Ammo Prices

Tam gives a thorough explanation of why ammo costs so much right now and why prices will have to come down eventually. I'm shooting a lot of .22 right now because of this. I have at least 4000 rounds of it left in the case I bought so I should be good for a while. On the other hand the last time I bought 5.56, I paid $13 for 20 rounds. Compare that to $6 per box when I built my AR a few years ago.

She also makes the point that if you're carrying a semi-automatic handgun, you ought to carry a spare magazine. It doesn't matter if the pistol mag carries a million rounds. You aren't carrying the extra mag for the capacity, you're carrying it as a reliability measure. If the magazine isn't the heart of the pistol, it's at least its stomach. If your one mag goes bad, then you have a very expensive and cumbersome breach-loader. Even if you can thumb a round into the chamber, that's a great way to break an extractor hook on some pistol models. Then you'll have a gun that can't feed or extract and you're doubly screwed. Carry a spare mag. It's cheap, it's easy, and it could save your life.

Oh, and how about that Ninth Circus? Broken clocks and all.