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Go figure, just like the artillery shells, NATO and the US specifically privatized all the ammunition manufacturing capacity and there's not enough capacity for a conflict.
There's barely even enough capacity for the panic buying of ammunition and components that happens every 4 years when people think the next election will decide between if they can buy guns or not.
Meanwhile the ammo companies just increase prices every time there's a panic and never invest in creating more primer or ammo capacity, and they mostly just manufacture enough to satisfy immediate demand. Because why would they manufacture enough to keep prices down?
The US ammunition production is state owned, by run by private companies lol. And the private companies bid on who produces it, so the quality varies. Like Winchester makes okay NATO spec ammo, but I would never trust a self defense gun with its white box.
I remember reading that China produces most of the lead and primer that the US uses for ammo. Not sure if this is (still) true or just fudd lore.
I believe that they prioritize military contracts first. Then civilians get whatever is left over or whatever they have enough time for. It’s why they don’t give a shit about “the second amendment” in actuality because government contracts can keep them afloat if guns are ever banned, which they won’t be.
I mean why would you invest in primer/ammo production capacity when you just said demand only spikes temporarily and for no good reason?
Because there is a moderate amount of capacity that could be increased that would allow them to sell a little more at these high prices, that wouldn't kill the market.
I would buy 5k of primers for around $150 during 2016-2019 that jumped to $1000 during the pandemic and has "settled" to around $400.
The other main issue is that if the USA is serious about fighting China or Russia they're going to need more ammo capacity. A peer conflict would use up all the stockpiled ammo very quickly and the production is a small fraction. For example on Radio War Nerd they talked about US artillery shell production being something like 100k a year and Ukraine is using like 50k a month or something insane. The point being production rate is far far below consumption.
Small arms production would have the same issue.