The world's using more ammo, and Alberta gun owners are paying the price
Industry members say prices have doubled to tripled over the past few years
Inflation has taken a bite out of many wallets over the last few years, whether it's the cost of beef, housing or fuel.
The cost of ammunition — of interest to the thousands of Albertans who use firearms — is no exception, though the reasons for the price spike may come as a surprise to some.
From war to election cycles to supply chain troubles, there's a complex web of issues behind the doubliing of prices over the past three years.
For example, the most popular calibre for handguns and rifles in the country, 9-mm ammunition, was selling for $13 for 50 rounds two years ago. Now, 50 rounds costs $24, said Wes Winkle, president of the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association.
"It's got way more expensive to shoot a gun in Canada," he said.
In Canada, around 80 per cent of ammunition is imported from the United States, which is also the world's lead exporter, followed by South Korea and then Poland.
And that reliance on external supply chains is one of the main reasons retailers and industry representatives say costs are at an all-time high.
Supplies, war and Donald Trump
For starters, the components used to manufacture ammunition have become more expensive, and in some cases, harder to get a hold of.
Winkle said the price of materials such as copper and lead, used to make shell casings and bullets, has gone up, while nitrocellulose, a material used to make modern smokeless gunpowder, is in short supply.
Tony Bernardo, a spokesperson for Canadian Shooting Sports Association, said there are only a few manufacturers of the product in the world, with China being a major player.
Bernardo added that global conflicts have driven up the costs and reduced the available supply of ammunition components.
"The war in Ukraine is … shooting [155-mm shells] at rates that are just seemingly difficult to maintain. Each one of those shells uses enough nitrocellulose powder to last most shooters 10 years," said Bernardo.
"The components that are being used in these shells just, you know, hugely gobbling up any availability of anything on the market."
Canada's own stockpile of military ammunition has been depleted through weapons donations to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, with the federal government last spring pledging $9.5 billion over 20 years to accelerate ammunition production in the country.
The Department of National Defence said work is still ongoing to sign contracts with industry partners to ramp up production, in an emailed statement to CBC News.
James Bachynsky, president of the Calgary Shooting Centre, which sells ammunition and firearms and also has a gun range, said ammo supply has improved but prices haven't come back down since spiking amid the pandemic.
Now that U.S. President Donald Trump has been re-elected, however, Bachynsky is hopeful prices will decrease once more, mimicking the 2016 "Trump Slump" the industry saw when he was voted into office the first time.
"He's not going to ban guns. So [in 2016] people stopped buying guns and ammo, and as a result, prices went down."
Who's affected?
Bernardo said everyone involved in shooting sports is feeling the ramifications of the rising costs, but target shooters have especially borne the brunt.
"Target shooters that would normally go through hundreds of rounds of ammunition in a week, and there are people who just simply can't afford it," said Bernardo.
"You'll find that instead of paying $30 a box [for shotgun shells], you're now paying $60 a box. Well then don't shoot as much. You know, that's really what it comes down to."
Bernardo said for hunters, the price of ammunition is a smaller share of the pie compared to their other overhead costs, especially if they are going on a guided trip, which can be thousands of dollars.
In 2023, there were 361,699 possession and acquisition licences (PAL) issued in Alberta. More than 120,000 hunters in the province use firearms, as opposed to bow hunting.
Ashley Tebbutt, a customer service representative at Alberta Firearms, an ammunition retailer based in Fort Macleod, Alta., said customers have noticed price increases, but it hasn't necessarily changed their behaviour.
"Most of the customers are diehards.… If they need ammo, they're going to purchase it, regardless of the price, most of the time," said Tebbutt.
"A lot of them are hunting to sustain their families over winter and stuff like that. So I mean, they need it, right?"
Bachynsky said his gun range hasn't experienced a drop in business yet due to higher ammunition costs, but he admits that could be because a large competitor in Calgary recently closed its doors.
In the long term, he said he does expect memberships to decrease, but not necessarily because of the price of ammunition.
Bachynsky said further federal government regulation on firearms (on Dec. 5, another batch of 324 firearms were classified as prohibited) is causing fewer people to enter the shooting sports, and creating confusion among gun owners about which makes and models are legal and which aren't.
Some new markets
Donglin Xie, the owner of FH Munitions, a Calgary company that manufactures ammunition, is hoping to fill a gap in the market by ensuring a supply of locally produced options to the Calgary area.
WATCH | How effective are Canada's gun regulations?
With a team of seven employees, Xie said they manufacture several mainstream calibres from components sourced from Quebec, Turkey, the United States and Switzerland.
Xie said the process of getting off the ground was a long one — he had to procure several licences from both the city and the government — but so far, it's been worth it.
"On the component side, price has increased but not as high as the final product. So that still gives us a little bit of room to make ammunition here."
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