We know that the manufacturers lobby writers to test and advertise their products. Is there any serious conversations going on about the lack of primers killing a generation of young reloaders from the other direction?
Best regards,
F01
No, because the causes of this "shortage" are the same as all the previous shortages going back to the 1-2 year primer shortage in the late 1990s after the passage of the Clinton "assault rifle ban." Many handloaders thought all their guns and ammo were going to become "illegal" and started hoarding--and the big item was primers. This was because a rumor started going around that "new government rules" were somehow changing the way primers were made, so they'd all "go dud" within six months. Consequently handloaders started buying up all the "old style" primers they could find, and some were so paranoid that they started stuffing them inside PVC pipe and burying the pipes in their yards.
Same basic thing has happened in various ways during every component/ammo buying panic since, though often to different sorts of stuff. Obama's reelection somehow caused shooters to start hoarding rimfire ammunition, especially .22 Long Rifle. This lasted for a year or more, until most shooters figured they had enough. Not so oddly, one of the items I've been seeing plenty of in local stores is .22 Long Rifle ammo, probably because many folks are still shooting all the ammo they bought back then.
One of the interesting stories here on the Campfire was a guy who bragged about how he "got around" the 1-brick limit for .22 Long Rifles at a local store. He brought a "disguise" with him and left it in his pickup while he went into the store and bought his one brick. He then took the brick out to his pickup, changed his jacket and hat, and put on a pair of sunglasses--and went back inside and bought another brick.
I also was in a store that had the same deal--one brick per customer--during that period, right after a bunch of .22 ammo had been just delivered. Not only were people crowded around trying to grab a brick before it was all gone, but they were taking photos with their cell phones, then sending the photos to friends, who then showed up to join in the hoarding frenzy.
Every manufacturer I was personally acquainted with back then was running their plants 24/7 by putting on extra shifts. This included CCI in Idaho, where they were cranking out not just rimfire ammo but primers to feed the demand.
What has happened every time this sort of hoarding panic has occurred before is that after a year, or a little longer, it starts to subside, again because those who were "caught short" suddenly decide they have a sufficient supply. The other thing that happens is some people buy up whatever they can find that's in short supply, then sell it at higher prices. This is why Hodgdon's website notes that the powder they're selling when it become it's available is "NOT FOR RESALE," which obviously means squat to resellers.
Now, I can understand why somebody young enough to have just started reloading would wonder what the hell's going, and blame the manufacturers, because they've never seen this occur before. But I have, going back to the Clinton "dud primer" rumors, and so far the panic-buying/hoarding eventually slows down, and then ceases, when everybody who feels the need to hoard quits buying--which of course also stops the resellers from buying. A year or two after the Obama rimfire panic I was at a local garage sale, and the guy had obviously been a reseller, because he had stacks of .22 rimfire that still had the super-high price stickers on from when he'd been reselling. And nobody was buying any.
Oh, and I have yet to encounter any of the "go-dud primers" that supposedly were going to replace all the "real primers" during the Clinton panic.
