Banning Ammo: Russian Sanctions

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Back on 20th August, 2021 the White House announced a policy that would ban the importation of certain Russian firearms and all import requests for ammunition would be denied.

This is a blow for the American firearms market who relied on the inexpensive steel cased ammunition, some popular firearms run the Russian ammo best.

This problematic change is a response to Russia under the CBW Act of 1991.  The Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 is an agreement that the US will not tolerate the use of Chemical and Biological weapons use by the Russian Federation.

Putin, as you may recall, has been accused of using them for assassinations in the past couple years, the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter.

As a result the US has shifted policy for a minimum of 12 months to deny importation requests and punish Russia by cutting of this revenue source. The US civilian market for firearms and ammunition is the largest by far in the world and conditions for opening that market again have been set by the US government, they include reparations to the Skripal family and assurances Russia will not act in this manner again.

Compliance by Russia is unlikely, Putin and his government are unlikely to acquiesce just to sell bullets. This leaves the American consumer in a poor position as import licenses expire, especially if this goes on beyond the 12 month term. Price spikes have already been seen.