As we closed out the deplorable year that was 2020 where most of us spent tremendous amounts of energy taking care of loved ones, restructuring our lives, and learning to live a “new normal” we believed things would slowly improve. Now that we are into 2021 it appears we have more adversities ahead and one of the most pressing ones for firearm owners like us is trying to get ammunition. So, what the heck happened?
There is no singular answer; rather, it is a culmination of many things. For one, people are statistically buying more firearms than they ever have before in history. It is reasonable to intuit that all of these new firearm owners want ammunition for their new handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Secondly, without getting too political, whenever we are on a presidential election cycle people come out in droves to stock up on ammunition. Finally, with the horrific times we endured combating the coronavirus many ammunition manufacturers were forced to have diminished manufacturing hours, shortened staffs, and/or be closed entirely – in some cases for months at a time! All of this mothballed into a colossal ammo shortage that has people scrambling for defense rounds and even paltry amounts of ammunition to simply go plink with.
So, the real question is how do we keep our perishable skills of shooting sharp when it is burdensome to find ammunition or you do not have much to begin with?... One thing you can do is holster work. All of us have holsters and will likely be drawing from one if we ever need to defend ourselves. So, something you can do in the comfort of your own home without ammunition is practice your draw stroke. Start slow, work on clean movements that do not waste movement, and be methodical. Slowly speed up until you get to a realistic, defensive draw speed. In your dire time of need you never want to be inhibited by not being able to properly present your firearm in defense.
Another thing we can all work on is our trigger press. Again, this is something you can do indoors, sitting on your couch, and without the need of ammunition. Understand where your trigger breaks on your carry gun versus your range guns. Feel the reset and watch to see if you jerk in any direction as the trigger breaks. You can improve and clean up your trigger press more than you think if you take the time to examine your own movements.
A final thing you can do is examine your gear when ammunition is sparce. Is your red dot on? Is it zeroed? How is the retention on your holsters? Is your gun clean? Are your magazines functioning properly? Are they clean? There is a lot of house-keeping of dry-fire skills and gear maintenance you can be doing throughout these difficult times of ammo shortages to keep your skills and gear honed and ready to go. Until next time, continually check out our blog, join our newsletter, and watch the website for new and exciting updates! As always, let us know all of your thoughts in the Comments below. We love it when you participate in our articles and keep the conversation going!
