ORIGINAL: The Famous Grouse
ORIGINAL: bigtim6656
one word guys just one word to explain the ammo cost
WAR we are fighting two of them
look at history when were fighting wars ammo gun gas all metal prices and most other stuff we use in the us go up during world war 2 everything went up Vietnam everything went up Korea and when the cold war was over ammo and gun price went down because of all the surplus from the us and Russia
when the wars are over the prices will go down
I don't believe this to be true in this case.
The main culprit in ammo prices is the price of copper and lead. Lead prices have increased dramatically, from about $500 USD per US ton in 1998, to about $2500 per ton today. And in 1996/early 97 in particular, lead prices spiked at almost $4000 per ton!
Copper prices have followed the same track. On this date in 1998, CU was selling for about $1600 per ton. Today it closed at $6,629 per ton in London.
Both lead and copper are common industrial materials. This issue of the impact of the Iraq war's impact on these commodity prices is practically zero. I can't find an exact figure, but muntions manufacturing does not even appear as one of the top 100 industries that consume copper. At a guess, I'd say on a fraction of a fraction of the world's CU supply goes into ammo every year.
Like oil, the prices are rising because the demand is rising. China's oil consumption doubled in the last 3 years. There are predictions it could double again in the next year and a half. It's not the suppy going down, it's the amount of demand chasing the same supply.
Grouse