SPRINGDALE - Crowded into one corner of Sturm’s Indoor Gun Range in Springdale, Steve Sturm works around a cluster of Dillon ammunition presses, aligning components, adjusting the flow of gunpowder and selecting the right bullet. After a few moments, Sturm has produced ammunition that’s become increasingly scarce for gun owners in Arkansas and around the country.
The press is a Dillon Super 1050, a multistage manual press capable of turning out between 1,000 and 1,200 rounds of ammunition an hour, according to the manufacturer. The process of reloading requires knowledge, measurement, and fine-tuning.
Factory-produced ammunition of more than a half-dozen popular handgun and rifle calibers - especially 9mm, .40 and .45 calibers for pistols, and .223 and .308 calibers for rifles - has become increasingly scarce.
Locally owned stores and large national retailers are restricting ammunition sales. Wal-Mart spokesman Ashley Hardie said Friday that all Wal-Mart U.S. locations began limiting ammunition sales to three boxes per customer per day beginning Jan. 24. Employees at Sturm’s Indoor Gun Range are now selling ammunition only for customers’ use at the store’s range, but not to carry out of the store, Sturm said.
Many gun owners are turning to reloading their own ammunition as a remedy. But buyers are discovering that the necessary components for reloading are nearly as hard to find as the finished product they’re trying to replace.
“Everybody’s buying presses now, thinking they’re going to reload their ammunition,” Sturm said. “But they’re finding out they can’t get the parts they need for that, either.”
A finished round of ammunition has four basic components - the jacket, which is usually brass, a primer, gunpowder and the bullet, the only part that’s propelled from the weapon.
Phil Garratt, a former sheriff ’s deputy from San Benito County, Calif., and co-owner of G.I. Guns & Ammo in Rogers, said his store is usually sold out of most of those components.
“That’s what’s hard to get a hold of now - they’ve just dried up,” Garratt said. “We’re scrambling to get what we can.”
Garratt said the basic tools for reloading - a press and caliber-specific dies to properly reshape the brass - are still widely available. A single-stage press, such as an RCBS Rock Chucker, with which a skilled reloader can produce about 100 rounds of ammunition an hour, costs between $300 and $400. (A multistage press such as the Dillon Super 1050 retails for upward of $1,600.)
Assembling the ammunition starts with the brass. Although some manufactured rounds are jacketed in steel or nickel, those materials are not easily reshaped and are typically dangerous to use in a reloaded round.
Most of the market for reloading brass is what’s known as “once-fired brass,” jackets in various calibers typically collected from shooting ranges and resold in bulk quantities. While shops such as Garratt’s sell bags of 50 jackets for pistol ammunition for about $5, bulk suppliers such as Diamond K Brass, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., sell packages of 5,000 jackets for prices ranging from $375 to $575, depending on the caliber.
Availability of brass and other reloading components varies among online retailers. Midway USA, a Missouri-based firearms retailer that advertises itself as offering “Just About Everything for Shooting, Reloading, Gunsmithing and Hunting,” features almost 3,200 items under its “brass and bullets” section on its website - more than 2,200 of which are out of stock. Competitors including Cabela’s feature only in-stock components on their online shopping sites, but of much smaller selections. Cabelas. com, for example, features about 130 bullets, brass and powder products for sale.
Douglas Kiley, president of Diamond K Brass, said he is unsure why so many retailers appear to be having trouble obtaining recycled brass for reloading.
“We’ve been pretty busy in general,” Kiley said, but noted his company hasn’t had trouble meeting demand. Kiley declined to discuss sales figures, but noted that the company’s website features only items in stock and ready to ship.
Kiley, who said he helped found the business in 2001, said the demand for once fired brass is cyclical and he had seen several peaks and valleys during his time at Diamond K Brass.
“Any time there’s a scare, people just go crazy,” Kiley said. “This is the third time I’ve seen this happen, just since I’ve started watching these markets.”
Kiley said the first of the three spikes occurred when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. The second spike was during the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, and the third followed the spate of mass shootings across the country, including the December slayings of 20 children and six adults at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. Kiley said each event stirred anxiety among gun owners over the possibility of restrictive firearms legislation.
“Any time people start talking about gun control, people start hoarding their guns and bullets and ammunition,” Kiley said. “I think it’s somewhat the mentality of, ‘Hey, there’s a hurricane coming, let’s load up some water.’”
Dustin Cunningham, an employee at Ozark Sportsman Supply and a longtime hunter, said he has been reloading his own ammunition for about the past 10 years. He said that although reloading involves many important details, it doesn’t take most people too long to get the hang of it.
“I was pretty scared when I pulled the trigger that first time,” said Cunningham, referring to his first experience firing a reload of his own making. “But after you fire off that first round, you realize you’re not doing anything unusual. After about a week, you’re starting to feel pretty good about yourself, and you can hone in on your skills.”
Ozark Sportsman Supply features indoor pistol and gun ranges, and also rents firearms for use on those ranges. Although the store sells reloading supplies, it has a strict policy against allowing customers to use reloaded ammunition in rented firearms. Cunningham and other employees said this was because of past accidents, where badly loaded rounds had destroyed guns.
Cunningham and Garratt both said they had begun to broaden their search for suppliers for reloading components beyond their normal lists of manufacturers and distributors.
“We’re having to go through pretty much anywhere,” Cunningham said. “Usually we go through factory-direct, or through our wholesalers. Right now, I think our last powder order came through an Internet shop that just had more than we did.”
Cunningham said that in turn, this contributes to higher prices.
“We had to pay retail for that, then we have to try to make our part,” Cunningham said. “I think the last [pound] of powder we had came in at $3 or $4 higher than what it normally is, which is around $30 after tax, for most.”
Garratt said the scarcity had led to a kind of reversal of the typical purchasing relationship between retailers and wholesalers.
“You call them, and they tell you what you can have,” Garratt said. “It’s not like the old days when it was the other way around, when you told them what you want, and they placed the order as fast as they could.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/22/2013