The ammunition shortage brought on by the recent push for gun control has left many gun owners empty handed. Uncle linked to a story that shows the positive side of the ammunition shortage, the state’s costume-clad thugs aren’t able to acquire ammunition either:
Dayne Pryor is the chief of police in Rollingwood, Texas, a small suburb of Austin. “I’ve been in law enforcement for 31 years and I’ve been a chief for eight years,” he sighs. “And it’s just one of those things that I never thought I’d have a problem with, especially being in Texas.”
Pryor’s problem, he explains to Salon, is that he’s having trouble finding ammunition and firearms for his officers, thanks to a national shortage. The cause? A run on supply from gun lovers afraid that Congress or state legislatures will impose new gun control laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.
“Everyone is thinking, they’re going to stop manufacturing, or they’re going to be taxing and all this, so it’s just this mentality of, let’s all buy up everything now just in case. And it hurts us,” Pryor said. “This is ridiculous. This shouldn’t be happening to law enforcement.”
Economics is a mean old cantankerous bitch. It doesn’t matter who you are you’re subject to economic realities. The first rule of economics is that scarcity is a fact of life. There are only a limited number of resources available and they can’t fulfill every demand. Thanks to the gun control advocates ammunition demands have spiked and manufacturing isn’t able to meet demand. This change in the supply and demand curve means anybody wanting to acquire ammunition must either scrounge high and low or pay a higher price.
The second option is important to bring up here. When the demand for a product increases without the an accompanying increase in supply prices tend to go up. Pryor can easily acquire ammunition, he just needs to offer more money for it. Since Pryor isn’t willing to pay more (I’m assuming he’s not willing to pay more because he’s opting to bitch about the shortage instead of bitch about the high prices he has to pay) he has to go without. Fortunately that means his officers will be less able to cheaply murder nonviolent individuals. While the police may be unhappy with the current situation those of us outside of the state’s employ should be jumping for joy.
It’s nice to know that this ammunition shortage isn’t all bad.