Popular .22 long-rifle shells are in short supply at Corridor gun shops

Corridor ammunition dealers have been struggling to hunt down .22 caliber shells amid a long-term national shortage.

Iowa City's Fin & Feather has one employee who spends a large part of each day on the phone with suppliers trying to order .22 long rifle shells, said Clint Hartsock, gun department manager.

'We've been able to play the game and find it by calling more suppliers and casting a wider net,” Hartsock said.

When customers discover Fin & Feather has .22 in stock, they often get on their phones to call friends, he said. Fin & Feather has had people drive from Des Moines, Davenport, and Cedar Falls for the shells.

Sales of guns and ammunition nationwide surged after the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Some gun enthusiasts feared tighter gun restrictions would follow the massacre of 20 children and six adults.

Two years later, most kinds of ammunition are readily available. But not .22, usually one of the most popular and common types of ammo.

'We haven't had any at all in two weeks,” Bryon Burkey, a sales associate in the Lodge department of Dick's Sporting Goods, 4601 First Ave. SE, said last week.

The store's only .22 ammunition earlier this month was a small package included in a $33 Remington gift set, Burkey said. When Dick's does get a shipment of .22, Burkey puts it out gradually over the course of the day so more customers have a shot at buying it.

Gander Mountain, 2140 Edgewood Rd. SW, limits customers to five small boxes or one large box of .22 ammunition - when they have it in stock.

'If we run a new ad (announcing .22 in stock), we'll have a line of people at the door when we open,” said manager Tim Tietz.

Larry Pence, owner of Liberty Safes, Coins and Ammo, 1950 Dodge Rd. NE in Cedar Rapids, began selling ammunition about 18 months ago. When he first started, he would buy 5,000 .22 shells when he could, and repackage them in smaller Ziploc bags for sale.

Repackaging ammunition is not illegal. It not even regulated, according to officials at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

'We don't do firearms or ammunition,” said Alex Filip, deputy communications director for the product safety commission. 'Since we don't regulate the product, we wouldn't know what the shelf life is.”

The ATF only would get involved in ammunition sales if the vendor was selling to a prohibited buyer, such as a felon, or was selling reloaded shells without a manufacturer's license, spokesman John Ham said.

Ammo retailers said the price of .22 has gone down since the peak of the shortage. At one point, gun show vendors were selling bricks of 500 shells for $100 to $150, when that brick normally would retail for $30 or $40, Burkey said.

'The whole reason people are buying a lot is because it's hard to find,” Hartsock added. 'It feeds itself.”