What cailiber? Available and affordable.

With the rimfire situation being what it is(limited supply/hoarding), what is the next cheapest thing to shoot? Around me, I can easily find "popular" shotgun(12,20, .410), handgun(9, .38, .357, .40, .45), military(5.56/.223, 7.62x39) and hunting(.308, 30-06, .270, .30-30, ect). Rimfire and obscure military calibers are the only things I really have an issue finding .

The first thing to come to my mind is 12ga. "Game" load(no. 7-9 shot) runs $20-25 for 100, and different loads can cover anything from home defense to anything you can hunt within 100yds in the lower 48.

Bonus points for long guns in handgun calibers that are NY SAFE legal

7.62x54r Mosins are fun to play with, last I checked you can still get surplus by the crate. Around $160/880 shipped last time I bought any, might be up a little now.

12 gauge is even cheaper than the fun packs if you invest the ~$100 into a lee load-all and the consumables.

9mm is always cheap, at least compared to other pistol calibers. .38 Special seems to be high right now for some reason.

I think Russian 5.45 is still cheap, but I could be wrong on that.

Around here you can get a 100 round pack of 12 ga target loads for about $20. About the cheapest fun with a gun that is locally available.

5.45 is on the rise as is 7.62x54r. I would suggest looking for your cheap fun in what is available locally unless you decide to drop big coin on stocking up on surplus stuff while it is more affordable.

Ammobot is a decent source for current prices & availability. Last time I noticed 7.62x39 was getting more or less reasonably priced as was 9 mm.

Even during the worst of the shortage I was buying 9mm regularly online, Natchez Shooter Supply's in stock notifications actually work, unlike Midway USA's who's notifications get sent out about 12 hours after everything is sold out again. I'm not a big 9 mm fan, but it's cheap, common, available-ish, and what SWMBO shoots. I had a little more trouble, but not much finding .40 S&W and it's not been much more expensive than 9 mm. My biggest complaint about Natchez is that their shipping rates aren't that great unless you're buying in larger quantities.

Just like you Neon, .22 LR and to a lesser extent .17 HMR have been near impossible for me to get my hands on. I bought a 525 round, brick of CCI .22 LR for a little less than $40 shipped about 15 months ago that I've have a hard time making myself use, and I've seen the rare few I've come across since then go for significantly more. I can remember buying a brick of cheap, dirty, Remington .22 LR for around $8-10 just a few years ago. Sadly those days are long gone.

I've squirreled away a bunch of .223 and a bit of 5.56 but they are a lot easier to get now than even just a few months ago, so I might be convinced to put the AR back together, and actually go shooting again.

So 9 mm would probably be my pick.

Why is 12 gauge so cheap compared to everything else?

My dad has a .17HMR that is nearly impossible to find ammo for. He has been squirling .22 away for a few years now since we go plinking semi often.

It looks like the 12 guage is the new plinking tool haha

In reply to stanger_missle:

Volume, Federal sells a lot of 100rd fun packs, and they're loaded with very cheap components(most notably the hulls have very thin steel bases, not very reusable). A lot of people shoot a lot of 12 gauge between screwing around and shooting clays.

I too remember when I could load my old MkIII 22/45 and do a mag dump with no regret, just to warm it up. I should have waited another year to sell it, with my ammo stash, I would have more than broken even then.

Just buy a gun in every caliber, then go shoot whatever's cheapest at the time

In reply to Kenny_McCormic:

That makes sense. Most of the case is plastic.

Can't you pick up a Stevens scatter gun for about $200?

That seems like a lot of bang for the buck (pun totally intended)!

In reply to bigdaddylee82:

I can assure you that MidwayUSA notifications are NOT held or delayed in any way. They're sent automatically when the product is scanned in at the loading dock, essentially. If your are arriving 12 hours later that's due to your ISP or some other factor, not when the notification is sent.

Neon, 38 Super and 9mm Luger are your most affordable cartridges in handgun. Surplus 5.56 NATO or 7.62x51 would be your next source but availability is limited.

In reply to stroker:

Multiple ISPs, multiple computers, work, home, Ohio, Arkansas, Midway's notifications sucked. Maybe Gmail doesn't like them? Regardless, I quit relying on them and set up a Firefox App to monitor specific things back during the worst of the nonsense, which worked phenomenally well. Twelve hours is likely an exaggeration, but several hours is realistic, confirmed by when members of another forum would find stuff available vs. when I'd actually receive notification of the same item. Natchez has been near instant.

I don't dislike Midway USA, I've bought a decent amount of parts from them, though I seem to buy more from Brownells and PSA. Most of my ammo has been from the local Gander Mountain or Natchez.

• Lee

Army looking to replace their 9mm

I PREDICT: The next US military caliber will be 40 S&W.

Dr. Hess wrote: I PREDICT: The next US military caliber will be 40 S&W.

Way to go out on a limb there.

Not really much of a limb. The Feds (not the military, the civilian Feds) just bought enough 40S&W to shoot all Americans 3 or 4 times each. For the Children. Obviously, that's the next official caliber.

I thought the reason why they went to 9mm in the first place was because it's something everyone else uses.

A friend of mine was very high up in the Navy small arms department or whatever you call it. They basically told them "Here's a Baretta 92. Approve it for Navy use. The Italians are going to buy a bunch of our missiles, so we are going to buy their 9mm's."

Way Back Then, the reasoning for 9mm was "you can have a bunch more ammo in the mag and it's easier to shoot because recoil is less." "Everyone Else" (NATO) does what we tell them.

Knurled wrote: I thought the reason why they went to 9mm in the first place was because it's something everyone else uses.

Here's the story I heard on 9mm adoption. Can't prove it, but it seems believable to me.

Back in the 80s, NATO was pushing us fairly hard to standardize calibers. After all, we'd sold the world on 7.62 and 5.56mm, so they wanted us to adopt 9mm pistols to replace our .45s (which were so old that the newest ones had been delivered in 1945). At the same time, Reagan wanted to base US aircraft in Italy, and the Italians wanted a weapons contract, so in exchange for buying 9mm Berettas we got use of Aviano AFB.

Dr. Hess wrote: A friend of mine was very high up in the Navy small arms department or whatever you call it. They basically told them "Here's a Baretta 92. Approve it for Navy use. The Italians are going to buy a bunch of our missiles, so we are going to buy their 9mm's."

I can believe that, given the way it was handled when they found that the 92s were happy to launch slides into peoples' faces.

ryanty22 wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: I PREDICT: The next US military caliber will be 40 S&W.

Way to go out on a limb there.

Was it DHS that bought millions of rounds of .357sig?

Unfortunately for the OP, even the rossi puma lever actions(winchester replicas) hold 8+1 in most handgun calibers. NY were dumbasses afterall. Granted, 357mag is really the only caliber I've seen for those that is cheap/somewhat plentiful. An old Marlin Camp 45(uses stock 1911 magazines so 7+1 of 45acp) might be your best bet in an easy to find pistol caliber carbine with the 7rd restrictions.

Don't NATO countries all have to use the same calibers?

Knurled wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: A friend of mine was very high up in the Navy small arms department or whatever you call it. They basically told them "Here's a Baretta 92. Approve it for Navy use. The Italians are going to buy a bunch of our missiles, so we are going to buy their 9mm's."

I can believe that, given the way it was handled when they found that the 92s were happy to launch slides into peoples' faces.

"You're not a SEAL until you've eaten Italian steel." When sayings like that get started, yeah, there might have been a problem. As unit armorer back in the day I had to send our Berettas out for the retrofit "fix".

The story I heard at the time was that when acquisitions was deciding between the Beretta 92 and the Sig Sauer P226 (a much better firearm) the bid for the Beretta came in $30 cheaper per unit. I suspect it cost more than $30 to fix every single one....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIG_P229#P229

At walmart earlier looking at some shotguns and jokingly ask about .22lr. I was told to come by at 7am. I might leave early for my next opening shift and do that.