What will 2022 look like for the shooting industry? Well, we really aren’t sure yet! This past year we saw the dramatic slowdown that the industry was expecting. As for the gun retailer concerns, all good things come to an end. We have seen this multiple times already. There were surges during the Obama administration, after the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy, after the Pulse Nightclub massacre, the various school shootings – one after the other, then the most recent cause for a surge; the pandemic and the beginning of the Biden administration, all at once. Gun dealers have had it good for the last 2 years. Now it could be coming to an end.
Firearms are coming back strong, and prices have dropped immensely. Ammunition is returning slowly, but thankfully it’s returning. The prices on ammo are still and will run like that for a while. There is no more “cheap” ammo, and shooters need to come to that realization. Will the prices go back to where they once were? I doubt it, but a price drop will probably happen once we reach those back stocks we once had. How long that will be is another question though.
The supply chain problem for sure is an issue. Some of the more popular brands are made overseas, and with the ports backed up this will cause back orders for most of the 2022 year. Browning is one of the companies that there’s a real issue getting merchandise from. We deal a lot in sporting clay shotguns and Browning being a popular choice, there are none to be found. This also goes for Beretta, Benelli, Rizzini, and Perazzi as well.
So, no one really knows what to expect for this year, only time will tell. There are way too many factors to get a good hold on what will happen. Hopefully it will become easier to obtain the things you want, but we have been wrong before.
Chuck Papp