation of guns, ammo, or reloading supplies getting banned (or even just the next fear based buying spree increasing prices) with the hopes of being able to resell at tremendous profit.

I dont blame you. I blame lazy money grubbing 'investors' making record profit off of your hard work.

I've said it before- It's rarely the innovators that get rich. Its the one's riding on their coattails or using them for stepping stones that do.

Threads like this are dangerous for us consumers, as it shows gougers just how far people are willing to go for their hunting and self defense.
 
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Why is they're this assumption that a political party is controlling the production of components and ammunition. From what I see on tha shelves, ammo manufacturing is focused on high volume shooters not hunters and reloaders and that makes money sense. I don't see any shortages of 9mm and 5.56 ammo anymore. I guess a bunch of grumpy old men don't really set the market demand.
They also make a whole lot more money on their factory ammo than they do just producing components for sale.
 
I can't speak for everybody else but I get what youre saying- your costs have risen, especially at this point. I can only imagine what copper costs these days. I'm a machinist and metal fabricator and I can't afford to have much stock on hand anymore.

The thing is, many of us know that costs for 'everything' had not not risen just a short time ago. There were a few 'rather convenient' things that happened and they all transpired to drive the cost of everything else, including labor, up with a snowball effect. It was an intentional hijacking of the American economy.

Labor shortage was started by the 'vid, exacerbated by the stimulus checks, and the nail in the coffin was the the vaccine and mask mandates making prople not want to work for those that imposed them. Now that all that has passed, you're starting to see unemployment drop. Its easy to see.

The shipping crisis was started by the ship that got turned crossways and plugged the suez canal. There were other ingredients at work causing shipping to come to a standstill in the ports, such as vaccine mandates. Another snow ball got started down hill.

The fuel price hikes were stated by the hacking of the oil pipeline back east and the vaccine mandates. That was another snowball started.

The housing crisis was caused by the mad exodus from liberal cities and states to places that are less like California. They were used to paying astronomical prices for housing and land and our cheap prices spurred the panic buying and corresponding price hikes from greedy realtors. Real estate in my area has doubled to tripled in the last few years.

The final puece of the inflation puzzle was the Russian invasion. Any sector that hadnt already raised their prices, used this as an excuse to do so.

I've been through enough of these scenarios to be able to see the patterns, and to see the initial triggers, and how that affects the whole economy. Our frustration comes from the instant knee jerk price hikes.

I took a leisurely road trip throigh colorado a few weeks ago, and dropped by quite a few sporting goods shops- from mom and pop shops to chain stores. What I saw was price gouging at its best. Dusty 20 year old stock with price stickers crossed out (or not, in some cases) or covered with a new sticker with the new, 2x or 3x higher price on it. I even saw a store that had what looked like 40 year old primers selling for $130 per thousand! The extreme price hikes are ususlly only on goods that are most in demand such as ammo and reloading supplies. This is where our frustration lies- the retail level gouging.

We've seen big box sporting goods stores posting record profits, beacuse of how they've increased their margin percentage over and above what guys like you are charging because, as this thread well illustrates, rich hunters and sporting goods "investors", as I call them, will buy at any price when it looks like we may get stuff taken away.

The investors are the worst. They buy in the anticipation of guns, ammo, or reloading supplies getting banned (or even just the next fear based buying spree increasing prices) with the hopes of being able to resell at tremendous profit.

I dont blame you. I blame lazy money grubbing 'investors' making record profit off of your hard work.

I've said it before- It's rarely the innovators that get rich. Its the one's riding on their coattails or using them for stepping stones that do.

Threads like this are dangerous for us consumers, as it shows gougers just how far people are willing to go for their hunting and self defense.
As long as you have ever increasing demand, ever rising costs in production, and a limited supply prices will continue to rise. That's just capitalism.

About the only way to reverse that is going to be for demand to drop significantly and I don't see that happening.
 
As long as you have ever increasing demand, ever rising costs in production, and a limited supply prices will continue to rise. That's just capitalism.

About the only way to reverse that is going to be for demand to drop significantly and I don't see that happening.
I'm afraid you're right as far as reloading components. The was pretty much the last straw, if you will, that taught most serious shooters that they had better be prepared to 'roll their own', and quick.
 
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I guess my point was the cost of material is miniscule in comparison to the rest of the costs. I do blame the inflationary costs on the policies of one political party. The odds of those costs ever going down are low. The odds of them rising being slowed or stopped lie in the next election results.

We raised our prices for the first time by 10% over a year ago. Not because we felt like we could get it, but because we want to stay in business. If things don't change in November we will likely have to raise our prices again. Our daily costs have risen beyond our last increase.

I can't speak for any retailers, but I am sure they are just trying to stay in business too. Inflation is a terrible thing. It is only good for the biggest companies because they can weather it better than the smaller competition. This is why you see the biggest companies in favor of bad liberal policies. It puts the smaller competition out of business. Nothing to do with quality of product, everything to do with depth of pocket. Government stopping the free market from working by artificially raising the cost of doing business.

This is not a boon market making it so that manufactures and retailers can make more money because the supply of everything is short and more expensive.
 
I hear ya man.
Mom and pops are abosolutley the targets of today's political efforts, and not just in sporting goods, its every sector of the economy. Independence as a whole is at stake here. Its really telling when you see how many small farmers are getting bought out by the big guys around here. The big farms just keep swallowing up their neighbors and it doesnt make any sense how they can afford to do so until you see that they are investors with VERY deep pockets (AKA Bill Gates et al), and the land is not being bought up for 'farming for profit' but as an investment for the future. This scares me.

On that note, a few days ago I found a really awesome semi-local retailer that has been in business a lonnng time (somehow I didn't know about them). Tiny place stacked to the ceiling with stuff. Their prices ranged from very good to high, but dude and his wife were super cool and we talked for a long time discussing what we are here.
Needless to say, they had alot of stock and I spent a bunch of money there and I'll be supporting them when I can.
 
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