Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
As the year comes to a close, it’s interesting to note what did and did not get consumed. Ammowise, this was a very light year…not surprising since the theme for the whole year was to hoard and conserve ammo rather than expend it. However, practice and social gatherings (which tend to oft be the same thing) do require a bit. Rough numbers look like this: .22 LR about 4,000 rounds. 9mm about 1500 rounds, .45 about 300 rounds (I hardly shoot my 1911 these days), .223 about 300 rounds (I practice mostly with the .22 conversion kit in it), about 200 rounds through the AK, .308 about 200 rounds (again, .22 kit for most practice), and about 400 rounds of .38/.357. 12 ga., maybe 50 rounds. So, by Montana standards, I never got out the range at all this year.
So could you argue that the amounts shown above are all I would need for a ‘years supply’ of ammo? Well, you could argue that but you’d be quite wrong. Those numbers reflect what amounts to casual shooting and not much else. In the classic End Of The World scenario I would imagine I’d have expended less ammo since the idea is to save every round possible and avoid drawing attention to yourself with gunfire. Of course, the numbers above don’t indicate what ammo may have had to be abandoned, gotten confiscated, shared with friends, used to trade for items, hidden away at a secondary location, etc, etc. So, really, the numbers above are fairly useless except to say that for my particular needs, this particular year, there was enough to go around.
I normally get out to the range two or three times a month in the less brutal weather. Often I’ll grab a pistol, a rifle and some targets and that’ll be it. I hate gun cleaning so I try not to bring six guns out the range at a time. But one trip it’ll be the Glock and an AR, next trip a .357 and the Marlin, next trip the Glock and the PTR-91, etc, etc. Eventually everything gets shot and familiarization is maintained.
So how much ammo should I be keeping around? Well, I have the numbers of what is in storage. The missus, who is in a position to know this sort of thing, remarks that we have more ammo than the 100-man police department does. Always a nice strategic advantage, that. Obviously, .22 ammo is the thing we go through the most. It’s cheap(er) and everyone has a gun chambered in it. Having 20,000 rounds on hand isnt expensive and can last quite a while if a fella is careful. We have a bit more than that but thats because every time we go to WallyWorld, regardless of what we have at home, we always pick up two bricks of the stuff. As a result, when the current ammo crunch hit and Federal .22 ammo became tough to get we could just shrug and ignore the entire situation.
Same for 7.62×39..I bought it when it was $75 a case. Bitched when it went to $95 but kept buying, got loud and rude when it hit $135 a case but kept buying. Nowadays its north of $225 a case, and I havent bought any in probably five years. But when it was $75-135 a case I bought enough. So, we dont generally worry about that stuff either.
In fact, I don’t think we’ve bought any bulk ammo at all since early 2008.
Anyway, the point I’m not making here is that stocking up on the ammo has paid off in regards to not really cutting into my shooting habits and has saved us, compared to todays prices, quite a bit of money. The .22 kits for the AR and the PTR-91 (Made by CMMG and HK, respectively) also made a huge difference. In fact, I need to get a .22 conversion for the Glock so I can really practice on the cheap. (The PTR-91 conversion, by the way, was first shot exactly one year ago today. Coincidence! That kit wasn’t cheap, but at a price difference of $.03 per round versus $.50 per round it only takes two bricks of .22 to realize the savings.)
Any plans to pick up more ammo for 2010? Well, always if theres a deal out there. Certainly I’ll do more reloading to keep the ammo levels topped off and I’ll still try to hit WallyWorld for Federal bulk when they have it. But I think we’re at that very pleasant stage where, ammo-wise, we can buy it if we want more it…we don’t really need more.
But, I dont have to be a fortune teller to guess that I’ll still be buying more anyway ‘just in case’.
