Is Another Ammunition Shortage on the Horizon?
By George Ross Jr. August 22, 2021
On August 20, 2021 the “United States will impose a second round of sanctions on the Russian Federation over its use of a “Novichok” nerve agent in the August 2020 poisoning of Russian opposition figure Aleksey Navalny”. The fact sheet can be found here. The sanction that is of particular interest to anyone who consumes ammunition is right up front in the first sanction. It says this. “Restrictions on the permanent imports of certain Russian firearms. New and pending permit applications for the permanent importation of firearms and ammunition manufactured or located in Russia will be subject to a policy of denial.” As you can see this effectively cuts off the supply of ammunition coming in from Russia. Undoubtedly the news of this will spread and people will start to panic buy ammunition again, but when the store shelves become empty this time there will be one less place to from which to bring in more ammunition. This is of particular interest to me as I have bought in to the 7.62x39 cartridge and have made significant investments to do so. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Not all 7.62x39 ammunition comes from Russia, but the majority of it does. Just from the 10 kinds of ammunition I have 4 are made in Russia, 2 are made in the U.S.A., 1 is made in the Czech Republic, 1 is made in Serbia, 1 is made in the European Union, and 1 is made in Hungary . I have shot up all the Russian TulAmmo I had so I left it out of my available options. As you can see at least with what ammunition that is available to me cutting off the Russian supply would cut the current ammunition options I have on hand nearly in half. This is far from an ideal situation.
New Sanctions Duration and Conditions for Removal
The sanctions do not take effect until September 7, 2021 and last for a minimum of 12 months. The sanctions can be lifted after 12 months providing Russia meets several conditions. The 4 main ones are listed below.
- Providing reliable assurances that Russia will not use chemical weapons in violation of international law.
- Russia is not making preparations to use chemical weapons in the future.
- Russia is willing to allow international inspectors to verify those assurances.
- Russia is making restitution to Mr. Navalny.
Myself I do not see Russia meeting any of these conditions, but you never know. At least for now these new sanctions look to be permanent at least to me.
What Can We Do to Help?
We can all help out in the near term. All one has to do is NOT PANIC BUY ammunition, but if we cannot learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it. If we all do our part we can make it through this, but it will require each to do their part. Remember we are fresh off of the last ammunition shortage. It is my hope that we can apply some of the lessons learned from it. So please DO NOT PANIC BUY AMMUNITION because in the end it is all up to us.
