09-21-2013, 02:12 AM
Tangentially, from my perspective (AR buyer for a national firearms distributor), the supply on all things AR has just caught up and leveled off in the last 45-60 days. The eight month period from Dec 2012 to July 2013 *EVERYTHING* AR related flew out of every nook and cranny of the supply chain and into the retail market. Manufacturers were looking at more orders than they had ever seen. In some cases on the firearm side of the industry there were purchase orders for three years worth of production. Tens of millions of dollars in excess wholesale and retail orders on firearms (particularly AR's) were cancelled across the industry in August as the hyper demand subsided and business returned to normal demand levels. On the ammo manufacturing side, there were/are wholesale orders for SEVEN years of production capacity on certain SKU's. Just this month, inventory levels on AR's has returned to pre-hyper market levels, so you can see (perhaps) how long it took the production side to catch up with just one segment of market demand. All the while, guys in the Grendel niche have been waiting...