Price of 5.56/.223

[G26man]

This stuff is all the sudden the same price as .308! Half the volume of the same raw materials, but equal price. What's driving these prices? I highly doubt it is "the war", although its a convenient excuse.

I really want a rifle that shoots this round and takes AR mags, but at these prices I might as well step up to 7.62x51/.308.

[BrianNH]

I'm told it's a raw material shortage. Both Federal and Winchester are back ordered with XM193 and Q3131A. I'm seeing federal AM Eagle showing up here and there.

Check out Privi Partisan ammo. I'm working on a website and hope to have quite a bit of it for sale at a decent price in the next few weeks.

[G26man]

That just doesn't make sense to me. If that were the case then .308 would be affected twice as badly. If the price of raw materials goes up, unless it is obvious it is a short term anomally they apply it to the retail price immediately, so even if there were boatloads of .308 in stock at the distributors it shouldn't be the same price as .223.

[hotpig]

One of the biggest thing is the ammo is not being made availible to the public. There are only x many machines and x many people to operate the machines. civillian ammo has taken the back seat for now.

It may get better next year unless it looks like the Ultra Liberals are going to take complete control.

[BrianNH]

Originally posted by hotpig
One of the biggest thing is the ammo is not being made availible to the public. There are only x many machines and x many people to operate the machines. civillian ammo has taken the back seat for now.

It may get better next year unless it looks like the Ultra Liberals are going to take complete control.

That too. The folks at federal have no inventory at any given time. When ammo is available, it goes out right away. This goes for hangun calibers as well. We all should be stocking up.

[hotpig]

120 days for Federal handgun ammo as of last week. It may be up to 160 by now.

[G26man]

If there truly is a deficit in manufacturing capacity then how could we possibly sustain a real shooting war if one were to happen and last longer than a month? Our current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan simply can't be using that much ammo.

Also when the current manufacturing capacity can't satisfy demand then the manufacturers are losing money, to which most industries would respond by increasing capacity. It's just simple business sense. Why would they not be increasing capacity?

[hotpig]

CCI has increased the number of machines but it is rumored to take months to get them online. Federal hired more people but did not increase machines. Winchester has not increased machines but did lay of several dozen guys from the brass mill after finishing a large project.