Nationwide Ammunition Shortage Squeezes Police Departments Across Ohio

Early in the pandemic, ammunition was like toilet paper – panicked shoppers rushed to stores and cleared out much of the stock.

“You also throw in, at the beginning, you had some labor issues and shutdowns due to COVID at the manufacturer level,” said Doug Vance, co-owner of Vance Outdoors, a Columbus-based firearms and sporting goods store that sells ammunition to retail customers and law enforcement. “That, at some point, went back to normal. They’re producing at full capacity, and they have been for some time now, but they’re so far behind on orders.”

A year later, this is now the longest shortage Vance has ever seen. Once the initial coronavirus-related issues faded, the protests over the killing of George Floyd brought on another surge in demand for ammunition.

“Everyone was fearful for their personal safety,” Vance said. “And then it became ‘defund the police’. Now people are again fearful that, if they defund the police, I need to become more reliant on myself to protect myself.”

And then in the fall of 2020, a more traditional driver of demand added to the shortage: the possibility of a Democratic presidential administration and new, stricter gun control measures.

So the ammunition shortage continues, more than a year after it started.

“You may have had as big [a shortage] in a short duration but there’s never been one of this size for this duration,” Vance said.

According to William Balling, president of the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police, that means cities and counties across Ohio are struggling to get supplies for officer training.

“Even in a scenario-based training, each officer can go through 400 or 500 rounds of ammunition in a day,” Balling said. “We do a lot of variable training from getting out of the police cruiser, walking towards a target, when to stop firing when the threat goes down. When you’re talking about shooting, you can go through quite a bit of ammo.”

Balling said his Sidney, Ohio, police department usually does more than the state-required minimum yearly certification at the firing range, instead doing day-long training twice a year. But due to the ongoing ammunition shortage, Balling said he is looking at changing to drills focused on decision making and dexterity – requiring fewer cartridges.

“We’ve seen ammunition go from 20 cents a round to a dollar a round. And that makes a big difference on the budget for a city,” Balling said.

This is not the first ammunition shortage. Another shortage in 2013, which lasted years and got widespread attention, was prompted by the election of Barack Obama and a prolonged push for increased gun control measures in Congress.

That was around the same time Balling took over as chief of police in Sidney.

“I stockpiled a little bit to have two years of ammo almost available,” Balling said. “We’ve been able to slowly ration that out. I know a lot of the departments I’ve talked to across the state are having troubles.”

Vance said it comes down to planning for shortages like this, especially for retailers like him.

“Right off the cuff, we ordered millions of rounds,” Vance said. “We took everything one of the manufacturers had in stock the first day we recognized what was going on.”

And Vance Outdoors has continuously made large orders to the manufacturers every month since to keep their law enforcement clients supplied.

“When we get it, it goes right away usually,” Vance said. “If there’s agencies, big or small, purchasing from a law enforcement distributor who’s planned properly, their waits might be immediately, or it could be one to two months’ wait, versus seven to 12 months’ wait.”