On another forum with several thousand members there is an ammunition thread where people from around the nation report on what's available in their areas. There are sporadic reports of 223 and various pistol rounds, fairly common reports of 20 round boxes of centerfire rifle hunting rounds of various calibers & shotgun shells but no reports, period, of anyone seeing rimfire for sale anywhere.
Talked to the sporting goods dept manager at the local Walmart who told me that a couple of weeks ago they unexpectedly received about 60 of 333 round bulk boxes of rimfire. Word apparently got out. She said at the opening the next day there were 10 people already lined up. Even with the 3 box limit, all gone within about 45 minutes.
Found this on Breitbart.com:
"According to reports, the Department of Homeland Security has stockpiled over 1.6 billion rounds of ammo for its various agencies, and one of the worst side effects of this appears to be a shortage of ammo for private gun owners.
The question is--what if the shortage is intentional?
Bear with me here. I am not a "conspiracy theorist" nor do I believe that DHS is stockpiling bullets in order to wage war on Americans, as some commentators have suggested.
However, I do believe they know these massive ammo purchases are driving supply down and prices up, and that's generally a good thing for an administration that doesn't think people ought to be able to own guns to begin with.
Think about it this way--although reports indicate DHS had 1.6 billion rounds stockpiled as of spring 2012, they recently ordered over 20 million more.
Many of these rounds are in .40 cal and 9mm--two very popular rounds for civilians--and will be manufactured by ATK, which owns Federal. Federal, as you know, produces a lot of the ammunition that civilians used to purchase at Wal-Mart and other stores, when Wal-Mart and other stores could find ammo to put on their shelves.
The bottom line--gun owners are facing a perfect storm. Civilians are buying up every box of ammo they can find in anticipation of a federal gun grab and less ammo is making it to the shelves to replace what is being purchased, largely because so many rounds of ammo are being sent to fill government orders.
Sounds like gun control by another name.