I didn't want to chime in because I didn't want to help contribute to derailing the thread. But it looks like it has done that already.
I am not so sure that we are seeing regular supply and demand driving shortages.
This is something unlike anything I've ever seen in my 50+ years. This is no longer "democrat-in-office-panic-buying". And it's not just gun-related things.
This is the first time in my life I have seen shortages where you have people with money and things just cannot be bought no matter what.
I think two big things are at play.
First, we are seeing a global unwinding of the "global supply chain". I think Covid has shown a lot of people that you cannot count on global sourcing for things, and people are now working to onshore things.
I also think that a lot of people are looking at what happened to doing business in Russia because of Crimea and are seeing the same possibility for doing business in China because of Taiwan. My employer is one of the biggest companies in the world and it abandoned all business in Russia. Geopolitics has a lot of people spooked about doing business in China and this is also hitting supply lines.
Finally, there are huge international billionaires (World Economic Forum) who are very seriously bent on reducing first-world energy consumption, which means essentially reducing the first-world standard of living. This is not conjecture or speculation. They have plainly stated that they intend to, for example, reduce car ownership by 75% by 2050.
(Back to speculation) these people are extremely powerful and are able to sculpt policy beyond what governments can do. They pull financial levers that drive businesses to do their bidding whether they want to or not. For example, "ESG" ratings determine whose businesses get invested in, which drives companies to do things like Bud Light did to stay in the good graces of the global financial elite, even though it is horrible for business at least in the short term.
I believe there are very powerful rich people who are trying to sculpt the world into their vision of what the future should be like. And I think a lot of that vision is something that most of us would consider "anti-American". In fact I think they envision a post-American world that scraps a lot of the ideas that made America great.
I think all of these things are combining to bring economic pressure on the world to try and change it in ways we do not want.