A listing is one ball product (non-expanding range and practice ammunition) at one national distributor. “At scale” is 250 or more units of one listing at a single distributor. American-owned means made in the United States by a company whose ultimate parent is majority-owned by U.S. persons. Prices and distributor names are never published.
- American-owned.
- Made in the United States by a company whose ultimate parent is majority-owned by U.S. persons. Imported or rebadged ammunition doesn't count, and neither does U.S.-made ammunition under foreign ownership.
- At scale.
- 250 or more units of one listing in a single national distributor's warehouse: enough to actually reach store shelves in any meaningful way. Smaller amounts at several distributors are not added together.
- Listing.
- One ball product (non-expanding range and practice ammunition) as carried by one national distributor. The same box carried by two distributors is two listings.
- Ball.
- Non-expanding range and practice ammunition: full metal jacket (including enclosed-base designs such as Winclean), total metal jacket, flat point, plated round nose and frangible. Hollow points, soft points, match (OTM), polymer-tipped, total synthetic jacket (TSJ) and cast-lead loads are not counted.
- The pipeline.
- Ammunition sitting at national wholesale distributors, waiting to ship to stores. We count it here, before it reaches a shelf.
- American Market Presence™.
- American-owned listings at scale ÷ every listing in the catalog, all brands. Each caliber is rated on this number.
- True Market Presence™.
- Listings at scale from every brand ÷ every listing in the catalog. It shows how thin the whole market is, not just the American-owned part.
- Near the line.
- The American-owned share is within a quarter point of a rating line (5%, 10% or 20%). A rating changes only once the share clears a line by more than that, so a caliber sitting on the line doesn't flip back and forth from day to day. Until then it keeps its last rating. The share itself is always today's.
- Provisional.
- The rating cut-offs (5%, 10% and 20%) were revised on the day of our first data correction. The first setting (1%, 5% and 10%) was chosen before there was daily history to test it against. We'll keep reviewing them as history builds. Any change will be dated and announced here.
