Posted: 10/11/2014 11:24:44 AM EDT
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This morning I was looking at my ammo database. Then I was thinking about a reasonable estimate for when my shooting days would probably end. Came to the conclusion that I will never be able to shoot all that I currently possess. (Yet I occasionally buy more).
When I was younger, I didn't always have the capital to purchase bulk ammunition. Now as I get older, I don't always have the time to go to the range. I assume that many people here have the same "problem". At what age did you reach this point. I think I was probably in my early 50s. The size of the lifetime cache can vary greatly from person to person. A person that is 70 and goes to the range twice a year may be well served with one thousand rounds. An eighteen year old that shoots twice a week may need need half a million rounds as a starting point. |
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I went through the same exercise with a buddy of mine (in a bar, on bar napkins).
We took this seriously, it was not a joke or an exercise in conversation. We both went home and did inventories. We both love shooting and it started out as a question: if you could no longer buy any more ammo or handloading components, how much shooting could you continue to do with what you have on hand right now. And it evolved into the discussion of how many rounds of ammo would it take for us to continue to shoot at our present rate and not run out before we reached an age where we couldn't or didn't want to shoot any more. The numbers we came up with were pretty substantial numbers. Most people, even avid gun owners, don't really shoot very much. He and I did shoot a lot. And by shoot a lot, I don't mean horseshit like bumpfiring and trying to see how fast we could unload magazines. I am talking about going to the range a couple times a week and seriously shooting. This also wasn't about some end of the world senario, a foreign invasion, a race war or any other SHTF thing. If the S ever HTF, having a hundred rounds of ammo would be more than enough. This was just about us continuing to shoot recreationally for as long as we could.......how many rounds of ammo did we think we would shoot during the rest of our lives. Obviously, we both were in agreement that once we found the answer to that question, it was a wise thing to do, to try and aquire that much ammo NOW while we could still get whatever we wanted. FWIW: I shoot somewhere around 400 rounds of ammo a week. Every week. This is usually broken up into two or more shooting sessions a week. And I have done this for years and years. I would like to continue to do that till the day I die. For those of you that didn't take the time to do any cyphering, that is over 20,000 rounds of ammo a year that I shoot. So, when you see on TV that some guy had THOUSANDS of rounds of ammo..........that is a nice start. At least some of this senario has already come true with .22LR ammo. OP: you never know what the future holds. You could very well be in a situation where you DO have plenty of time to shoot as much as you want to. My life doesn't revolve around money. When I have something sitting there and I am not using it, instead of thinking about selling it for the money, I think about the fact that it ain't eatin nothun, so just leave it there. As the saying goes, it's better to have it and not need it and than it is to need it and not have it. Ammo is only going up in price. If you decide to "get rid" of yours and then get to a point where you want to shoot a lot...........you are going to pay a lot more for it the second time around. Or more likely you will just quit shooting because of the cost involved. |
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Quoted:
This morning I was looking at my ammo database. Then I was thinking about a reasonable estimate for when my shooting days would probably end. Came to the conclusion that I will never be able to shoot all that I currently possess. (Yet I occasionally buy more). When I was younger, I didn't always have the capital to purchase bulk ammunition. Now as I get older, I don't always have the time to go to the range. I assume that many people here have the same "problem". At what age did you reach this point. I think I was probably in my early 50s. Dibs on your stash when you pass. 
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For those who will never exhaust their stash, are we talking low, med or high 6 figures? 7 figures?
I've got mid 5-figures and figure I can exhaust mine in 5-10 years. Less time if do more training, more time if I do none and my kids never get much time to shoot. |
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For those who will never exhaust their stash, are we talking low, med or high 6 figures? 7 figures? I've got mid 5-figures and figure I can exhaust mine in 5-10 years. Less time if do more training, more time if I do none and my kids never get much time to shoot. I intend to shoot just over 500,000 rounds of ammo in the rest of my life. Obviously I am guessing on the age at which I will still be alive and still want to be shooting. |
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A credible question. I buy in bulk for the cost savings and securing long term availability. As to defending off the hordes, I doubt ammo count beyond the first hundred or so really is going to matter - better to invest in water, heat, communications, neighbor relations, etc.
So at some point, when you realize you have more of a round than you are probably going to use in your lifetime, it's time to stop. I suspect that starting in the next few years, there will be widows out there wonder WTH to do with 50,000 rounds of .22 ammo... Too often, the sheriff's office is call, it's hauled away (legitimately as a courtesy to granny - in truth), and destroyed. Buying more ammo now than you can use for the rest of your life is a great way to tie up capital that could be used for far better investments like family vacations, etc. Formulae is relatively easy. How many rounds do you shoot a month? Double that, multiply by the number of years you think you will still be an active shooter. Add a few, and that's how many rounds you will ever use. If you undercounted, they are still making it, so adjust as you go... Just MHO - not the populist view on AR15.com! |
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i have multiple beltfeds and 3 kids - i will NEVER have that problem Quoted:
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I assume that many people here have the same "problem". At what age did you reach this point. I think I was probably in my early 50s. Which consumes more? 
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