Color me skeptical about metal prices being a prime driver of ammo prices. I’m sure rising metal costs definitely have some effect, but let’s do some math for a bit. You can get 100 rounds of unprimed .223 Remington brass for 17.00 from Cabela’s. Each case weighs about 90 grains, which means a bag of 100 would weigh about 1.3 lbs. The current price for brass is about $2.20 per pound.  Strictly on metal costs alone, that brass should cost about $2.85.
If you look at bullets, figuring an FMJ bullet is roughly 1/3rd copper and 2/3rd lead (I have no idea if this is the case, but I suspect it’s the case), lead is going for about a buck a pound, and copper for about 3.40 a pound. So 100 rounds for the bullet is going to be 89 cents for the copper and about 50 cents for the lead. So the total price of 100 rounds of .223, in terms of material cost, is about $4.25.
So I think there’s a lot more going into the cost of ammunition that just rising metal costs.  Surely that’s had some small effect, but I think the cost of ammo is going up because demand has gone up. Rising fuel prices also probably have something to do with it too.  Ammo is heavy, so carting it around places is expensive when fuel is expensive. Overall, demand is high, both because civilians are shooting a lot, and because the military is consuming large quantities of ammo.  This will drive up prices for all calibers, since machine tools used to make ammunition will be busy with military orders in military calibers, rather than making ammunition for civilians.  I suspect that new production capacity may not end up coming online, since manufacturers probably expect military demand to be short lived. We may have to live with high prices for a while.
