A customer at the Snappy Sport Senter gun counter recently had some questions that normally would be answered positively — but not these days.

“Do you have any .380s?” he asked.

“No, I am out,” counter clerk Sean Albrite responded.

“Any .223s?”

“Nope. I am out,” Albrite said.

That’s pretty much been the course of conversations at gun counters across the valley and the country this year, due to an unprecedented rush on ammunition for firearms.

“I would say that that it’s the most remarkable demand phenomenon I’ve seen in my lifetime,” longtime Snappy’s owner BJ Lupton said.

Ammunition manufacturers have been increasing production to keep up with a consumer demand that seems to be fueling even more demand.

“I think it’s only partly driven by consumer concern about the perceived threats to the Second Amendment,” Lupton said, referring to gun-control measures that are being adopted by some states and have been taken up in Congress in the wake of last December’s Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut.

Lupton and other firearms retailers now are faced with a bottleneck of customers who are more frequently checking in to see if scarce shipments of their desired calibers are available.

The rarest rounds are those that are fired in the highest volumes, such as the .22 long-rifle caliber, .223 caliber and 9 millimeter handgun caliber.

“It’s anything that goes into high-capacity semi-automatics ... Anything that’s shot in high quantities,” Albrite said.

Lupton marvels that Snappy’s hasn’t had any .22 long-rifle ammunition on its shelves since the first week in January.

“For a sporting goods store? That’s like a gas station not having any gas,” he said.

Whenever a shipment of

 popular ammunition arrives, such as .22 rounds, it is doled out evenly to customers.

“It never hits the shelves,” Lupton said. “We try to make sure as many customers [as possible] get some. We don’t want five people coming in and buying them all.”

The Sportsman & Ski Haus store in Kalispell is handling demand in a similar manner.

“We’re doing our absolute best to keep our shelves as full as possible,” said Jon Hartig, gun department manager at the Sportsman. “We continue to order ammunition and firearms at the usual rate but we certainly aren’t getting regular deliveries.”

The Sportsman’s buyer, Scott Behrens, said ammunition is ordered on a regular basis but shipments are commonly delayed.

“This morning I was on four different distributor websites ... Nobody had anything other than oddball cartridges. It’s kind of my routine every morning,” Behrens said Tuesday. “If we get a shipment, we sell them so fast it just doesn’t even seem like it hits the floor.”

Media reports from across the country indicate it’s a national phenomenon.

Multiple manufacturers have put out statements on their websites stressing how they have increased production and explaining how the demand has impacted their operations.

Hornady, a Nebraska-based manufacturer, said the government has not interfered with production, which has gone to 24 hours for its most popular ammunition.

The company also responded to a frequently asked question: “Since we can’t find your product, you must be selling it all to the government?”

“Nope, less than 5 percent of our sales are to government entities,” the company states.

Lupton said some customers bring up that issue. “There’s lots of our fellow citizens who wonder if something is going on,” he said.

In February, there were news reports of federal nonmilitary agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, buying two billion rounds of ammunition in the preceding 10 months. Obama administration officials at the time said the ammunition was necessary for “mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions.”

Stories like that can heighten the perception that there are threats to ammunition supplies, stoking demand further.

There also are reports of long lines of ammunition-seeking buyers at sporting goods stores and gun shows.

Lakeside resident Shannon Niswonger said he recently went to Missoula looking for .22 ammunition and found about 250 people waiting outside the Sportsmen’s Warehouse before the store opened.

“It was ridiculous,” he said. “.22 ammunition is almost impossible to find right now, and people at this time of year like to get out and shoot.”

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.