Well the latest rumor to have all the militia types and Glenn Beck fans panicking is the very flimsy story that the State Department is going to ban imported ammo. The gun shops and NRA stoke these fears like crazy to increase sales of guns and ammo. This is also the sort of thing that has the White Supremacists rubbing their hands with glee because they see it as prophecy fulfilled.
Chapter 1
Today it finally began! ..... We are at war with the System, .....ever since the Gun Raids two years ago....They knocked on my door at five in the morning. I was completely unsuspecting as I got up to see who it was.....I opened the door, and four Negroes came pushing into the apartment....
-The Turner Diaries
Some people believe bullets are already banned, partly because the shelve at Wal-Mart have been stripped of ammo for months. and partly because various Dems have floated half baked bullet bans for years.
I will admit to have quite a bit of ammo on hand. Why? Because in the last 5 years the price of ammo has pretty much doubled due to the commodity prices of materials like copper, as well as the large amounts of ammo being consumed by the army. And about 3 years ago I started gardening and such anticipating a future downturn in the economy. Armaments weren't high on the list, but now they're an excellent investment, better than a 401K for sure.
A lot of imported ammo is released as surplus by foreign governments as they clean out their warehouses of WW2 leftovers - stuff like .303 ammo from India or 8 mm Mauser ammo from Yugoslavia. These are no longer standard military caliber except in more remote corners of the world. When Remingtons cost $.80 each, who wouldn't jump on surplus rounds at $.20 a pop? And when this surplus stuff is gone, it's gone, never to be seen again unless an odd batch shows up somewhere like ammoman.com
The other source of imported ammo is Russia, which exports a lot of ammo to the US, including NATO calibers. Why? Because the US is shooting all the bullets it can make in the Middle East. I've always figured some diplomatic kerfuffle could put the kibosh on that trade.
I'm not sure I have a point here, but it's a situation being exploited by the successionists and crazies.