No More Military Brass

Michael Bane's Blog laments the recent decision of the Department of Defense to discontinue reselling used Military brass to ammunition reloaders.

Michael goes into fine detail, citing at least two sources, and I encourage you to read the article for the details.

We're here to talk about the consequences of this decision.

Essentially, the DOD will no longer resell 'used brass' to reloaders. Instead, the new requirement is that the brass must be "mutilated" to the point at which it is no longer usable for reloading.

If you reload in the common Military calibers (to include .223, 9mm, .308 and/or .50 BMG), you have probably already noticed that the cost of reloaded ammunition, or the cases thereof, has at least doubled during the past year or two.

In fact, if you reload ANY caliber, you have seen the same or even greater effect. The U.S. Military is taking so much of the product of ammunition manufacturers that components have become almost prohibitively costly ... as availability is reduced. (The Law of Supply and Demand rules, it's a Free Market thing.)

This latest ruling, though, takes an even bigger bite out of the availability.

For those of us who use exotic or esoteric ammunition, such as .38 Super or .40 S&W ... or almost any caliber which is not commonly identified as a 'military component', this might serve to hold steady, or even lower the cost of reloading components.

If the problem is that 'original' cartridge manufacturers (such as Winchester) and 'original' component manufacturers (such as StarLine) find it difficult to compete with 'reloaded' ammunition, this decision dumps what may turn out to be "A Bunch" of ammunition-appropriate brass metal alloys on the market.

Starline et al (Cartridge Case manufacturers) cannot compete directly with reloaded ammunition manufacturers. The best they can do is to cut corners in their industrial process, and emphasize their availability of 'new' brass in all calibers ... subject, of course, to the availability of raw materials.

This new DOD directive renders an increased availability of raw materials. In fact, they are not exactly "new". That is to say, the market for 'amunition quality' materials may have just increased expodentially.

The composition of the metallic components of cartridge cases is, we suppose, not terribly different for .50 BMG and 9mm Parabellum. Any raw (or recycled) metal is cost-effective depending on the similarity between the available metal, and the end product.

Since 'mutilated' military brass is likely to be metallurgically similar to the desired end product (I'm making up terminology as I write, I hope you don't mind), the cost of converting "mutilated military brass" to "marketable civilian cartridges" should logically be minimal; after the Smelter costs (to convert "mutilated military brass" to ingots appropriate to an industrial production line), there are NO further economic differences between "mutilated military brass" and ingots produced by a smelter. In fact, it should be less expensive because there is little or no need to add other metals to change the base metal to that alloy which is appropriate to cartridge cases.

We're going out on the economic limb here, but it seems reasonable to expect that within the forseeable future (three to six months), the cost of 'new' brass in "non-military" calibers might actually be LESS than the current prices, assuming that the manufacturers pass on the savings to their customers.

And why wouldn't they? If they don't, their competitors will.

I don't much like the Obama Administration. My personal prognostication is that, because of his economic miscalculations alone, Barry Obama will be the most-despised president since Jimmy Carter .. if only because the Presidential priorities tend more toward encouragement of Socialism than toward Economic Health for this nation.

But while this policy seems, on the surface, to encourage the increase in price for the Reloaded Ammunition market, it may ultimately result in a decrease in price of at least one component: brass for less 'popular' calibers.

Save your Confederate Money, Friends.

The South Will Rise Again!