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What is a proper amount of 22LR ammo to keep on hand for a family of 5?
I used to think that 1 and a half bricks was plenty. I'd open a brick and when it was half done I'd buy another.

If you look around you can find "reasonable" prices out there again, so buy as much as you can afford. Considering how long it took prices to come back down after the last election cycle I would say you'd be good if you had 2 years worth of ammo for every caliber you intend to shoot consistently (or reload it). Even the guys that will call somebody crazy for stocking 10K rounds of 5.56 or 9MM have very little to say to people keeping large quantities of 22LR on hand.

22LR is the cheap insurance of the shooting world, no matter what happens to larger caliber ammo prices/availability, if you have a bunch of 22LR sitting around you can still go out to the range and shoot.


Somebody is sure to chime in and say that people running out and buying a few cases of 22 at a time is the reason why its not cheap anymore, same could be said for anything though.

At roughly $21-25 a box for 500 rounds by most brands, I'd say stock up on what you feel you can afford and just have fun shooting. The round is incredibly affordable, so I imagine a couple stacks will last you a good long while. Or you could always go by the train of thought, can you ever have too much? lol.

On a side note, when did Wolf .22LR become premium? Just checked, $50 for a case of 500? Yikes, I know my 10/22 loves that stuff but jeez, I always looked to them for cheap and dirty but fun. :skep:

I think the OP was asking about how much 22LR ammo to keep on hand not how much to pay.

I keep a couple thousand rounds on hand, myself.

wolf makes some of the best match ammo. that is why it's so expensive. i normally buy federal 550 boxes when they go on sale under $17. i personally have about 12k on hand but it's not like if i fall below that, i hurry and buy more.

I have 2K rounds of .22LR because I hardly shoot it. Although I'd buy more if I could find a gun I'd like to shoot it out of.

As much as you can afford, store, and transport.

due to the fact that 22LR is nonreloadable, i figure that when purchased i may need to consider a very, very large amount.
if the sales of ammunition became regulated and reloading primers and powder became a OSHA storable material, the price of ammo would 10X. having a lifetime supply of 22 on hand and resupplying what you shoot has come to make a lot of sense. remember a couple years back when primers went dry?
remember when the talk of ending the sale of USGI brass to public?
I dont want to get caught up short.

so if i limit it to the minimum..
50 rds per week X 52 weeks per year x 40 (I hope) more years of my life= 10,400 rounds.

lets call it 10.5K
same for wife and the kids are gonna need 70+ years supply each (18,200 x 3).

so...
around 75,000 rounds.
WOOF!!!
at $75 per 2100 thats $2700 and if my math is right.. about 550 pounds.

Locally I get it for about $18-19 a box of 525. As such i feel free to snag at least 5 at a time or so. Granted my girl and I use a box every time we bust out the gsg-5s. So I like to keep about 2600 on hand or more.

Cohiba wrote:due to the fact that 22LR is nonreloadable, i figure that when purchased i may need to consider a very, very large amount.
if the sales of ammunition became regulated and reloading primers and powder became a OSHA storable material, the price of ammo would 10X. having a lifetime supply of 22 on hand and resupplying what you shoot has come to make a lot of sense. remember a couple years back when primers went dry?
remember when the talk of ending the sale of USGI brass to public?
I dont want to get caught up short.

so if i limit it to the minimum..
50 rds per week X 52 weeks per year x 40 (I hope) more years of my life= 10,400 rounds.

lets call it 10.5K
same for wife and the kids are gonna need 70+ years supply each (18,200 x 3).

so...
around 75,000 rounds.
WOOF!!!
at $75 per 2100 thats $2700 and if my math is right.. about 550 pounds.

Your math is a bit off, its 104,000 rounds for 40 years at 50 rounds a week, 180K for 70 years, 5,500 pounds etc so yeah.....probably not reasonable. That being said, the 75K rounds you were talking about should last a loooong while regardless, and you're starting to get up into the quantity where you can get bulk price breaks if you buy from the right places.

I keep something like 1,500 rounds around depending on when I was shooting last and when I bought last. That's to feed two 10/22s and a Ruger Single Six. If/when I get a .22 upper, I'll probably keep more.

I finally figured out the formula for how many guns a man needs. It is (number currently owned) + 1.

I think there is a similar formula for ammo, but I am still crunching the algorithms.

Cohiba wrote:What is a proper amount of 22LR ammo to keep on hand for a family of 5?
I used to think that 1 and a half bricks was plenty. I'd open a brick and when it was half done I'd buy another.

2 answers, none of your business, and you can never have enough. :cya:

flyingirish04 wrote:

Cohiba wrote:What is a proper amount of 22LR ammo to keep on hand for a family of 5?
I used to think that 1 and a half bricks was plenty. I'd open a brick and when it was half done I'd buy another.

2 answers, none of your business, and you can never have enough. :cya:

:laugh: The standard Irish answer. :thumb:


.22lr became currency in the book One Second After. If I remember right the kids were charging seven cartridges for a rabbit.
So adding that to the formula to feed and protect a family of 5, "It is (number currently owned) + 1" and "none of your business, and you can never have enough"
are all correct and still fall short. :laugh:

Rather than the 'proper amount', what is the 'best kind' of bulk .22LR?
My Ruger SR22 tends to jam up bad on Winchester green box. I'm still not sure if its the aftermarket 20 round mags or??
The GSG 1911 doesn't have any problems with the ammo though.

federal bulk is all i buy for plinking ammo. when i want decent accuracy for cheap, cci standard.

I like CCI and Federal. Remington 22lr is the worst money can buy. Such junk.

I'll try both and see if they make a difference in the Ruger. If not, then it has to be the mags.

now that ruger released their own 25 round mags, there is no reason to go with someone else.

http://www.cdnninvestments.com/ru102225blma.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

panzermk2 wrote:I like CCI and Federal. Remington 22lr is the worst money can buy. Such junk.

not to mention what ever coats the "golden bullets" gets everywhere. I hate the gold flake all over my barrel and action.

srt-4_jon wrote:

panzermk2 wrote:I like CCI and Federal. Remington 22lr is the worst money can buy. Such junk.

not to mention what ever coats the "golden bullets" gets everywhere. I hate the gold flake all over my barrel and action.

Forgot about that, plus for awhile they where selling it in a Remington coffee cup. Being the coffee addict I am I bought a bunch. The first time through the dish washer almost all of the image washed off. I should have known.

I only use CCI or better, my stock is mostly CCI standards and wolf MT, with some lapua and eley mixed in. Mostly subsonic and match ammo.

my little savage loves the blazer bulk, how luck is that. but the BL-22 likes thunderbolts (which are accurate when sorted by weight on a digital scale), the trooper and 10-22 CEEBEE's best but function and shoot the federal thunderbolts well enough that that is my prefered storage bullet.
I just take the time to sit down in front of the digital scale and sort them into 3 seperate weight catagories. the ones that are balls on are kept, the sporatic ones are shot in the bolt and lever for practice and the near empty ones are shot in the 10-22 and the pistol for small game around the house.

fd57 wrote:As much as you can afford, store, and transport.

Okay, I just saw this pic..........................................................................................


Umm... that's a healthy stash of ammo fd57. I'm comin' to your location for protection when the SHTF.

I have between 5-7,000 rounds I would say. My bigger problem is my 10/22 likes 1 type of ammo and my gsg g5 likes another and I never remember which is for which . My 10/22 actually likes almost any ammo, but with the stupid muzzle light stock it just sucks...gotta get something better. CCI is what I have the most of though.

Cyberfly wrote:Rather than the 'proper amount', what is the 'best kind' of bulk .22LR?
My Ruger SR22 tends to jam up bad on Winchester green box. I'm still not sure if its the aftermarket 20 round mags or??
The GSG 1911 doesn't have any problems with the ammo though.

I will only buy minimags or better. I like Wolf MT for accuracy.

The cheap bulk is exactly that, cheap, it's horribly inaccurate.

Keep that stuff in an air tight container and it will last forever.

Don't be rough house with it either, sometimes if you toss .22 ammo around too much, a chunk of the priming compound can break off in stuff that has been sitting for years. If your pin his the rim where the chunk broke off, you will misfire.

ShockedNKansas wrote:

fd57 wrote:As much as you can afford, store, and transport.

Okay, I just saw this pic..........................................................................................


Umm... that's a healthy stash of ammo fd57. I'm comin' to your location for protection when the SHTF.

That's a tiny amount :p

Get working on a better stash. But really buy what you can afford. :thumb:

1 mag's worth for every man, woman, child, and beast on earth is a good place to start.

i usually maintain a stash of 2000 rounds at all times. my brother sent me a link to a website that had 5250 rounds for Federal .22 for 220.00 might have to stock up

Just noticed the referenced snap. LOL That's maybe ~11K rounds of 9, 5.7, and .308 in that photo. There's more than one of those "stashes". But less than five. All in separate locations of course.

Buy it cheap and stack it deep......

Just buy it (ammo, parts, cleaning and lubrication agents and supplies). The dollar will only continue to decrease in value, so a dollar today buys you X ammo, while a dollar in two months from today will buy you X-Y ammo.

On .22, I don't know the exact best prices, but Wal-Mart had 1600 rounds of CCI+a dry box for $99 and Cabela's had either 1000 or 1400 rounds of Federal for $60

I am pretty sure I have in excess of 10K rounds. My thinking is that when the economy collapses, .22 ammo will be as valuable as gold. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it would make great barter material.

As for the ammo that is best... I second CCI Mini Mags and Federal bulk (525 packs). I have actually won matches with the Federal bulk stuff. I have had very few if any malfunctions with either of those choices.

I also second that Remington bulk stuff is the worst out there. I get about a 10% failure rate on that stuff. At least one round per 10 round magazine will not fire. I have even tried to take the "duds" and put them in a different gun, and they still won't fire. They are absolute crap.

Mike

Holy chit if you buy what you can afford I would love to see your pay check or bank account. That's one of the coolest pics I have seen of a ammo stash.

Don't let the pic fool you, its an old pic :laugh:

Funny. Looking at my post above... I must be psychic. 22 LR ammo IS like gold now.

Mike

Vortec MAX wrote:Funny. Looking at my post above... I must be psychic. 22 LR ammo IS like gold now.

Mike

Try finding 22 Short ammo. That's platinum.

Vortec MAX wrote:Funny. Looking at my post above... I must be psychic. 22 LR ammo IS like gold now.

Mike

Not anymore. Stock is filling up around here. Price still up, but not as high as before. Give it four more months, the whole climate will be back to being fine and well.

But my answer still holds true though... :p

A lot. I have some 10+ year old Federal bulk that is full of duds, maybe 20% or more. My other old bulk is all ok...All told my 22lr stash is over 10k, just enough for me for a few years.

Or a month's supply in event of zombie apocalypse depending on location :laugh:

I wish I had 1/2 that much

Enough! :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

One round for each dollar of national debt should do it.

Mike

On the flip side how much is toooo much?

Civil wrote:On the flip side how much is toooo much?

I don't think you can have too much ammo, if you can afford it. More apparently, it is up to your personal preference, as long as you play well with others and make sure your fellow sportsmen, hunters, and recreational shooters have access to the same.

For example, I don't have much money/I'm poor (but rich in so many areas like having awesome friends!). So I only stock about 1000 rounds at a time (it is more economical to buy 1k rounds at a time because of shipping-usually only $200 for 9mm) of 9mm for my competition needs. 1000 rounds only lasts about 2 months.

I use 90% of it at competition, while most serious competitors use it in the exact opposite ratio; 90% at practice, 10% at matches.

I compete twice a month. Well, it's more like one and a half, since I shoot a Glock or other 9mm only, at 3GN, unless I'm borrowing someone's gear for a stage or two.

The main concern, for me, when buying ammunition and storing it, is mainly to have about 200 rounds of SD/hunting ammunition. Other than that, if I run out of the other stuff, I just stop shooting.

I guess, budget and how rich you are resolves this question, at a higher rate. :thumb:

OMG...turkey season is right around the corner and there isn't a single freakin box of shotgun shells at WalMart...what the heck happened??
Lemme guess...now the FedGov is buying up birdshot as well??

Well, deputy looney bird (biden) DID tell people to buy a shotgun & shells.

Of course he also told them to discharge the firearm into the air & thereby make themselves into felons (in many states) for brandishing & discharging a firearm in city limits. Which means his minions could now come take the shotgun away.

I think in todays climate any 22lr ammo would be nice! My LGS has it for frickin 80 dollars a brick. lol

Oh for the old days of $5 bricks at Target or K-Mart.

It's sad when you can't find a single box of .22 ammo within 30 miles. Surely the madness won't last much longer. I use the .22 for practice and my daughter loves to send them down range. We have slowed down a bit since our reserve has dropped to a few thousand rounds.

Few thousand? LOL!! I'm down to a few hundred.
That's what I get for getting my twin girls 1911 .22LR pistols...

I have to search her range bag to see how much ammo she grabbed. I guess I'm lucky she enjoys spending time at the range with me. Never hurts to have an extra gun during an apocalypse either.