Ammunition imports shoot up nearly 50%
Ammunition imports rose 48.9% in the 12 months ended May 2016, according to a report from Panjiva, a research company that tracks global trade by compiling data from bills of lading. Panjiva research analyst Chris Rogers, who is based in London, said the top countries of origin were Italy, Peru, Serbia, South Korea and Spain, in that order. "What's surprising is how diverse the production base actually is," he said. "It's actually a global business."
Panjiva said the top exporter was an Italian ammunition company called Fiocchi Munizioni, based near Milan. The second biggest exporter to the U.S. was a Peruvian ammunition manufacturer called Industrial Surquillo, based in Lima. The third, Prvi Partizan, is Serbian. Italy, home to the gun maker Beretta, has a thriving gun industry. Of the top 10 companies exporting ammunition to the U.S., six of them were Italian.
The Panjiva report on ammo imports only counts shipping. It does not include any ammo trucked into the country. The increase in bullet imports is being driven by Americans' desire for guns, which has increased dramatically along with a relentless series of mass shootings and an ongoing push for more gun control. "Firearms sales are very healthy and ranges are reporting they are busier than ever," said Michael Bazinet, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry group. "So, demand for ammunition is brisk."
The surge in gun purchases started in 2012, with the mass shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. Since then, background checks conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation have hit record levels as lawmakers in some states pass more restrictive gun control laws. Gun owners and retailers ran into ammo shortages in the months following the Newtown massacre. The .223 ammo used in assault rifles and the once-ubiquitous .22 ammo popular with target shooting, or plinking, became particularly hard to find. But the imports seem to have helped alleviate the shortage. "Ammunition shortages at this point are on a spot basis, not national," said Bazinet, whose organization is based in Newtown.
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This story can't be right. I keep hearing that fewer people than ever own guns.
= new reply since forum marked as read
because it is structured to undercount gun ownership. It is non-anonymous, face to face, and IIRC is run out of Chicago by an organization that isn't friendly to gun ownership.
If a fundamentalist Baptist university had conducted a non-anonymous, face to face survey on sexual issues in the 1950s, would you take it as valid data with regard to the percentage of GLBT's in the population at that time? Because that is what you are doing when you try to assess gun ownership via the GSS methodology.
Anonymous surveys conducted by other organizations have consistently shown gun ownership to much higher than the non-anonymous self-reported totals in the GSS, and for good reason.
Even anonymous polls are subject to underreporting when the climate turns hostile (look at the drop from "54%" to "40%" in the two years after the gun control lobby passed the Feinstein non-ban and were openly talking about Brady II and confiscation). But the NORC GSS approach maximizes it.
it would seem the "shaming" is the end in itself. (In culture wars the "promise of punishment... is the sweetest of moral pleasures" -- attrib. A. Huxley). But even here, this pleasure principle is misplaced. Survey responders are moved to privacy not by shame, but by continued insistence by the elites of prohibition that they do in fact "want your guns." So it's not shame, just prudence.
We're trying to marginalize companies (and the people who support them) who use ad campaigns that appeal to people with unhealthy fixations on violence to sell weapons like this:
A weapon which was used to murder 49 people and injure another 53.
A weapon which was used to murder 49 people and injure another 53.
This one killed 87:
You're not going to "marginalize" anyone. All the moral posturing just drives the wedge deeper, creating more Republicans and selling more guns.
Sure you are.
You don't even know factually, that the ads were seen by anyone that committed violence.
Thin gruel, even for a gun ban supporter.
Guns aren't registered individually, but you must show a valid FOID card to handle or buy guns or ammunition.
But I'm sure Illinois must be an anomaly with all those new gun owners in less than 3 years. After all gun owners are dwindling away.
Every gun control paid survey says so, so it must be true. 
Here are the actual Illinois numbers through 2015 and the Illinois State Police projections YTD for 2016.
Note the trend to "fewer" gun owners in Illinois every year?
Active FOID Card holders
2009 - 1,260,521
2010 - 1,315,691
2011 - 1,394,245
2012 - 1,475,534
2013 - 1,682,245
2014 - 1,745,862
2015 - 1,954,781
2016 - Projected to be over 2 million, based on 1st quarter completed and approved applications.
But if you have any doubts, feel free to go to the Illinois State Police website, just use your Illinois Certified Concealed Carry Instructor license number and get all the information you want.
