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Plato wrote:Hehe, properly stacked -case quantities of ammo can serve nicely for chairs, tv stands, tables, etc

Maybe in a one story house with a slab foundation but not so great in a 3rd floor apartment.

I agree with Beiruty. There's no need to stockpile .223 ammo and magazines and M4 carbines. With one box of 30-06 and a real rifle I can get all the poodle shooters I could ever need if push comes to shove.

I decided on an additional 400 rounds of 223 to add to my inventory. 6.99 /box from budsgunshop.com..... now 7.99
One dollar increase in two days

Wow, reading this thread I feel compelled to stand up and say, "Hi. My name is Skiprr. And I'm a stockpiler."

But it has nothing to do with politics, going "survivalist," or fearing real Dawn of the Dead zombies crowding the streets. It's just money.

For the calibers I shoot regularly, I keep a fair amount of ammo. A pretty fair amount; I won't say how much. But at least I'm not using .50 ammo cans as furniture. An upside is that I don't buy ammo very often: only twice this year, and one of those times in a caliber for which I have no gun (been waiting on the new rifle since May).

One of these days I'll start reloading--at least my basic pistol ammo--but in the meantime, when I find what I feel is a good deal, I stock up. Heck, these investments have vastly outperformed the Dow Jones Average.

I missed the rush on buying a AR, wanted one forever, but by the time I got around to buying one they were all gone.. I didnt just decide to buy one because of the resent events.. So I have no .223 rounds.. A buddy of mine bought his AR a month ago and has about 500 rounds, he'd have more but he cant help but to get rid of a few hundred every weekend LOL..

For the other guns I own, I only keep rounds for the guns I shoot all the time, the others it just depends on the price at the time when I buy them, can range from 50 to 200... .22LR 600 rds, 30-06 500 rounds ( the expensive stuff )... I bought a Kimber UC 2 Thursday, and I already have 300 rds for it, bought 120 more today. S&W .41 I've got 200 hot reloads for it.. I always figured if something were to happen, give me the 30-06, and the .41 ( haven't shot the .45 enough to trust it yet ), and I'll be fine.. A 30-06 in capable hands is a dangerous thing... 1 of my .300's would be a better choice, they are my Elk hunting guns though, so I dont keep many rounds for them, tp expensive to stockpile..

My buddy and I are considering getting into reloading. My dad did it many yrs ago but got out of it.. We had it figured that 50 .45 hollow points would cost about 12 bucks.. If start I'll have a ton more of everything, I save all of my brass..

Bunkins wrote:My buddy and I are considering getting into reloading. My dad did it many yrs ago but got out of it.. We had it figured that 50 .45 hollow points would cost about 12 bucks.. If start I'll have a ton more of everything, I save all of my brass..

Start casting while you're at it; to get good deals on bullets, you'll need to buy by the thousands, and 1,000 230gr bullets weigh over 30lbs. Some of the companies still haven't come down on prices since lead topped out and started dropping, and either way, shipping is a real bear.

Scrap lead is cheap by comparison, usually available locally, and you can get a hardness tester from Midway for about $45 if you want to know what you're getting. Depending on the scrapyard, you might even be able to pick and choose a couple hundred pounds of exactly what you want. One of my coworkers got 300lbs of nothing but linotype at scrap price a couple years ago, and another one just picked up 250lbs of wheel weights for about $50 from a tire shop that didn't want to take the time to haul them to the scrapyard.

zaroffhunts wrote:I agree with Beiruty. There's no need to stockpile .223 ammo and magazines and M4 carbines. With one box of 30-06 and a real rifle I can get all the poodle shooters I could ever need if push comes to shove.

Other than my rifle of choice is a 6 mm. And $1 to anyone who can come up with a good reason why the weaker .243 has won out over the 6mm in the popularity contest.

Buying up large lots of ammo when it's on sale is maybe reasonable, if you use it quick enough to justify it. Hoarding it for The Big One doesn't make that much sense to me. I mean, if it's gonna go down like that, after you go through 10 clips or so, they're gonna send in a missile or something and blow you into smaller pieces that are more easily swept up, so more important to rely on The Power in that case.

The pres is only one man, who has no legislative authority. Yeah, I know, executive orders. But we all know he has to try for re-election someday, and he and his party don't want to alienate the majority of Americans who believe in the RKBA. Sure they may make some inroads on the fringes, but my simpleton self here thinks things aren't going to change that much in 4 yrs.

So, I've got
~15 rds of 6 mm (plenty for deer season as I don't plan on bagging more than 15 deer )
9 rds of .243 (have to get another box of 20 before going hunting next week)
20 rds of .223 (for the single shot deer/varmint rifle)
40 rds of 9mm (I don't even have the gun for that one)
~70 rds of .40 S&W (more than my usual stock, but got a good price on a 50 ct box)
200 rds of .22 LR (most of a brick--is that 250 or 500... I forget)
30 rds of 22 WMR
~60 rds of 20 ga (mostly bird loads, 10 rds #3 buck for self defense)
GRAND TOTAL: ~450 rds (mostly .22 LR) spread among 8 cartridges/shells.

I think that's it. I'm kind of half looking for another deer rifle for the kids. Main objective is to get it in a caliber that I already have so I can not increase the number of different calibers I have to keep in stock!!!

KD5NRH wrote: Start casting while you're at it; to get good deals on bullets, you'll need to buy by the thousands, and 1,000 230gr bullets weigh over 30lbs. Some of the companies still haven't come down on prices since lead topped out and started dropping, and either way, shipping is a real bear.

Scrap lead is cheap by comparison, usually available locally, and you can get a hardness tester from Midway for about $45 if you want to know what you're getting. Depending on the scrapyard, you might even be able to pick and choose a couple hundred pounds of exactly what you want. One of my coworkers got 300lbs of nothing but linotype at scrap price a couple years ago, and another one just picked up 250lbs of wheel weights for about $50 from a tire shop that didn't want to take the time to haul them to the scrapyard.

I was under the impression that a straight lead bullet with no copper jacket would foul the barrel much sooner/worse than your typical copper jacketed factory projectiles. Any truth to that?

The biggest threat to ammo right now, IMHO, is a possibility that cheap import ammo may get outlawed. If they ban cheap imported ammo,Wolf...barnual...ect..., the most popular calibers affected will be .223 and 7.62x39. These also happen to be the calibers that a person is likely to shoot more of during an outing to the range. Heck, it is easy to run through 4 or 5 hundred rounds in a day. Point is, buying ammo in bulk when you find it cheap is not such a bad idea. I can remember paying less than a hundred bucks for 1000 rounds of wolf 7.62x39 just a couple years back. Now look at it. 250 is beginning to sound like a good deal. A couple years ago, .223 could be bought for 125-150 bucks a thousand.... now 275 up is the norm.

I say...Buy it cheap and stack it deep. I have been stocking up for a few years so now I have the luxury of waiting the present panic out to see if the price comes back down while others are having to rush around hoping they can get some before it is gone and paying 40% more for it than if they had bought a few months ago.

To answer the original question. YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH!!!

SlowDave wrote:I was under the impression that a straight lead bullet with no copper jacket would foul the barrel much sooner/worse than your typical copper jacketed factory projectiles. Any truth to that?

Depends on what you're using it for; in most pistols, lead bullets make fine target ammo at velocities that will still let you get in a full day's practice before you have to clean. In a high-powered rifle, you'll want to use gas checked bullets or really light loads. If you decide to do gas checks, search eBay for user codarnall and get his gas check makers in the calibers you use; at $30-35 per tool, using aluminum cans or scrap sheet brass for gas checks will save you money in the long run.

It also depends on the lube and the hardness of the lead alloy; I regularly shoot soft .38 wadcutters at +P and above velocities without too much trouble using Liquid Alox, and I have some really hard .45ACP bullets (West Coast Bullet, IIRC) that don't seem to foul at all...then again, I've pulled some of those out of the backstop that were still perfect except for light rifling marks, and the micrometer shows they're less than .002" different from unfired ones. That said, pushing soft lead into the medium-to-hot .357Mag range without a gas check is going to foul regardless of the lube, but practice loads, I tend to keep it down to .38+P.

I do know a few guys who cast .357Sig and 9mm that will take 10-20 FMJs when they go to shoot their cast bullets, and run a couple through any time the barrel starts getting fouled. They claim that one or two jacketed bullets will scrape the lead fouling out just fine, though I haven't had to try it yet since most of my plain lead usage so far has been .45ACP, .45LC, and .38Spl. I may be ordering up some 9mm and .308 molds soon, though, so I'll probably get to try that.

We've got 500 rounds of .223, 400 rounds of .308, and 200 rounds of .45 ACP.

For me, it's not about panic buying; it's about buying it while it's still affordable.

When the ammo you were stockpiling in the first floor bedroom is now in the basement without any assistance from you that is probably enough

dukalmighty wrote:When the ammo you were stockpiling in the first floor bedroom is now in the basement without any assistance from you that is probably enough

You may think your joking but that stuff gets real heavy when you start getting past 10K rounds. I had decided to store it in a cabinet off the side of my Kitchen. I had about 7K rounds piled in and noticed the cabinet was beginning to pull off the wall.I unloaded it all before it caused any damage. Then I stacked it under the wet bar. A week later I went to put more ammo in my new ammo area and the top shelf had collapsed down onto the bottom shelf. Now I have to dig all that ammo back out and reinforce the shelf.

03Lightningrocks wrote:The biggest threat to ammo right now, IMHO, is a possibility that cheap import ammo may get outlawed. If they ban cheap imported ammo,Wolf...barnual...ect..., the most popular calibers affected will be .223 and 7.62x39. These also happen to be the calibers that a person is likely to shoot more of during an outing to the range. Heck, it is easy to run through 4 or 5 hundred rounds in a day. Point is, buying ammo in bulk when you find it cheap is not such a bad idea. I can remember paying less than a hundred bucks for 1000 rounds of wolf 7.62x39 just a couple years back. Now look at it. 250 is beginning to sound like a good deal. A couple years ago, .223 could be bought for 125-150 bucks a thousand.... now 275 up is the norm.

I say...Buy it cheap and stack it deep. I have been stocking up for a few years so now I have the luxury of waiting the present panic out to see if the price comes back down while others are having to rush around hoping they can get some before it is gone and paying 40% more for it than if they had bought a few months ago.

To answer the original question. YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH!!!

Theres your answer folks!

Price protection and need is the biggest advantage by stockpiling ammo.