Free For All Friday: 3-21-14
It’s Free For All Friday again! This is the day where we focus totally on questions from our readers. We were kind of light on questions this week but the one we did get was a great one!
“My question is, are there good or better sites online to buy ammo? Local stores and the big box stores are sold out typically. In this time of ammo shortage, where is the best/cheapest ammo sources?“ -Skylar R.
Ammo. The thorn in our side. The achilles heel of the firearm industry. It doesn’t matter what guns we have, if we don’t have ammo we can’t feed them. The problem is, as of late, ammo has been harder to find and a bit more expensive than we’ve been used to in the past. Things are getting better, but they’re not great.
Fortunately, there are some options. Much like Jeff said in the comments on Facebook, Gun Shows are a great place to stock up. My personal favorite is to look for the reloaded ammo. Here in Jacksonville, I can typically get 100 round bags of 9mm for about $30 a bag. It’s not any ammo that I would bet my life on, mind you. This is range trash. The ammo is dirty as heck but I’ve never had a single problem with it. Strangely enough, I’ve had more bad rounds (about a dozen bad ones) come out of the professionally produced UMC boxes that Remington puts out than I have in the gun show reloaded stuff (zero bad rounds). Your mileage may vary, however.
The other source, and this is my personal favorite, is a site called Gunbot.net. What this place does is they scan all the major online retailers and logs their prices. It runs every few minutes so the prices are almost realtime. You can have it show in-stock ammo only and, my favorite feature, is you can sort by the price per round. That way you can see just how good the deal actually is. I check this site every few days not only to look for good deals but to keep a price in my head of the going rates. That way, if I see a price in a store (Academy Sports FTW), I know if it’s a good deal or not.
The third option is a bit more difficult but it’s not a bad idea: look into reloading. It’s a bit pricey to get started but buying the individual pieces in bulk and then loading whenever you want to go to the range helps offset the costs. You don’t get as much in terms of savings on rounds like 9mm but, when you’re reloading, .45 becomes an incredibly inexpensive round for some odd reason. Ultimately, when you factor in the prices of getting started, it’s a while before you make your money back and it takes a lot of experimentation initially. Once you get the hang of it, you can churn out thousands of rounds for less than $0.20 a round. Again, your mileage may vary.
So do you have a question burning in your mind? We answer them every Friday so send them in! It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s arguably gun related we want to hear it! Head over to our Facebook or Twitter or Contact Page and send them in. See you next Friday!
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