General GunTuber thread

[waffle]

. It was only cheap in the US cause the USSR made 10s of millions of rounds and they mostly sat in warehouses until the USSR collapsed. Steel case was always going to run out eventually, and people were going to have to buy brass eventually.

This isn't true though, mild steel just is a cheaper material per pound than brass (and it's less dense so you get more cases per pound), most of that steel case ammo was new production from Serbia (IIRC) and got hit by sanctions/bans. Allegedly it is going to come back soon as the same rule change that is going to let MG barrels in again is going to let it come back.

Your instincts are also right in that some of the savings surely come from wages/costs being lower where it's made - Privi brass ammo is pretty cheap too.

There was significant R&D done to make them run and it’s why no US manufacturer has ever gotten steel cases to run right (see Winchester USA forged reviews).

Hornady has made good steel casesed ammo, i think they still do. The Winchester stuff sucked because the costing on the cases was so rough that it would make the rounds stick to each other and bind up in the magazine. Like when you hold them they feel like sandpaper, it's ridiculous that they ever shipped them like that.