Shocker: I found a reasonably priced source for ammo online
Major Pandemic 09.16.13
Yes, I will admit it. I am a recovering ammo purchaser, and was one of those guys who would purchase a case of .22LR ammo at a time. (I still will when given the chance.) Unfortunately, the horde of ammo that I had amassed was damaged in a basement flood, so I now find myself like anyone else out there begging, bartering, and trading for a few boxes of ammo here and there. On occasion I max out my two box daily purchase limit from my gun dealer. And now, my latest pastime seems to be placing orders for out of stock ammo.
Generally the way this self-inflicted torture process works is that, after hours of exhaustive searching, I find someone who actually has ammo listed as “In Stock”, and I place my order. Usually 3-10 days later after my hopes have peaked, the email from the company reads “the bastard who placed the order before you took all your ammo”. I am probably paraphrasing and embellishing their words, but I think you get the idea: no ammo.
Several weeks ago, I was again cruising the world wide inter-web for .22LR ammo and I ran across a company called BangItAmmo.com, who listed .22LR CCI Standard Velocity ammo as “in stock” for a reasonable price. They even had a “Warning” on their front page which noted that if a product/ammo is listed in stock, it is actually physically “in stock” and that their system would not let you buy more than they had. They even had no purchase limits. OK, I’ll bite. I whipped out my theft-protected Life-Locked low limit credit card and decided to give it a go by adding a reasonable number of .22LR CCI SV boxes and a couple boxes of .223 to kill the $100 of credit limit on the card.
There was none of the expected drama typical of my previous ammo purchase attempts. This time I received a couple emails thanking me for my account registration and order placement. As is typical these days for online ammo orders, they required a state issued ID with my name, address and date of birth to verify age. But the request this time was a bit different. BangItAmmo asked that I cover my photo, ID#, and any other non-pertinent information before sending in a copy. I covered the non-necessary info on my ID with tape, snapped a picture, and emailed it right from my smart phone. I had been this far with other retailers to still be told the ammo was out of stock, so I was not holding my breath yet.
The next set of emails confirmed my age verification and shipping information. Wow, I may even get the ammo. How exciting! I kept tabs on the UPS tracking info to the day of delivery, where a nice man in a brown UPS truck delivered my ammo. What is more amazing was that all the ammo was there physically in the box. A few times, I have expectantly opened a box only to find there was one box of ammo in the shipment where there should have been ten with a note that said “sorry, sucker, but we are now following a socialist mentality of even distribution of ammo.” Nope, everything I ordered from BangItAmmo.com was in the box.
I did actually read the “About” section of their website before ordering, which was truly enlightening. BangItAmmo.com is run by just one guy, out of his home, often on his kitchen table. So how does this ammo madman founder of BangItAmmo.com do it and still offer decent prices? Simple: he is both a licensed FFL dealer and an ammo scrounger just like me. Sometimes he gets the ammo wholesale, and sometimes he is the guy buying out the latest flash sales by being the first guy in line or online at 3AM. When he has something in stock, he marks it up from what he paid for it, adds shipping, and then sells it to desperate, ammo-deprived individuals like myself. This means that sometimes my beloved CCI Standard Velocity ammo is $5 a box and sometimes it’s $6.99.
Being the little guy gives him the advantage of less overhead, so instead of having to double his cost, he can add a smaller markup. But what all this boils down to is that I need ammo and he has it at a reasonable price that’ss not gouging me. Plus, BangItAmmo.com allows me to buy all he has in stock without limits, without a maximum, or without stupid socialist ammo distribution rules.
My suggestion is to give them a try for ammo and look around a bit on their site, as they even had Magpul PMAGs for under $13 each, which is a great price. They will not have everything all the time, however they did allow me to buy just under 10 boxes of CCI SV ammo in a time when I cannot even find one box anywhere else.
