Hornady Critical Defense Ammunition Update

Aaron Spuler is a firearms enthusiast and recreational shooter. Follow more or his work at The Weapon Blog

As we all know, everyone is faced with production bottlenecks right now and all the supply chains are stressed. In particular, the freight system is stressed, and we are seeing delays that are longer than normal.

Nickel Plating is a feature that is “nice” to have on cartridge cases, functionally it is not a “need” to have. We use outside vendors to nickel plate our cases. Currently, our turnaround time on nickel plating cartridge cases is 4 plus weeks, which is two weeks longer than normal. The additional delay becomes a significant bottleneck in the production of ammunition. After questioning resellers and consumers, the response has been, “We don’t care if it is plated, ship faster!”

Because of these issues, we have made the decision to suspend nickel plating on all of our Critical Defense pistol products. This is just a suspension and we will review this in six months, and resume when things return to reality!