3. “Worst I’ve seen it.”
Francis Misantone is one of the owners of The Bullet Hole in Sarasota, Fla. He’s talked to several ammunition manufacturers and gotten basically the same story from all of them: People were laid off because of COVID-19 and primers aren’t available.
“Our inventory levels are horrible,” he shared. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen it. We’re the oldest gun store in the state of Florida; we’ve been open since 1947 and I’ve owned the store since 1982. I’ve never seen it this bad getting ammo.”
Shortages are across the board at Misantone’s store — .380, 9mm, .38, .357, .40 S&W, .45 ACP and .44 Mag. are all dried up.
“The bigger calibers, such as the .44 Mag., were the last things to run out,” he recalled. “Now, even .22 is next to impossible to get. We had plenty at one point. We had thousands of rounds of .22 ammo, but when all the other stuff ran out people started shooting their .22s and it went by the wayside.”
Misantone deals with seven large distributors, and none of them has any ammunition at all.
“They’ve all called me and apologized and said they have nothing at all they can sell me,” he informed. “They say nothing is available right now.”
Some retailers do have small amounts of ammunition, and a few of them are selling it at exorbitant rates.
“To me, that’s not an American helping other Americans. It’s just gouging for the bottom line and I hate it,” Misantone added.
Misantone predicts demand is going to continue to increase because customers have become more fearful as ammunition has gotten harder to find.
“When they see anything, they grab it up,” he noted.
Eventually, Misantone contends panic buying will subside.
“The panic will go away, normal buying will come back and everything will be strong,” he concluded. “I can’t even begin to guess when it will happen; if I knew that, I would play the lottery.”