.22 LR on Shelves 3.6 Cents per Round

The .22 LR bubble is over. With the Trump Presidency, gun owners are no longer worried that ammunition might be hard to find in the indefinite future.

I visited the WalMart in Northern Dallas on the corner of Marsh Lane  and Frankford Rd. It has had more ammunition available, at lower prices, than the others I have visited in Arizona and Texas.

As seen in the photo, take on December 20, 2017, Federal bulk packs of 550 rounds of 36 grain high velocity .22 Long Rifle cartridges were priced at $19.94.  According to my calculator 1994/550 is 3.62 cents a cartridge. That is the lowest price I have seen in a store, on the shelf, since the end of 2012, when the great .22 ammunition bubble was inflated by the Sandy Hook mass murder and President Obama’s attempt to use the tragedy to enact strong restrictions on gun ownership in the United States.

That attempt ultimately failed. But for long years, with tens of millions of gun owners determined to stockpile a few hundred or a few thousand rounds of .22 ammunition, shelves were bare and middlemen made large profits as the price of .22 ammunition doubled, redoubled, and redoubled again.

At the height of the bubble, 500 rounds of .22 LR ammo went as high as $100, or more. That is 20 cents a round! Just before the bubble I purchased bulk Federal .22 LR on sale at 2.6 cents a round.

I predicted, that with the election of Donald Trump, .22 LR prices would go below 4 cents a round by October of 2017. Many scoffed at the idea, saying that manufacturers would conspire and never allow prices to fall that low.  On line sources showed multiple sources for .22 LR below 4 cents a round in October.

The question is how low will .22 ammunition prices fall? Stockpiles of .22 ammuntion have been purchased by tens of millions of gun owners. Millions of new gun owners have been created. My hunch is that most gun owners will not want to shoot up their stockpile, but keep it “just in case”.

On the other hand, at a recent gun show in Yuma, Arizona, I saw 10,000 rounds of .22 ammunition for sale for $420, or 4.2 cents a round.  The price was reduced from 6 cents a round, after I told the sellers that WalMart had plenty on the shelf, locally at 4.2 cents.

.22 LR production has been increased by about 20% in the industry.

There are bound to be ups and downs in the market. Metal prices and energy prices are considerably lower than they were in 2008.

Here is a new prediction: Before the end of the Trump Presidency, we will see .22 LR on sale for 2.5 cents a round or less. It may not be common, but it will happen.

Report it here when it happens, so we can all say the “good old days” are back.

©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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