How Much Ammo Should We Stock?

The subject of “how much ammo should I stockpile?” comes up a LOT on prepper discussion boards, and it’s one that you hear many different answers to.

Many times, you will see a wide range of answers with good arguments supporting them.

We’ve talked about this subject before here on 3BY but I wanted to come back and revisit it following a recent thread I was reading on PrepperForums.net 

How much ammo is enough?

The subject came up when the original poster, with the user name of BookWorm asked the following question:

“This question; how much ammo is enough, has many answers. But… I came up with a theory on how a person MIGHT come up with a real answer, based on some facts about your area.”

His post continued:

“The theory is very simple: how many gun fights do you see yourself getting into and about how many rounds will each fight take to win. Obviously a few variables go into answering this, how many people are you providing ammo for, how good a shot are they, what style of weapon(s) are being used are a few I could think of. 

If you’re in a small town of 100 people, you may not need more than 500 rounds to get control. But if you’re in a town of 25,000 where a few gangs may also call home, you may need 2,000 or more, with 5-10 real good shooters on your team. 

The famous gunfight at the OK Corral lasted about 30 seconds with roughly 30 shots fired from I think 7 people. Yet around 2,000 rounds (reports vary, bad guys fired 1,100, cops fired 650) were fired during the North Hollywood, Feb 1997 shootout between 2 bank robbers and police that lasted 5-10 minutes roughly. 

Of course, all this is just an estimate. If a nuke goes off in your back yard, all the led you could buy won’t shield you from the yellow-orange glow that will be headed towards you at speeds the SR-71 could only dream of.”

Interesting stuff, right?

First, let’s look at my answer

The following was my reply:

“I don’t make my ammo plans based on how many gunfights I plan to be in.

I fully intend to try never to be in a gunfight, that crap’s dangerous. I will defend my home if I have to but the whole notion of me going out with a team of gunfighters? Just no.

I base my ammo plans on something a lot less nebulus, and that’s this: If the gun grabbers make the sale of ammunition illegal, how much will I need to finish out my time here on this earth well supplied, including the rounds I plan to shoot to stay proficient and for hunting purposes. 

If the grabbers had half a brain, which thankfully they don’t, they would concentrate not on guns but instead on ammo… since there is no specific second amendment that says arms and ammunition. Yes, I know it could be argued that arms includes ammo, but it could just as easily be argued it doesn’t. 

My stock level is “lifetime supply” of what I NEED (not all that I WANT).”

That’s fine for what it is, but let’s dig a little deeper

My short answer to a forum question is true as I see it, and as far as it goes.

Having said that, our personal situation is a lot more complex than just “have enough to last forever” due to many mitigating factors.

1. There’s only so much prepping money to go around, and if you spend it all on ammo then you are really digging yourself a hole
2. Ammo isn’t a cyber product, you have to put it somewhere
3. Ammunition is something that criminals will want to steal, so your storage needs to be in a secure area
4. Ammunition can go BANG! out of a gun, so it must be kept safely away from children
5. There are many different sizes of bullets and shells, and (of course) you need to make sure that you have an adequate supply of ammo in each caliber/size you plan to shoot.
6. You can’t eat ammunition. Well, OK, technically you can… but you’ll only do it once.
7. Each person/family/group’s situation is different, requiring specific plans. What might be enough for somebody who rarely shoots their guns won’t be enough for people like Spice and myself. We are known to blaze away like it’s the 4th of July.
8. Not all guns are created equal, and not all guns (obviously) have the same job.

I could go on, but that’s a starter list for some of the challenges in figuring out how many rounds is enough.

There is no right answer, but there are a lot of wrong ones

There’s a lot of folks on the internet that will chime in and just throw out a round number (see what I did there? A pun!) of bullets to stock.

Commonly heard numbers passed around include either 500 rounds for each hand gun you own, or 1,000 rounds for each long gun you own.

While nice, round, easily digestible numbers like that are really popular, if you stop and think about it for a bit they don’t really make all that much sense as a “start here” for everybody.

Why not?

We go back to the eight points listed above.

Let’s say I own three AR-15’s and a couple of AK-47’s. That’s not a huge arsenal, I bet a lot of people out there have a lot more than three AR’s in their family and more AK’s as well.

If you go by “conventional wisdom as stated above, that’s 3,000 AR rounds and 2,000 AK rounds. 

That’s a whole lot of ammo. Let’s say the people using those guns are a couple, is it really reasonable to assume that each person REALLY needs 2,500 self defense rounds?

I don’t know, that’s not my call, that’s entirely up to you. I know a lot of gun people who would be flabbergasted at the thought of buying that much ammo, and I know a lot of other people who would consider themselves “just about out” if they were down to only 5,000 rounds. (Salty would be one of these later people).

Calibers matter

Here’s a brief aside to talk about limiting the number of calibers you stock in your prepping guns. We’ve done full articles and podcasts about this subject, so I won’t re-write it here, but here’s a link to another article about this if you want more information on our thoughts. 

https://beansbulletsbandagesandyou.com/bullets/2017/03/17/streamlining-ammo-why-i-only-shoot-a-few-sizes-of-shells/

We will be coming back to this with another article expanding on calibers and streamlining in the near future. 

Watch the ball

First, let’s define what “ball ammunition” is for those of you who may not be familiar with the term. Ball ammunition is “Geneva Convention compliant” solid point, jacketed ammunition that does not expand and is not designed to fragment. Generally referred to as “Full Metal Jacket” (FMJ) the bullet consists of a hard metal jacket around a soft core, generally lead. 

This leads us to a problem. It’s not just about numbers of bullets that you have stored, it’s also about types.

If I own 3,000 rounds of 5.56 ball, really about the only thing I can use it for is to plink, train or fight a “Geneva Convention compliant” battle. They are useless for hunting, and they sure wouldn’t be my first pick for self defense either.

Ball ammo is, BY FAR, the round that most preppers stock the most of when it comes to self-defense semi-auto carbine ammunition. It’s not even close. 

Ball has real advantages, it tends to jam less than hollow point or hunting tipped ammo, and it’s generally a LOT cheaper. It’s commonly available in bulk from companies that supply the military, because they make so much of it they can sell end runs and extras cheap.

The problem is, if the Stuff Hits The Fan (SHTF) and all you have is a massive loadout of FMJ… well… that’s a bad thing. 

Hollow points are our friends

The problems created by having a disproportionately high percentage of ball ammo should be apparent, which is why I think preppers should take care to buy and store plenty of hollow point hunting and personal defense rounds.

Unfortunately, these rounds tend to be more expensive (and they can be more jam-prone in some firearms). That expense means that it’s more painful financially to buy them than a similar number of FMJ rounds. 

I think it’s important to do this even if that means you end up having less ammo on hand that preppers need to concentrate on having SHTF usable rounds instead of just raw numbers of FMJ rounds.

Can I have my cake and eat it too?

In at least one situation, yes you can.

Most people don’t put consider former Comblock factory steel-cased rounds anything more than cheap junk plinking rounds… but I’ve got a little secret for you to think about when it comes to these folks.

Pretty much every single one of these manufacturers put out hollow point steel-case rounds that ARE legal to hunt with in most states, and that (while not nearly as good as high-quality expansion bullets) do expand at least some:

I’ve shot a lot of this steel-cased ammo, and can easily recommend Wolf and the Three Bears (Golden, Silver and Brown) as effective and reasonably accurate. Not nearly as much of a fan of Tulammo.

Some of my storage ammo is steel cased stuff (nearly all of it is hollow point) but I’m going to be honest, it’s more for the “if ammo becomes illegal I will still be shooting” situation than I plan on using it in my self defense guns.

Even still, I’ve gotta be honest, I have no qualms about using Wolf or the Bears in an AR if the SHTF, my failure to fire rate is virtually nill with the stuff. 

Pistol ammo choice is equally critical

I’ll admit, we have a TON of FMJ 9mm in our house… OK, perhaps not an actual ton but a WHOLE LOT of it.

After seeing what I said about hollow points above you may be wondering why. Well, it’s because we shoot a LOT of 9mm at the range and again, FMJ is cheaper. 

Still, we actually shoot a significant amount of hollow point and self-defense specific rounds, even though they are much more expensive. 

Why?

Well, again, hollow points often are more “jam prone” than FMJ or round nose bullets, and if you are putting the rounds through your self-defense semi-auto, you NEED to know that the gun likes to eat the type of ammo you are putting in it. For example, I have one 9mm that absolutely refuses to shoot any type of Russian ammo. It’s kind of funny that it’s a German gun, but that’s another story.

Additionally, many of the self defense rounds (we are partial to Gold Dots and Hornady Critical Defense here in our household) are quite a bit hotter than “standard” FMJ rounds, so there’s actually a need to adjust aim point a bit and be ready for more felt recoil pressure.

It’s just not all about numbers then

It’s about having the right TYPE of ammo that you need for the right calibers, and organizing your guns and ammo in an organized plan that streamlines your preps.

We also consider magazines as a part of our ammo stores, even though technically of course they aren’t. 

We have, however, standardized them. 

Example, our self defense guns all use Magpul magazines (whether they are the .223’s for our Tavors or 7.62×39’s for our AK’s). All of our prepping/self defense guns shoot Glock 17 magazines (she has a 19 but it shoots 17 magazines), even our pistol caliber SUB2000 carbines shoot those. 

So I’m going to throw it out there, do my theories on “how much to store” hold water? 

Salty’s Note: I’m sad to say we’ve gotten a couple of comments that were quite insightful and well thought out, but that were far too political for us to post. Yes, we do support the Second Amendment but we are also an inclusive site and we are not going to become yet another place on the internet for people to bash their political opponents. Not going to happen. We will be glad to approve any relevant comments that are not politically based, but we just don’t do politics. It’s what separates us from just about every other prepping site, we want all people to have the information and politics drives people away.

https://beansbulletsbandagesandyou.com/bullets/2017/09/01/my-take-on-5-guns-to-own-when-ammo-is-scarce/