U.S. Citizen reported on Monday:
Firearms and Ammunition inventory levels continued their plunge at Nationwide Distributors which serve firearms dealers.
Ammunition broke the 50% level (less than half of pre-election day stock on hand remains).
One order for Magpul PMags was cancelled today at Traction Control.
At 5:30 AM I showed 9,330 units on hand, when the order was received (at 5:00 PM) the quantity available was zero. My distributor reported over 70,000 Magpul PMags were sold last weekend alone.
(My emphasis.) My local favorite firearms vendor Dave reported this to me via email last night:
“Submitted for your approval”:
a) We sold more AR-platform rifles TODAY than we have in the past two months
b) We can’t replace the ARs that we have sold, because ALL of our distributors are sold out.
c) None of our distributors have any idea when they will see more.
d) Last week we received a shipment of over one hundred Mag-Pul 30-round P- mags and were worried about having them around through year-end inventory. As of today, we’re worried about finding more.
e) We are selling multiple cases worth of 9mm ball ammo every day. These are not being sold by the case, they are being sold as individual, 50-round boxes. (I bought two boxes myself today. I really have to sit down and do some handloading for 9mm. I have all the components. – Ed.)
f) I put out three to four Mosin Nagant M-91/30 rifles EVERY morning.
g) I put out two to three home defense shotguns EVERY morning.
h) ATF form 4473 (the “yellow form”) comes to us in case lots. The forms are shrink-wrapped 100 to a stack. Six stacks to a case. We have gone through three stacks since this past Friday. (This also counts forms that have to be destroyed due to mistakes, forms that are in a “delayed” status and forms that are in a “denied” status as well as forms that are not immediately processed for sundry other reasons).
i) We are totally sold out of AR lowers (in all manifestations), parts kits, and most other AR-related goodies.
j) The FBI maintains three call centers to process NICS checks. We have the 800 number on speed dial. The last two days I have had to keep pushing the “redial” button because of the “We’re sorry, all circuits are busy at this time. Please call back later.” message I hear when I try to call in for a background check. Average number of times I have to hit the redial button: fourteen. Conversely, once I actually do get through, the wait time to talk to a human, is seven to nine minutes. If the form I am calling in gets sent for “further review” it’s another five-plus minutes before I get to talk to the next human.
Markadelphia suggested in a comment yesterday that “People are really sick of it and there may very well be waning interest in guns.” Doesn’t appear that way, does it? Standard response #7.