When I first moved to Mexico, you could buy powder for shotguns (which is pistol powder essentially) in some of the Sporting Goods stores. I even saw some cheap LEE loaders for sale. Then, after the Chiapas "Revolution" in 93-94, the Army moved on it's own accord to confiscate ALL reloading materials from the stores and instituted a "non-Constitutional Ban" on reloading. If you were caught SMUGGLING powder and primers, the jail term was immediate and long.
Now, I have been TOLD by people who do not live in Mexico that reloading is banned in Mexico. In fact, it is NOT banned, and is quite legal according to the Federal Firearms law. The Army, however, has "prohibited" reloading and you are swimming up-river trying to take them on.
Anyways, you don't need to. Price drives the market, and people are willing to pay 5 times the store-price for primers and powder and so they arrive. Figure it out. If the ONLY ammo they'll sell you (from limited stores, let me tell you) costs you 35.00 dollars per box of 50 .38 Special shells, you might as well invest 300.00 dollars to buy a pound of Bullseye and 2,000 primers and reload 40 boxes at a cost of 7.50 per box.
You guys have a LONG way to go before you'll be anywhere as bad off as Mexico is right now, today, this minute as I sit here and type. And we're reloading. And "THEY" are doing everything they can to stop us, with no worries about Civil rights or laws or anything else -- and they are failing MISERABLY.
Now, if they banned the components COMPLETELY in the U.S., well, you'd have to get them from somewhere else, I suppose, and that would be a pain. Especially if they stopped manufacturing them. However, my point is, even under draconian censorship, reloading continues practically unabated.
I'll tell you a story: about 8 years ago, I was sitting out in my back patio casting up a storm. Doorbell rings, and it's my neighbour, come to borrow some coffee. He comes back to the patio, sits and chats for a while, and asks what I'm doing. I tell him I am casting bullets. "From what?" he asks.
"Wheelweights," I tell him.
"I thought you couldn't do things like that in Mexico." he retorted.
"Yeah," I snorted. "THEY would like it to end up that way."
I kept pounding out the bullets, 6 at a time, poured from the two Lyman pots I use so I never run out of lead due to an empty pot.
After a bit of pondering, he said; "So all these laws and everything...they really don't DO anything then, do they?"
"Well," I told him, "they make it more expensive. But they don't have the final end-effect they thought they'd get."
I would personally like the see the Mexican Army back off, and they might: they are losing the Drug War, and they CANNOT win with the cards they have. A loss will seriously devalue them politically in Mexico...and so far, THEY are the problem as far as the growth of Sport Shooting is concerned. On the other hand, it won't help much if there's no primers to be had anywhere, and because of the "O'Bombo Effect" there really aren't primers by the thousands in the stores for the smugglers to buy. Barack O'Bama did more to slow down the primer smuggling by just winning office than the Mexican Army has in 15 years of trying.
However, a win by the opposition in 2010 -- this year -- could swing the pendulum back to a more normal position as panic and worry could probably subside. AND the markets might come back better, jobs might come back better, what-have-you.
My point is, though, without standing too long on my soap-box, is that life (and reloading) goes on. Shooters are amazingly resilient and adaptable. I see this in Mexican Shooters, and the U.S./Canadian Shooters are equally so, if not more so. The morons in high-office CAN make life miserable, and they can certainly drive up the price...but stopping people from reloading is going to take more years than the current group has. But feel free to stock up anyway, I sure would if there was product around to buy.
