There is that aspect as well, I saw a lot of smaller ammo companies shut down and come back because they clearly couldn't get primers or brass. Whatever the deal the bottom line is that hobby reloaders aren't getting primers because that supply isn't increasing because companies refuse to increase supply.
Hobby reloaders are on the dog food end of the spectrum for getting primers, I guess thats what im getting at.
Increasing supply is more complicated (and expensive) than you make it out to be, but we covered this ad nauseam years ago on this forum, in great detail.
Which irritates me to no end because the cost for another machine to punch anvils and cups and hire one more person to work in the primer compound room is very little compared to investing in more machines to make bullets, cases, and fixing the ammo. Again, no matter what the investment cost is the companies are refusing to do it.
If you were an ammo company would you want to f*** yourself in the ass by making too much product? (this is a thing, btw). Nah, steady state high profit is where its
at. Their investors would assasinate them if they started whoring out. They dont want to be in a position where they have too many dead lines or similar. Thats wasting money. Theres a delicate balance between losing $ because you are underserving the market vs going full retard and overproducing.
Not to mention ethically nobody who isnt an a**h*** wants to be in a position where they have to lay someone off. Ethically its far better to over Heywood Jablome foreman of line whatever, 1 or 2 days of overtime every week for a year than it is to hire another guy and then have to fire the dude when the demand drops off. Overstaffing sucks because it sets a company up to have to do shitty things to people when the gravy train slows. Ethically its less shitty to take peoples OT away than it is to fire a bunch of people.
Guns get sold once, ammo gets sold continuously to feed said guns. So, there's reasons for gun makers not to expand because after people went crazy and bought them they didn't need to buy guns anymore, but the ammo is always needed if they shoot those guns at all.
Dude 90% of those guns go home and collect dust. Go work at a gun shop of any size for a year or two, and you will see what I'm talking about. You can tell when used shit comes back in X years later when a guy dies or something and most of it is barely used. I remember taking in a guys collection that had passed, guy msut have had 15 rifles, only about 5 of them were used. Several were new in the box, untouched.
Most people don't shoot most of their guns.
The "guy or lady who is always shooting" rate is probably well under 10% of all gun owners, then it goes up in % from there vs time between range visits etc.
ETA: if most people who bought guns shot them on the reg there'd still be a huge shortage right now.
And that's just focusing on the Covid panic buys, what I'm talking about is the explosion in the CCW market. Even if only 5m of the 70m people choose to carry that's 5m more people with a need for ammo that didn't exist 3 years ago.
I think you overestimate, the number of carriers vs gun owners is a tiny percentage. You might hit double digits in places where its more politically normalized (FL, TX, etc) but you're smoking crack if you think that say, Maryland, is going to get more than a 2% vs gun owner total carry rate, and most of that rate is going to be among people who already own guns in those shit states. You're forgetting that part. a majority of the people who want to carry in MD or wherever,
ALREADY HAVE GUNS. And ammo for them. And already are shooting on the reg. This use rate was already accounted for, even before Bruen. Bruen doesnt really change things that much commercially even if it allows people more freedom.
Maybe not immediately, but 10-20 years from now when PSA expands and can start selling steel case 9mm for 25% less than what Blazer and Winchester can for brass, it will have a noticeable impact.
Meh, maybe, but even so, thats still small ball, and no threat to the bigs whatsoever. Even when the russians imported that stuff, the numbers were never that high.