For those of you who are associated with the shooting sports, do you remember, and I am talking to the seller as well as the buyer, when you went into your favorite shooting supply store, or tried to order new stock for your shelves, but there was nothing but bare shelves?

I can remember not being able to find one box of ammo for my pistol. I can also remember going into the local stores and asking if they knew when they had another shipment coming in. The common answer was, “Maybe you could check back next Thursday, that’s usually when we receive our ammo shipment.” I tried going to these stores as early as possible and the clerks would say, “Well, we got in 10 boxes of 9mm, but they are already gone.” I began to see a pattern with all of the gun and ammo stores, they simply were not getting any shipments of ammo at all.

Stores that sold reloading supplies were in the same predicament. They also couldn’t get primers, bullets or powder. I received call after call from friends scrounging for anything they could find to load their own ammo. The only ones that I remember who were still loading any ammo at all were those that had squirreled away supplies for this very possible scenario.

What caused this sudden disappearance of shooting supplies? I bring back to all of our memories about the gas prices beginning to climb ever so steady, up, up and up. The next thing that happened was that everything began to go up in cost. The truckers hauled the supplies, and their fuel costs went through the roof. Well buckle your seat belts…

If you haven’t noticed, the cost of fuel has begun to skyrocket again. Now, can you remember what will happen next?

Yes, everything starts to go up with it. The rise in fuel costs is what put this country on its knees in the first place. If you have the cash and have a need for shooting supplies, you had better get busy purchasing what you are in need of. If something doesn’t happen soon with the impending rise in fuel cost, we will be in even worse condition than before. With fuel costs changing every day, the producer will not know how to predict costs on his product. I think many will simply sit on what they have until things level off. The shelves will begin to empty again. What is still on the shelves will be even higher in cost than the day before.

The domino effect has already begun. Will you be prepared this time around?

Roger Sherrill lives in Ringgold. He can be reached at tandemjumper@catt.com.