Quote Originally Posted by RCCrawler View Post
I just don't understand. Are the ammo manufactures running their equipment 24/7? There are plenty of people looking for work, why aren't they hiring more people to work more machines for longer hours? Even if they are just temporary jobs, and it's a temporary demand why wouldn't all these companies do everything humanly possible to take full advantage of selling anything they could make as fast as they could possibly make it?
Any factory already runs 24/7, or close to it. To do anything less is inefficient, and keeping the machines running was the reason for the creation of shift work in the first place - two or three shifts to keep the expensive capital equipment running as much as possible.

Only if a factory was running below normal levels, due to slump in demand, perhaps, can they just "ramp up" output quickly - and ammo leading up to the election and newtown was anything but in a slump.

The only other way, then, to increase capacity is to add new production lines, or upgrade existing machinery to do more or go faster. That takes money, lots of money, and time. Why on earth would an ammo factory add, say, $100M in new equipment in order to keep your price down, and when supply catches up to demand, they're sitting with expensive new machines to make more product than they need? The way new capacity gets added overall is new companies starting up, or the big companies overhauling their old machines once they've recouped their capital investment, and building a bigger/better/faster/more efficient production line in due time as part of modernization and maintenance, not as knee-jerk reaction to market fluctuations.

The fact is that demand has outstripped supply even with the ammo companies making as much as they can, as fast as they possibly can make it - and they'll only add additional capacity if the demand stays high for a long time, and projections make them believe demand is going to keep remaining high even after and if they add additional capacity.