How much ammo is too much ammo? And who gets to say?

[P5 Guy]

How much secure storage space do you have?
From the buy cheap and stack deep school of ammo and handloading procurement that and cash are my limiting factors.
Who is going to snitch on an ammo stockpile/hoarder anyway? Just keeping my buying habits to myself.

[spacecoast]

I have a heuristic - a thousand rounds for each gun caliber as a reserve.

My thoughts are similar, although I set my comfort levels depending on number of guns owned in each caliber, frequency of use and whether or not I reload the caliber and can make more as needed.

very high use and no reload - 7.62x39 and .22LR (2,000 or more each)
high use (reload) - .38 special and 9mm (1,000 each)
medium use (reload) - .45 ACP and .380 ACP (500 each)
low use (reload) - .44 special, .44 mag, .357 mag, .25 ACP (100-200 each)

[Skans]

You know you have too much ammo when.....

(a) You are visited more by the EPA than the BATFE.
(b) You feel certain you will be the richest man on earth after the next financial crash.
(c) When your redneck friends think you are too redneck to hang out with because of your ammo addiction
(d) When you lost half your ammo in the divorce because you threw your wife's old shoes out to make room for more ammo.

[spacecoast]

(d) When you lost half your ammo in the divorce because you threw your wife's old shoes out to make room for more ammo.

Forget cliff diving and bungee jumping... now that's dangerous!

[Glenn E. Meyer]

You know you have to much when you run out of space and have to stack it around the toilet such that it and the ammo falls through the second floor on to the first floor.

A friend of mine swears this happened to someone he knows. I do know someone who was sitting on the can - no ammo around him - and the throne plunged through the second floor to the first. He was seriously injured.

So I supposed ammo could accelerate the process.

[Levant]

Ok, here's a twist. How many magazines is enough or too many?

I've seen pictures of piles of 300+ magazines owned by some folks in combinations of various pistol calibers and AR-15s.

[Onward Allusion]

After all I had a Ruger target pistol that I ran about 40,000 rounds through over a 20 year period that pretty much just fell apart and has officially been retired to the old guns home.

Um, my boys and I used to kill a couple of thousand rounds at the club in ONE afternoon. 27,000 rounds would last a dozen or so range trips for us. Of course, this was before the post-Newtown ammo-hoarding madness.

[Coach Z]

I don't have a number but I agree with the sentiment of enough that I can weather another drought or price spike. I've exceeded that by a fair bit so I've stopped buying ammo for now. Kinda kills me to pass up a 1k pack of 9mm for 218 but I did and hopefully someone who has been starving for ammo will get it.

[Levant]

Two more school shootings this week. This shortage is not going to end until we get a Congress and President that realize it is criminals and not us that are shooting and that taking our guns, not keeping our guns, is the cause of violence.

[JohnKSa]

I have almost 3000 rounds of .22, 1000 of .40, and 500 9mm.

My wife and I both compete, practice for competion and generally enjoy shooting.

There have been many occasions when we've used more than 500 rounds of centerfire pistol in a single day, and on at least one occasion, the inventory dropped about 1300 rounds of centerfire in a single weekend.

I don't mean this to be a commentary on your level of ammunition inventory, or mine either for that matter--just pointing out how different levels of usage color one's thoughts on the matter.

[jaytex1969]

why do people these days feel they need to know or be involved?

Isn't that a significant part of using a public forum?

[Levant]

Isn't that a significant part of using a public forum?

Discussing on a public forum should generally be discussing and not judging. I'm hardly one to speak on that since I tend to see the world in black and white but I work on it.

Where I get the most judgmental is morals (my morals - go figure) and when people talk about doing things that leave victims behind. If someone brings to the forum that they're having an affair on their wife, I'm going to judge.

If they say they prefer white cars, I'm going to (at least try to limit to) give them my opinion that I prefer black cars.

You want a thousand rounds, I want 500. Someone else wants 10000 or 100000. That's a discussion of pros and cons, reasons to, reasons to not; that's a forum.

[jimbob86]

I have not read the whole thread but....

I was talking to one guy that said he has 27000 rounds of 22lr. Why would anyone need that many rounds ?

From an investment standpoint, I wish I had 27K rounds of 22lr, purchased at the price point that existed when I first heard the idea that .22lr would be a good thing to have in uncertain times (late 1990's) ..... it would have been a much better investment than that mutual fund was ......

[tomrkba]

I buy it to use. I can shoot 500 rounds of 22 LR a week. Twenty seven thousand rounds is just over a year of shooting. I know guys who shoot two to three hundred rounds of center fire rifle ammo every weekend. Other guys I know shoot obscene amounts of 9mm. Another guy I know put 45,000 rounds through one of his 1911s in just under two years.

[Levant]

jimbob, you're absolutely correct.

Had you put all your money in gold in 1980 you would not have kept up with inflation to now.

Had you put all your money into ammunition in 1980, you would have kept up with inflation and then tripled that in value.

[Old 454]

The only time I find a problem with that kinda buying is when people are standing in line to buy some ammo and one guy will buy everything and leave nothing for the other people waiting to make a purchase.

In this recent shortage I have seen it happen with powder and primers, with the too bad for you attitude, YEAH for me and screew you.

But other then that I belive anyone can own as much as they want, who knows maybe the guy bought the 27K rounds over time.

[44 AMP]

How much is too much ammo?

When you have to reinforce the floor in order to store it all, that might be too much, in one spot.

Otherwise, I think ammo is like what pilots think about fuel. You can never have too much, unless you are on fire!

27,00 rounds of .22LR sounds like a fantastic amount of ammo, but it all fits in 6 GI .50 caliber ammo cans (in 50rnd boxes) and doesn't even fully fill the 6th one.

To me, there is a significant difference between someone with money, and no previous firearm hobby buying up ammo as a speculator (hoarder), and those who have acquired what to some seems a huge quantity of ammo as a result of their shooting and reloading hobby.

Also, while not as common as they used to be, there are still people who do not operate on a "just in time" inventory system.

Somehow, it seems these people are being made out to be something abnormal. If your life is such that you have no problems with a small amount and buying more whenever you need or want, fine. Its your business. But please don't mock me for a reserve in times of plenty, and DO NOT whine to me about your situation in times of want.

I used to shoot a bit, haven't done much lately, for various reasons. I do like ammunition. I like loading and reloading ammunition.

I don't compete. And I haven't hunted in years (I'm a bit more mobility challenged than I used to be). But I have a bit of ammo on hand.

Anticipating my children learning to shoot, I bought at least a couple bricks of .22LR a month for over a decade. Kids are grown and gone now, and I still have about 12k of that stuff left. Am I a hoarder?

It don't spoil (or at least not for a LONG time, if done right) and if I don't have to buy any for the rest of my life, how does that hurt anything? Frankly, I'm rather glad I bought what I did when I did.

Also being set up to reload for over 30 different centerfire rounds, including some wildcat calibers, I have a few rounds of ammo here and there....

The sad thing to me is that for as long as I can remember, a rifle was worth several cases of ammunition in a caliber like .308. One case of that ammo today would buy two of those rifles now.

I don't care who you are, that there just ain't right...

[Joe_Pike]

I don't have 27, 000 rounds of .22lr but I do have close to half of that. I still can't bring myself to shoot any of it, though, until I can walk into any store that sells ammo and buy what I want. I like shooting .22lr more than a lot of other calibers, but I'm in a holding pattern at the moment. Actually, I wish I had 27, 000 rounds of .22lr.

[medalguy]

I do have about 20,000 rounds of .22, most of it purchased over the years prior to 1995 when I stopped buying it. Many of you say you have enough ammo to last maybe a year. Think about this-- how long ago was it you were able to buy .22 ammo for a reasonable price? Wish you had bought more?

And then there's this-- I own several machine guns, and not infrequently we will take several cases of .45 and .30-06 to the range and leave with large buckets of brass. How much ammo do you think I might shoot in a year? 27,000 rounds isn't really very much ammo in ANY caliber.

[ms6852]

You can never have too much ammo unless you are on fire or sinking.

[SFsc616171]

Folks here in America have forgotten a basic premise.

"What somebody does with their money, time, and avocation, ain't nobody else's business, and if somebody gets to bein' a dang busybody, and has the darn fool idea that what they'sa doin' ain't no good for them, then they need to keep that overlong proboscis inside their own drapes, and just shut the heck up!"

That goes for any busybody fool in the gov'mint, too!

Why?

It's called personal responsibility, and personal freedom.

[Don P]

Enough ammo on hand is when the concrete slab in the den starts to sag under the weight.

[SPEMack618]

I'm in a position where the ten cases of .22 LR I just recieved from the CMP may be considered hoarding or too much by some, but I look it at and hope that it will be enough until the next time I can place and recieve an order of that quanity again.

[DMZX]

I got into a habit of buying a box of bulk .22 ammo, when it was on the shelf and around $10 for 500 rounds, every time I shopped at the local discount stores. When the wife sent me out to get canning jars, yarn and such, I would grab a box Rem, Win or Fed bulk. Hey, WTH.

I shot a fair amount of .22 LR so I was just stocking up a bit. I stacked it in a cabinet below my shop bench without ever giving much thought to how much I had.

Over the years I accumulated quite a bit. I did a inventory when .22 ammo became rather scarce.

I discovered over 30,000 rounds of mostly mixed mfg. bulk ammo. In the last two years I have shot and given away to friends and relatives about 10,000 rounds.

So I, without much forethought, have been able to get through the current .22 ammo shortage without effecting my shooting.

[FlyFish]

How much ammo is too much ammo?

More than I'm able to afford.

And who gets to say?

I do.

. . . the ten cases of .22 LR I just received from the CMP . . .

I was feeling pretty good about the several cases I've got in the closet until I read that.