Ammo Whammo.

  The level of brass in my five gallon bucket has barely budged and I have 1000 rounds loaded.  Much fun.  Brass tumbling as we speak.  Going to switch to .45acp next and stock up with match grade ammo.  Need about 500 rounds of that.

  Folks still talking about ammo shortage.  Scary stuff.  Every time Academy has a sale on 9mm and .45 people go buy another five boxes.

  I get through deer season shooting about 30 rounds, including zero checking.  Um, that's using five or six different rifles killing five or six deer.  Most folks get through a whole season with 1-3 rounds.

  Shooting competition I run through a couple thousand 5.56.  Add another 100 rounds of 30-06,  60 rounds of M1 Carbine, 100 Swiss 7.5,  65 rounds of 7.62 at the Cap Perry Springfield match.  Not really that much.  Toss in pistol shooting and a junior shooter and you are looking at 4-5000 rounds a year.  Harmless rounds.  Paper punching.

  Soldiers waded ashore on Dog Green at Omaha Beach with a couple of basic loads in bandoliers of 30-06.  56 rounds per bandolier.

  Two criminal scumbags, Mohammed and Malvo, shut down the whole East Coast with one 20 round box.  For two weeks.  They had ammo left over when they were found asleep in their car.

  The moral?  If you are shooting paper in competition, you need a lot of ammo.  If you're shooting live targets, not so much. 

  If the government decides to destroy the gun culture, they easily can.   They have made it troublesome and expensive in plenty of places and wiped it out.  New Jersey.  New York City.  No problem.  No more paper punching.

  But it doesn't seem to take much ammo to have a big impact.  I'm not sure they can fix that on the way to utopia.

Update:  Got any .45acp WCC 04?

Update II:  Brass out.  LC91, 02, 04, Win.  All of it shot at least once by me and the Marine Reserve units at Mineral Wells.   Might be some US Army Squad Designated Marksman school brass from Ft Hood.  Recycling at it's best.  These cases get a lot of love.  They are like old coins.  You turn them over in your fingers and wonder where they have been.  Was this a 10, 9 or an X?  Or did some Pfc get whacked with a cleaning rod over this shot?

  When I started shooting Highpower Rifle it was a scramble to find ammo.  We shot Win white box, begged ammo and Black Hills reloads.  Hard to find enough and it was breaking the bank.  I started reloading for me and the Kid's dad with a box full of junk stuff I bought for 20 bucks at a gun show.  At one point I had 70 rounds of some off-brand brass that I found in one pile at the rifle range that I shot in practice, reloaded, then practiced again.  Usually shot twice a week.  Couldn't practice until I had all the reloading done.  I shot that brass about 15 times.  It was still good when I put it in the brass barrel.  Never split and always held the primers.  Some weird stuff with three letters on the headstamp.  No date.  Never seen it again.  Finally found enough LC and Winchester to start sorting by year and headstamp.  I did have a few pieces of old nearly black brass that I found on the range at Ft Polk, Louisiana.  That was where my brother took basic training before getting killed with the 173rd Abn in Vietnam.  Those black cases used to work themselves through the process and come by about once a month.  I think they were about LC 66.  Would have liked to hear their story but they stayed silent though I shot them more times than the army ever dreamed about.  Nice to have good brass.  Don't really need it talking while you are trying to shoot.