Have seen quite more brass and bullets showing up here on store shelves, along with ammo. The timing is pretty typical of these shortages, and would guess for the same reason: The component and ammo companies are cranking stuff out as fast as they can, but more is going into ammo than usual, because believe it or not most shooters don't handload. I know this is hard for Campfire members to believe, but there it is.
Plus according to the ATF about 11 million people were run through the background check system in the past year that had never been checked before--which probably means 11 million NEW shooters, many of whom bought a handgun for self-defense. Each of those probably bought a couple of boxes of ammo, which means a LOT more factory ammo was sold as well.
But even with that, what eventually happened during the last several shortages is starting to happen now: The shooters who want a "lifetime" supply of ammo or components are starting to fill their needs, whether cases of ammo/components or a couple boxes of handgun ammo. Once that starts to happen more will stay on shelves, whether local stores or those of Internet companies, because fewer people feel the need to buy whatever they can, whenever they can. The ammo and component companies won't have extra shifts anymore, and things will return to something approximating normal.
This is what happened during past shortages, going back to the big primer-buying panic during the Clinton "assault rifle ban" in the 1990s: Eventually supplies exceeded demand, and the shortages ended.
