Ammo sales regulations?

[beaverislander]

In another thread someone mentioned taking excess ammo to a local gun store and selling their excess. Is it legal to buy ammo off the street and resell it? This idea bothers me... a lot! I would not want to go into the LGS and buy ammo that wasn't stored properly, or some weirdo could have tampered with and brought back.
It's kinda like going into a drug store to buy insulin. Once that insulin leaves the pharmacy it can not be returned, it must be destroyed.

 

[swsig]

In another thread someone mentioned taking excess ammo to a local gun store and selling their excess...

I'm surprised to hear that. I didn't think anyone on the Forum believed in the concept of "excess ammo".

 

[Dave Lively]

Ammo isn't like bananas. It keeps a long time even if not stored under ideal conditions. But I want my ammo to last decades so I store it under near ideal conditions and would be upset if I bought ammo labeled as new but was actually used.

But if it was labeled as customer returned and sold at a discount I might buy it. I have bought lots of military surplus rifle ammo over the years and judging by the cases not a lot of care was taken in how it was stored. But despite that and some of it being quite old it always worked fine.

With both the stock market and ammo I have always been a buy and hold kind of guy. The people selling what they have assuming they can replace it once prices come down must be day traders. Some people make money that way but I am too risk adverse to do so myself.

 

[s&wchad]

The vast majority of retailers will not accept returns on ammo. I'm sure they do this for liability reasons. It can be virtually impossible to distinguish between factory and hand loaded ammunition.

If ammo is purchased from a manufacturer/distributor and it destroys a gun or insures someone, the retailer has pretty good grounds to deny responsibility. I sure wouldn't want to be taken to court and have to explain that I bought the ammo from some guy who walked in off the street!

 

[Muss Muggins]

My two go-to LGS's will both buy original package ammo from regular customers for resale, if the price is right . . .

 

[scoobysnacker]

It sounds kinda crazy, but you might want to explore the option of using steel-cased ammo for deep reserves etc.
If your gun shoots it, fine.

Steel tends to be cheaper anyway, and it's way tougher to reload (and thus, reload and "sell back" as we're discussing). They also tend to be berdan primed, which in theory is supposed to last longer.

Lots of places say "no returns on ammo", but with everything is such short supply and high demand, it wouldn't shock me if there are some shops that would take what they can get, and if it passes the eyeball test, resell it.
Some of us might know the difference... most of us would know to look at casing head stamps. I know S&B (for example) uses brass jackets, not copper. All the Aguila I've had has been crimped. Beyond that, I wouldn't know what's new, and what isn't.

And, heck, there's a decent acceptance for reloads, like from LAX and Freedom, etc. People were paying prices that matched new manufacture from them.

All that to say, some smaller shops might get very tempted to sell "used ammo" just to keep a share of the market.

 

[max]

I got a call from my LGS this past Spring wanting to buy 9mm from me. I sold them a sealed case I had previously bought from them.