Gun Dealers Making Money From Hot Selling Bullets

What's up with America? Sales of properties, cars and other things in the US are declining due to bad economy but bullets are selling like hot cakes. Americans have spent record-breaking amounts of money on guns and ammunition and the most obvious sign of their demand: empty ammunition shelves. At points during the past year, bullets have been selling faster than factories could make them.

Gun owners have bought about 12 billion rounds of ammunition in the past year, industry officials estimate. That's up from 7 billion to 10 billion in a normal year.

It has happened, oddly, at a time when the two concerns that usually make people buy guns and bullets -- crime and increased gun control -- seem less threatening than usual.

The explanation for the run on bullets lies partly in economics: Once rounds were scarce, people hoarded them, which made them scarcer.

But the rush for bullets, like this year's increase in gun sales, also says something about how suspicious the two sides in the gun-control debate are of each other, even at a time when the issue is on Washington's back burner.

The run started, observers say, as people heeded warnings from the gun-rights lobby that a new Democratic administration would make bullets more expensive or harder to get. Now that the shortage is starting to ease, gun-control groups are voicing their own dark worries about stockpiled ammunition.

In between, in the 12 months since last October, gun shops sold enough bullets to give every American 38 of them.

The increase in gun buying during the past year explains a large part of the increase in ammunition sales to the private market, experts on the industry say -- but probably not all of it.

They say that bullets were bought not just by new gun owners but also by those who already owned weapons. And they say bullet sales might have increased even faster if supply had kept up with demand.

Bullet makers say the reasons for these shortages include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have made bullet components such as copper and brass more expensive.

Reason for alarm?

The high sales have alarmed some anti-gun groups. Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center said he worries about a revival of the anti-government militia movement of the Clinton era.

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