Tougher To Reload

Gun shop owner Larry McCoy spends much of his day on the phone. He’s trying to cut better deals on guns and ammo.

“I'd say a year ago you could get a box of [some ammunition] for $4.50, $5 a box and now it's approaching $10. McCoy's one of many gun shop owners who says customers fear the Obama administration will make it tougher to get the ammunition they want. Gun shop owners say they really have to roll with the punches considering what's coming in and what's going out in terms of sales.

“[Wholesalers] will only sell you a limited amount of certain calibers and we just have to go with what we can get and be happy with that because right now it's really bad,’ says McCoy. Global demand for firearms is also partly to blame. Some shop owners have found a way to help supplement the bullet shortage.

“This is the shell casing, this is the primer, this primer is knocked out of the previous cartridge and replaced with a new one,” says Gary Mozingo at the Gun Port in Coden. He spends some of his day taking old shells and reloading them.

“Put it on top of that cartridge and then I pull it back down again,” says Mozingo. The process is far more complicated than what we could fit in our story. He says this should be done with a lot of care and safety in mind. Without this form of bullet-recycling, Mozingo says he'd be up a creek. He says it also cuts the cost of a round by about half.

“It's just a matter of sitting down and assembling them after you know which one they want,” says Mozingo. Shop owners say there seems to be no end in sight for the ammo shortage. In a statement e-mailed to News 5, a White House official says that President Obama believes in the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. It says the administration is committed to protecting those rights for hunters and law-abiding citizens.