There's a bull market for bullets.
Stacks of ammo, once piled high at gun shops across America, have dwindled. Prices paid by consumers for much-sought-after Winchester .380-caliber handgun bullets have doubled. At weekend gun shows, trailers loaded with boxes of ammunition are drained within hours.
Budget-pressed police departments, which can't be caught short, have increased their orders just to be safe, and the U.S. military, fighting two wars, has seen its need for bullets quadruple in recent years.
Bullets are in demand as the nation's appetite for firearms has soared. U.S. gun sales are up since the 2008 presidential election, during which the National Rifle Assn. poured millions of dollars into advertisements suggesting that Democrat Barack Obama would move to restrict gun sales if elected.
Sacramento businessman Strati Vourakis, 29, has been looking to get ammo for his semiautomatic Glock handgun for months. But prices have been too high, he said. "Everything's in short supply, and everything that's in is so expensive."
Like others, Vourakis says he fears that ammo sales may soon be restricted with Obama in the White House.
"The entire administration has a terrible record when it comes to gun rights," he said. "They're always trying to restrict guns in some way -- especially here in California."
Graphic designer Tak Shimada, 37, of Torrance, has been trying to track down bullets for his 9-millimeter handgun all summer.
"Buying 9-millimeter used to be like finding Coca-Cola," he said. "It's not like that now."
Both guns and ammo are in demand, but it is the bullets that are in short supply -- and bullet factories are running around the clock to meet demand.
"Nobody has ever seen this kind of demand before," said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation Inc., which represents the largest ammo suppliers in the country. "Right now, the plants are operating full-bore to get the product on the shelf."
The foundation estimates that there will be about 2 billion more American-made bullets produced this year over 2008's 7.5 billion. But customers wouldn't know it by the empty spaces on gun store shelves.
At the Los Angeles Gun Club downtown, a shooting range and ammo store, customers are limited to buying four boxes of ammo a visit.
