George,
To a certain extent I agree with you, and the problem was exacerbated not long after Obama's reelection by the school shooting, which stirred up the entire anti-gun community, and really cleaned out a lot of gun stores.
But by the next summer the threat of new federal anti-gun legislation had died, thanks to the Republican-controlled house. A few laws were passed in ultra-liberal states, but the big threat was gone.
Unfortunately, by that time some people had figured out how to profit from the .22 ammo shortage, something that's apparently continuing. This fed into our anxieties about loading components, and as TheBlueMountainApe pointed out, the panic buying started to feed on itself.
Every previous such panic, like the one during the Clinton years fueled by the "assault rifle ban," and then Obama's first election, started to ease up within a year. I suspect this one's been going on longer both because so many shooters thought there was no way Obama would get reelected, and because of cell phones and the Internet. Nowadays, every time some .22 ammo or hard-to-find powder or bullets appear anywhere, there's a feeding frenzy and they're gone. That wasn't happening nearly as much during the previous two panics. So this one's at least partially information-driven.
It's interesting how many people post here (and no doubt on other sites) when stuff appears in stores or on websites. Apparently they think they're doing everybody a favor, but it feeds the buying frenzy, and thus prolongs the shortages.
I even know of one old sporting goods store here in Montana, where I did most of my component shopping when living in that area 25 years ago, that got out of the reloading business. The owner simply grew tired of shooters hounding him about not finding stuff on the shelves--and then buying it all in a day or two when it did appear. So he said screw it and sold what was left to another store.
