Guns and Ammo Thread

My buddy has a Mossberg Plinkster (how adorable) and gets rounds for teen-cents apiece.

 

Heh, where???

This .22 ammo bullshit will keep lasting as long as there's hordes of people buying up bulk ammo as soon as it's available in stores and people then buying it as they re-sell it at inflated prices. The manufacturers are going overtime but are already playing catch-up from the past couple of years.

It's easier for me to get the $15/box top grade match ammo than plain 'ol bulk stuff nowadays. My .22lr competition rifle is still fed well but I no longer plink like I used to since shooting in one match costs me $40-50 in ammo alone. So this thing is arriving today, a Crosman M4-177.



I decided to stick with this one for now because of the full-size stock and aperture sights. I figure proficiency with this thing should translate to the real-deal AR-15 well too since I'll be practicing iron-sight 3-P shooting with it and I have a match sling and glove that'll work. For $80 shipped with some pellets and magazines, if it is a piece of shit oh well... my dad would happily take it since his BB gun is ancient and the Ruger will be my next option.

Also, here's some gun porn to brighten up your Friday. A Heym .577 Nitro Express boxlock double rifle, with the metalwork and stocking completed by the German Master Gunmaker Max Ern. This is the stuff I dream about making someday:

 

I over-estimated. He's paying 6 to 8 cents per round for new ammo. He orders online and doens't seem to have any trouble finding ammo. ARe you guys saying the ammo is hard to find, expensive, or both? I'm new to all of this.

 

Yes, .22lr ammo is difficult to find. 6-8 cents per round is really damned good right now. The best average I'm seeing online is 13-15 cents per round. Fuck me sideways, drop in conversion kits are supposed to save money.

In addition to what Katokoch said, from some things I've read, one of the last lead smelters in the US (might have been the last) shut down about a year or so ago and that's having an affect on ammo as well.

 

Yes... to be honest it sounds unlikely, unless he's managing to catch some red-hot deals on base quality ammo while they last. They are out there now but rare.

Before Obama became President and Sandy Hook happened, .22lr ammunition was super cheap and super plentiful. Now we've seen a couple big waves of ammo hoarding (buying thousands upon thousands to have on hand for no other reason than that), in addition to that demand has skyrocketed due to a rise in new shooters, and it basically means the supply is drastically diminished and prices skyrocketed and are still up.

So in the past a "brick" of 500 .22lr rounds could cost as little as $10 where the same stuff would sell for $100+ at the peak of the hoarding. Prices have dropped some but will never return to what they were.

On that lead smelter... it's all hype. This is some info Sierra Bullets put out after the initial news report on the smelter closing:

source: <a class="postlink" href="http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2013/11/last-u-s-lead-smelter-closes-will-this-affect-bullet-production/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/201 ... roduction/</a>

 

I don't get the 22lr hoarding, but it is nationwide, after Sandy Hook the local Cabelas, Bass Pro and every other retailers sold out of AR-15's, 223, 7.62 and 22lr within a week and everyone began to panic buy. One store would hand out tickets at 8am and draw numbers lotto style to be able to purchase ammo but you were limited to certain amounts.

How much do you guys keep on hand? For me I keep 1000 rounds of 223 and 7.62, 9mm, 40cal, I have a few bricks of 22lr purchased years ago that have never even been opened and a few hundred rounds for my hunting rifle and shotgun shells.

 

I keep about 500 rounds of 223/5.56, about 300 of 45acp, about 200 of 38 spcl, and 0 of 22lr. I haven't had any 22 lr in a loooong time.

 

I currently only have about 500 rounds of 223 but usually keep 1000 on hand, a few boxes of 38, and cases of shotgun shells from .410 through 12ga. Luckily I also still have a few bricks of 22lr from years past and a couple of the 'bucket o' bullets' that Remington used to sell them in. Around here (north LA) they are gone by 8:15 am when they show up in stores at all.

 

Went to the local Gun Show a couple of weekends ago and a guy had an old Mossberg M44 trainer for a decent price, and as I was looking at it the old guy at the table started talking .22's, so I mentioned that it was a good buy except that I had been having trouble finding decent 22 for a while. His reply was to direct me to the end of his table where "he had plenty of good ammo": 5 boxes of Federal bulk 550 stacked up....ON SALE, Today only!......$75 a box, down from $85. I was so pissed I just stopped talking mid sentence and turned and walked away. Fuck people like this. 2 summers ago I was buying these exact boxes for $23.95.

 

I have enough parts to make 2000 rounds of 40cal, but rarely have more then 200 made at any time.

 

Don't forget how Brownell's sold three years' worth of AR magazines in a matter of days. Turns out Diane Feinstein is a great gun salesperson.

I have a lot of ammo for my rifles and shotguns. Enough that the gun show guys can shove it up their asses. Half of the problem is the fact that some people are actually paying those prices, so they keep selling it high. I'm hoping their bubble crashes, and I will be there.

My pellet gun arrived and I set up a little 10 yard range in my basement. Got it sighted in easily. I like how it is full sized, balanced like an AR, and has real aperture sights (although they're flimsy), and the trigger isn't bad. When I attached my leather match sling and got it adjusted nice and tight with a shooting mitt on my left hand, I could hold rock solid on target but was stringing shots in a line below the target. Turns out I was just bending the damn thing.

I think I'll have to add some epoxy to the sights to fix them rigidly in place but otherwise this will be a really fun rifle. Should be good enough for just practicing in the basement, and I'm sure I could kill a rabbit or squirrel in the backyard with it if I wanted to, but I wouldn't buy the thing with high expectations.

Regardless... I paid $5 for a tin of 500 decent wadcutter pellets and might as well be plinking with a simple .22. That alone puts a smile on my face.

 

Apparently there have been some changes in pellet technology over the last 20 years or so.

When I was a kid, there wasn't such a thing as pellet "technology." They all looked the same, like a basic pellet -- a rounded, flattened ball on top then a "skirt" behind that. You got a little hollowing out on the inside of the skirt, which I assumed had something to do with thrust and aerodynamics. Also, pellets came in little boxes with like 250.

Went to academy today, first time shopping for pellets like I said in about 20 years. There were as many different brands for those as there was for regular amunition it seemed like. And everything came in these dip cans with 500-750. I ended up buying Gamo's "Tomahawk pointed hollow point," which aside from being one of the best-value for bulk, also looked like a damn Blackbird engine.

Now, aside from the regular (or "match grade" as they call them now) pellets, you have soft tips, hollow points, and specialty ones that are hollow point with fragmenting tips (for if you really wanna show that can who's boss!!!). What the hell?? How much damage do they really expect an air rifle to produce?

 

That's for damn sure.

You mentioned putting a scope or red dot on it, both of which I have, but around here I do most of my shooting in the dark or low-light; in my experience the scope makes it harder to see (and MUCH harder to acquire a target), and the red dot is gonna cover some of what I'm trying to get. So I sighted it in just open sights.

About 20 yards, I took some plywood and drew a simple cross on it with a fat permanent marker. Sitting in a chair (but still going freehand from there), once I got the open sights on target, I was consistently putting 4 outta 5 pellets on the vertical marker line. Imagine how small that line is at even that short distance... Yeah, it's that consistent.

The elevation is "sighted in," but now it's just a matter of -- as it is with all open sights rifles) me getting used that "sweet spot" on the sights.

Now that I know what this thing does, I'm honestly curious what the higher end stuff can do, or hell, even the entry-level pellet guns. (Nett, I believe what we have qualifies as the "dollar store" pricing for pellet guns.)

 

Living in the country has its privileges. If I feel like killing a mouse with my 45-70, I can.

 

Really? Here in North Texas we don't really have that hard of a time finding 22. Just the other day I found several boxes of the Winchester bricks that come in the small wooden boxes at my local Cabelas. Several places around here even have the bucket o bullets on a consistent basis. They lifted ammo limits here a while back on everything except .22 (which is still easy to find).

 

I stop by a local gun shop maybe once a week or so, and in the past year six months I can probably count on a hand the number of times they've had normal .22lr on hand. Sometimes they only have .22 shorts or .22 CBs, without .22lr rounds in sight. Maybe it's just because the store is in St. Paul, MN but I'm not kidding when I say we're still in a solid ammo drought for the most part here.

 

22 ammo is still hard to find around here and when you do find it, it is ridiculously overpriced. Stopped by a local shop and he had $16 on a 100 round box of CCI Mini Mag ammo... I put the box down, turned around and left. I will not be shopping there any longer.