Where to buy ammo in the US in 2024?
I’m broadly assuming anyone reading this either has enough firearms, doesn’t want firearms, or can’t get firearms. If you want to buy guns, there are plenty of good resources for that. I’m generally a Sig Sauer fan, but almost all modern decent guns are decent.
While I have…substantially more than one gun, there’s a declining marginal utility to owning more than a few. I’m well into the very flat part of the curve, and happy to continue buying more, but this is more collector impulse than anything rational or practical. While there are periodically substantial technological improvements in firearms, they remain functional for decades — designs from the early part of the 20th century are still viable today. Assuming very minimal maintenance, it’s possible to spend $5-10k and purchase a lifetime supply of a variety of firearms.
However, ammunition is consumable, and periodically has been very restricted in supply. Costs have gone up substantially since 2016-2019, due to a combination of factors: increased demand with only limited increases in factory capacity (which mostly are now operating 24x7), increased commodity/component costs, regulatory fears, etc. If I had the US Government or some other entity paying for my ammunition, I could comfortably shoot 1-3k rounds/week, which (depending on the specific ammunition) is easily $250 and could be as high as $5000 per week. As I have to pay for my own ammunition, I shoot much less than that (both in volume and mostly cheap 9mm vs expensive rifle or shotgun ammo).
Ammunition isn’t quite as shelf-stable as firearms, but when stored properly (consistent temperature and humidity, broadly room temperature or slightly cooler, kept dry and safe) it can easily last for decades. I would probably not want to depend on 30 year old ammunition for low-volume carry use given the option of new production, but rotating stored carry ammo into training ammo once it’s aged is reasonable.
Prices in 2020-2022 were particularly absurd. Fortunately, I stockpiled enough before 2020 that I didn’t really need to buy much that year — just the new (to me) calibers of .300 Blackout and 6.5 Creedmoor, both of which remained relatively available (they were always expensive, and didn’t go up by as much), and in Puerto Rico, a lot of ammunition remained normal-for-Puerto Rico prices until late 2020 (since suppliers were distinct from the mainstream US market).
I mostly try to maintain inventory of 9mm (124gr FMJ, 124gr or 147gr JHP, particularly Speer Gold Dot Hollow Point), 5.56mm (various types, including M193, M855, and especially 75 and 77gr OTM), 12ga (#00 buck, especially Federal LE 8-pellet reduced recoil), and then about 10 other types in smaller quantities.
In Puerto Rico, where I live, ammunition must be purchased through licensed gun stores. There aren’t any truly excellent gun stores in Puerto Rico (yet; I’ve considered starting one), but several good ones — B&B Target is good for shotgun ammunition, AAA Gun Shop is decent for handgun ammunition and some rifle ammo (plus has some of my favorite staff), Lone Star has the best deal on transfers (a fixed price per box, potentially containing multiple firearms), and RL Armeria has by far the best range (45 IDPA bays, etc.) in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately the selection of ammo at these places isn’t amazing, nor is pricing, so for specialty calibers or specific defensive ammo, I tend to buy in the US and use the permitted “bring it with you along with a declared firearm on commercial flights” route. This is unfortunately limited to 11 pounds by most airlines, which is approximately 300 rounds of 9mm or 5.56mm. I bring ammo back on most flights from Florida, although don’t try with NYC connections.
I probably shoot more in the US than in Puerto Rico (due to classes, etc.), so having ammo in the US is actually more useful than in Puerto Rico.
In the US, I’ve also never really found local gun shops to be great for ammo. Some are better than others, but rarely will they sell at prevailing online prices. Ammo is heavy and expensive to ship, but it’s shipped from distributors to most shops in basically the same way it would be shipped from distributors to end users, and if you’re buying 1-5k rounds at a time, there’s not much savings to be had on slightly cheaper bulk shipping costs vs. smaller stores (a huge retail store might do a truckload delivery, but they also rarely have low margin pricing).
So, in the US, I mostly recommend (and order myself) from online stores. I have my ammo shipped to hotels or schools where I’m taking shooting classes, or to a consulting client’s office which I visit periodically (and where everyone in the company is pro gun; have had serious discussions of opening a non-retail gun business in one of the spare offices on our floor, and we could then have an SOT and other permits to have great stuff…)
While ammo is largely a commodity, lots of online stores play stupid games with shipping charges and other charges to confuse the final delivered price. What I focus on is in-stock status, delivered price per round, and to a lesser degree, being confident ammo was stored/etc. correctly (it usually is shipping fast enough that this isn’t a particular concern). I tend to buy 250+ rounds of shotgun ammo and 500-1000 rounds of pistol or rifle ammo at a time; cheap birdshot is the one type of ammo I preferentially buy locally in Puerto Rico (because we get cheap Spanish trash ammo pretty cheap, and it’s heavy/bulky).
There are specialty search engines for guns and gun-related stuff. Gun.deals has gone downhill over the past years, but still tends to post good stuff — the ammo category is solid.
Online stores with membership-based discount programs used to be good, but they tend to devalue over time. Most of my pre-2020 purchases were from Target Sports USA, but they’ve gotten a lot worse since the big 2020 shortages (they took a while to raise their prices, but rarely have good prices on rifle ammo, and rarely have anything in stock; in 2023+, they’re still a good source for my favorite 9mm FMJ, Speer Lawman 124gr, but otherwise pretty mediocre. I have a membership, but it’s barely worth it.
Lucky Gunner is a pretty good bulk store — often not the cheapest, but good selection, and my current only source for my favorite shotgun round — Federal LE13300 12ga 2 3/4” Flite Control 8-pellet reduced-recoil #00 buckshot — I still have some $200 cases of that from almost a decade ago, vs the $360/case it costs today, but now that I have a Benelli M4 and a Beretta 1301 mod 2, need to stock more to keep it fed.
During the 2020-2022 drought, one of the best stores was SGAmmo. Obnoxiously, they block Puerto Rico IP addresses (I think all non-US addresses), but they have great online inventory display and good selection. This is where I tend to get 6.5 Creedmoor (e.g. Hornady 140gr ELD Match).
MidwayUSA and some of the other stores have been good at various times. Midway is consistently a good source of IMI ammo, and I am a huge fan of their 77gr Razorcore 5.56. SGAmmo has had IMI at good prices in the past as well, but is about 30% more expensive now. Their M118LR .308 is also a good round; it’s 95% of the performance of the best Black Hills ammo for 50% of the price, but I’m mostly a 6.5 Creedmoor shooter now. I tend to use 77gr for short barreled rifles close-in/terminal effects, not long distance precision shooting (although it’s great for that as well), so I’m willing to sacrifice some additional accuracy for buying a larger quantity.
However, my favorite new ammo store discovery this year is Palmetto State Armory (PSA).
PSA is a unique company. While they’re a commercial business, and trying to make a profit, they have a specific mission:
FREEDOM OVER PROFIT.
Since its inception, Palmetto State Armory has focused on providing the best quality AR-15 parts and accessories for the best price possible. Following year after year of exponential growth, Palmetto State Armory’s core principle remains the same, and our commitment to freedom before profit remains unwavering. The idea is simple:
SELL AS MANY GUNS TO AS MANY LAW-ABIDING AMERICANS AS POSSIBLE.
Putting guns into "common use" is an important legal defense established by the Supreme Court that safeguards the rights of the people against tyranny by prohibiting restrictions on firearms found to be "in common use". Putting any gun into "common use" protects against any attempt by the government to further infringe on the Second Amendment right of all Americans.
OUR MISSION IS TO MAXIMIZE FREEDOM, NOT OUR PROFITS. WE WANT TO SELL AS MANY AR-15 AND AK-47 RIFLES AS WE CAN AND PUT THEM INTO COMMON USE IN AMERICA TODAY. OUR FOCUS ISN'T TO MAKE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY BUT TO SPREAD FREEDOM AS FAR AND WIDE AS POSSIBLE. OUR LEGACY WILL NOT BE ABOUT MONEY; WE WANT OUR LEGACY TO BE ABOUT MAXIMIZING AMERICAN FREEDOM. AND WE WORK EVERY DAY TO DO JUST THAT. WE MAKE HIGH-QUALITY FIREARMS AT AFFORDABLE PRICES FOR EVERYONE! THEN WE BACK THEM WITH A FULL LIFETIME WARRANTY.
They are a great South Carolina company, and have consistently moved upmarket from the cheapest possible decent AR-15s to a great selection across the price spectrum. In addition to their own manufacturing (which is helped by their great scale), they also are a solid retailer of products, and have purchased AAC, turning it into a high-volume, low-cost, high-quality ammunition manufacturer sold through the PSA website. They don’t tend to be the absolute cheapest ammo (contract overrun, etc. are cheaper), but they do have the best prices on mid to high end ammo types (e.g. 77gr 5.56 for $0.62/rd, vs $0.95/rd for 77gr IMI or $1.50+ for Black Hills). They also often have specials/discounts on other manufacturers. In general, if I can give PSA $1 of business, I’d choose to do so over any other company.
The downsides of PSA are they won’t ship anything to Puerto Rico (even though they legally could ship firearms to PR FFLs, like many other businesses in the US do, and they could sell non-firearms non-ammo accessories here), and they’ve currently blocked my account over Easter weekend because I probably hit some fraud limit ($10k in ammo might be a bit much…). Hopefully that gets sorted on Tuesday so I can stock up on the closeout Winchester #00 buckshot on Easter sale.
I do expect ammo prices will go up (possibly dramatically) and availability will go down, maybe to 2020 levels, later this year — both civil unrest and elections are a good cause, as well as any macro security issues or economic issues. I’m happier holding reserves of ammo vs. USD, although cryptocurrency and other assets are great too. I’d love to do “ammo coin” someday, but haven’t had time to set it up; it would be the ultimate Real World Asset tokenization.