Because there is a moderate amount of capacity that could be increased that would allow them to sell a little more at these high prices, that wouldn't kill the market.
I would buy 5k of primers for around $150 during 2016-2019 that jumped to $1000 during the pandemic and has "settled" to around $400.
The other main issue is that if the USA is serious about fighting China or Russia they're going to need more ammo capacity. A peer conflict would use up all the stockpiled ammo very quickly and the production is a small fraction. For example on Radio War Nerd they talked about US artillery shell production being something like 100k a year and Ukraine is using like 50k a month or something insane. The point being production rate is far far below consumption.
I mean why would you invest in primer/ammo production capacity when you just said demand only spikes temporarily and for no good reason?
Because there is a moderate amount of capacity that could be increased that would allow them to sell a little more at these high prices, that wouldn't kill the market.
I would buy 5k of primers for around $150 during 2016-2019 that jumped to $1000 during the pandemic and has "settled" to around $400.
The other main issue is that if the USA is serious about fighting China or Russia they're going to need more ammo capacity. A peer conflict would use up all the stockpiled ammo very quickly and the production is a small fraction. For example on Radio War Nerd they talked about US artillery shell production being something like 100k a year and Ukraine is using like 50k a month or something insane. The point being production rate is far far below consumption.
Small arms production would have the same issue.