there is a shortage of .22 ammunition

One of the things that has surprised me is the shortage of .22LR ammunition. You can't seem to get it anywhere.

Generally when I have taken a break from match shooting like I have I like to get out there in the spring and relearn my basics with a .22 because it is cheap.

Right now there isn't a whole lot of .22 out there which surprised the hell out of me. I could understand the shortages of the larger calibers as I sit here and watch the country gear up for some kind of internal war.

Then it occurred to me that .22s are the most common firearms out there and that it is likely that people are considering them to be some viable form of self-defense.

Actually the .22 rifle IS the most common firearm used for self-defense because it is simply the most common firearm out there.

While it certainly isn't the first choice, if it's all you have it is certainly better than nothing and in the right hands it can be downright deadly.

A .22 is a lot quieter than a regular rifle, too. They also make subsonic ammunition for it which doesn't muffle the muzzle blast but it doesn't crack as it travels through the air.

I have used subsonic ammunition before to eliminate a pest about 10 years ago. Neighbor Bob wanted a ground hog eliminated and his next door neighbor was a chronic cop caller. I loaded a .22 with subsonic ammo, stood in his dining room and waited.

The neighbor was outside and probably 75 feet away when I let fly and dropped Mr. Ground Hog and was none the wiser.

My guess is that a lot of the .22 ammunition is being bought up by suburbanites. I think the mentality is that they want it to keep people out of their back yards when the whatever is is that's going to happen happens.

Over the years a number of doomsday preppers I have met have suggested that any collapse is going to hit the cities the first and the hardest. That will be followed by groups of hungry city people making their way out to the 'burbs to forage.

It does make sense and you can well imagine that there are a lot of people in the burbs that will be hit also and want to hold onto what they have.

I suppose that when you think of it a .22 would be a pretty good tool to discourage would be thieves to go somewhere else. I sure wouldn't want to get gutshot with one.

All of the above is total conjecture. I really don't have a clue as to why the .22 ammunition is unavailable but it is. It just seems odd that it is so hard to get now.

As I am writing this I have just had a thought and the next time I go shopping I am going to start casually looking in other people's carts and see what kind of grub they are buyiing.

It would be interesting to see if people are stocking up on canned goods and other things that fare well in long term storage.

Incidentally I am just pretty much a neutral observer. I have no stake in what I post, financially or otherwise.

What I do have is that when I am not at sea making a living I am ashore and have free time to look around and notice what is going on around me.

I have an old friend that has spent the last couple of decades in a rural area running livestock and he has questioned my observations claiming he has access to the same things I do, meaning media and internet.

He does and he doesn't.

I run. I am on the streets, stores, bars, pool halls, rifle ranges, and whatnot. I am constantly in the 'burbs of Pittsburgh, the cities of New York and Philly. He's not. He misses a lot because of that.

When I chat withs someone I can hear the tones and inflections which can change meanings of things said radically.

I still come home to the usual pile of things to do. There's housework and honey-do lists but I do get time to get out and see a few things. All I do here is pass on what I see.


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