Lots of reasons for the price increases. As already mentioned other parts of the world like China and India are going through their industrial revolutions so to speak and sucking out resources at break neck speeds. There are also serious increases in fuel costs, not only for shipping, but to actually run the factories making the components and ammo. Then there are the various non value added functionaries that are part of people's supply chains that take a cut of the pie... You would be surprised at just how convoluted most major corporations are when it comes to getting product out the door. Worse, yet youd be appaled at just how much cost is added to each item sold because some beurocrat shuffled some papers acros his desk. Then you have the distributors adding their costs. You dont think that some small gun shop has the juice to go straight to Winchester and buy a couple of cases of 9 or 40... No they have to go through distributors. Walmart may have the juice to buy a couple of truck loads at a time straight from Winchester, but do you think thay are going to undercut the prices by HUGE amounts. No they see that a box of 40 is going for say $15.00. They will undercut that price by enough to get customers into the store and no more. These costs are all eventually passed on to the consumers. There is also the plain and simple supply and demand thing.
