Over 3 Years' Worth of Ammo Sold in 72 hours?

There's been a startling revelation from firearm accessories supplier Brownells.

Recently, the company said it is experiencing an "unprecedented" sales of ammunition magazines sales compatible with assault rifles like the AR-15. Brownells estimates that they have sold about 3 1/2 years worth of PMAG magazines in just 72 hours, according to a statement posted from the company's official account on gun owner forum AR-15.com.

It also says that it has sold "an even greater amount" of its own Brownells magazines.

Business Insider reports:

The U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps each recently banned the magazines in favor of government-issued ones, which sparked an outcry.

The magazine grab comes shortly after the devastating shootings in Newtown, CT that took the lives of 26 people, mostly children, which then prompted talk of assault rifle bans.

Here's the full statement from Brownell, attributed to the president of the family-owned company Pete Brownell:

Hey Guys,

I wanted to take a minute to shed some insight on the magazine situation if i can. First of all I wanted to offer an apology for the situation that Pacs and anyone else encountered with magazines being "In-Stock" and Backordered moments later. Cedjunior had it correct, the demand for magazines actually exceeded the ability for the system to keep up with the volume that was being ordered. They way that our website works is that inventory is fed from our ERP system directly into the website in "real-time". Unfortunately, "real-time" is the amount of time that it takes for the transactions to work both ways. During normal circumstances, it is nearly instant. However, we've been receiving orders at such a pace that these transactions have gotten slower. We absolutely apologize again, we definitely don't want that ever to be your experience.

To shed some more light on the magazine situation at present, it really has been unprecedented in the last 5 days. (Edit - Sorry guys, meant 72 hour period) we sold the "average demand" equivalent of about 3 1/2 years worth of PMAGS, and an even greater amount of our Brownells magazines. We're working like crazy to get these orders to you as quickly as possible.

We're working directly with Magpul daily to forecast out the next couple of months deliveries. Magpul is focusing their efforts on the BLACK magazines, so we're limiting backorders to only Black for now.

On the Brownells 30 and 20 round magazines, we're still flowing those into the system daily, and are producing those at 100% capacity as well. We ordered more material yesterday that will allow us to up production again in the coming weeks.

Our apologies for the delays! We'll keep working as hard as possible to get these going and will keep you updated always. Let us know if we can do anything at all. - Pete Brownell