Ironic, don’t you think, that you characterized DNewton3‘s post, a fact-based post on market forces, as “tin foil hat” while you post vague innuendo of conspiracy theories to explain this shortage.Indeed, Sir. That is what I believe.
Everything I said in my first post in this thread remains true. I’d encourage you to go take a look.
It’s clear now, that across a multitude of industries and commodities, the pandemic disrupted supply, production, distribution and demand, pushing some markets (like ammo) to record shortages while gluts were created in others. Those disruptive factors have not yet resolved, not by a long shot, and the ammo supply backlog is still enormous.
There are some signs of hope. I’ve seen some prices (e.g. IMI M193 55g 5.56) begin to come down from their peaks, but those prices are still more than double what they were in 2019. We will be living with higher prices, and bare shelves, for a while yet.