more on ammo shortages

MORE ON AMMO SHORTAGES
I'm happy to be once again hacking folks off. After last Friday's call to stop being a brainwashed sheep and question the governments version of 9/11 I lost 9% of my readers. Hell, I didn't even get into the whole "government is a stoolie for the bankers so you serve their interests by your complacency" thing. I just asked how you could overlook some really obvious inconsistencies. Now I'm trying to piss of a few more with my geriatric welfare remarks. The difference between me and an old fart, besides incontinence, is not the fact that I wouldn't grab any money with both greedy little fists, because I certainly would, but the fact that I don't count on it and I certainly don't think of it as an entitlement. "But I paid in to it my whole career" doesn't cut much ice. I'm going to pay into it MY whole life, and not only will I most likely not see any of it, more than likely I'll be having to care for several parents when their payments cease having any purchasing power ( thanks to the system encouraging divorce, I'll have more than two potential patients to care for ). So, by their reckoning, it isn't okay to screw them over, but it is okay to screw the younger generation over. There. Go ahead and stop reading. I get new suckers in every day. I'm in one of the few growth industries.
*
As usual, I jumped on to a fast moving train and as usually fell off and broke something precious ( at least to myself- several ex-wives would disagree ). Everyone was spouting off about the ammunition shortages and I just had to get my two cents worth in. If I had enough concern I would actually do a blog search and reread my article. Since I only care marginally, I'll just go by imperfect memory. I think I said something to the effect that the Oil War Two was using up all the common caliber ammunition and leaving less for the civilian market. The gun guy over at Backwoods Home Mag ( Mossad, or whatever the hell his name is ) said that it wasn't necessarily that the common calibers were being used but that the raw materials in the rounds being used were what was causing shortages. Probably as good a theory as mine. We can all agree that His Royal Socialist Obammy getting elected caused gun and ammunition sales to shoot straight up. The discussion was on what happened prior to that. There were already price hikes. Obammy just caused huge price jumps and overall shortages. So here I would like to question what happened prior to Obammy to cause the initial problem that his election just made a whole lot worse.
*
Now, history does prove that there have been shortages and scares before. History tells us that the recent global trade liberalization gave us a decade of fantastically low prices ( history should have been telling the semi-auto freaks that such cheap ammo was a one time event, but I won't mention that as I've pissed off enough people for one day ). What I would like to argue is that rather than just another blip on the radar, high ammo prices and constant shortages are both the new reality and not a dark conspiracy to deny us our Constitutional rights to shoot politicians. First, let's visit yesteryear. For many years of war, we didn't have any problem with ammunition prices or supply. The price increases were easily explained by general inflation. Small increases might have been attributed to Chinese building bubbles. Or our insane drive to extend suburbia over to the next cities boundaries. But these were minor. If war needs were to cause shortages, why didn't they happen years sooner? If it was the need for copper in plumbing, why didn't the shortages appear much sooner? In an economy where just in time inventory is the norm, shortages should have been felt immediately. More telling, foreign ammunition made from steel rather than brass only recently shot up in price.
*
I recently bragged about ordering two books, Peak Everything and Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller. Well, Peak Everything was a real turd. It was a hodgepodge of previous writing thrown together, and the whole did not cover how all resources are peaking. It was fine as a cheaper and shorter book, but certainly not worth $17. And while I'm at it, his recent book on Peak Coal was a real disappointment also. Anyway, the other book is really good. It is recent, very detailed while at the same time being very easy to read and digest. Definitely worth the $17. Think of the blog American Energy Crisis expanded into a book. How energy created the financial crisis, basically. But as I said, very detailed. Highly recommended if you want to explore how Peak Oil is interacting with the economy. The only flaw is his sunny optimism. Barf. No, we are not going to see factories move back to the US and local agricultural flourish once again ( not to the extent it will feed everyone, anyway ). We are going to see death and destruction and die-off. He explains how credit has dried up with oil, yet he thinks the capital will be here to rebuild an entire infrastructure. But other than that, a very excellent book. Yes, I had a point. Reading that book ( I'm almost done ) gave me the idea on ammo shortages.
*
If our sinking oil imports and higher oil prices ( by the way, the run up in price to $150 was a bigger increase in inflation adjusted dollars than the '70's oil shocks ) can give Detroit a coup de grace and bankrupt a lot of the major airlines, why shouldn't it also effect another high energy supply sector such as ammunition? Again, look at imported ammo. Steel, not brass. Costs have doubled and tripled. Yes, steel is more expensive than before. As a US product ( Chinese steel is suffering from higher transportation costs ). In Russia, you still have cheaper labor, energy and material costs. No, I don't think supply and demand locally drove up the costs that much. I think higher transportation or energy costs triggered most of the increase. Here, domestic production had to pass on the cost of oil increases. With a war going on and a building bubble, but prior to the oil shock of '08, ammo only went up slightly. As soon as the oil price went crazy, so did ammo. And since energy will keep going up, don't expect the ammo industry to go back to "normal".
END
Sorry about the publishing delay, and the article being cut short. I got a huge delivery half way through lunch.
BUY MY CRAP!!! www.bisonpress.com