Ok if this is the case. what are you buying? Are you buying so you can keep shooting or are you looking to profiter on other peoples panic?
As I wrote above, I purchase based on my budget. I don't have the budget to panic buy, nor do I have any real desire to profit off of panic. Also as I mentioned above, what I am looking at for the next year or so is to buy "fringe" items that may come under fire more directly...AR Pistols, binary triggers, and things like that. Those, in my opinion, would be low hanging fruit for gun grabbers who could easily get fudds on board to ban. "No one needs to shoot that fast!" or "No one needs an AR pistol!"
To throw out a bit of a confession...years ago, during the last panic on AR magazines when people were buying all they could, I did profiteer...a bit. It was before Ebay banned the sale of magazines I sold 4 or 5 surplus AR mags I had picked up for about $200. I spent maybe $30 on all of them, came out making $170 profit on them. Even had a buyer private message me wanting more. But, I was new to ARs, didn't have many mags and in the back of my mind I thought "Gee...maybe I should hold onto them..." I also saw SW MP15 Sports going for well over $1k, and strongly considered selling the one I had...but at the time I only had one...and again I had the "Gee, what if they do ban em..." in the back of my mind.
Its been a few years now, and I am older and a tad bit wiser. I never panic purchased, but I did pick up a few more ARs over the years (cheap PSA builds and the like). Never because I was "scared" of anything, but because I enjoyed putting them together and wanted to try out AR pistols and .300AAC.
Between now and 2024, even though I can forsee things getting bad after that, I am working off of the past few years of "building up a collection" and will spend the next 4 doing the exact same. When I have the funds, ill pick up stuff that I want. But I have "enough" AR magazines and ammo to last me the rest of my natural life shooting at the rate I currently do. Whenever I buy a new auto-loading pistol I always invest in a few spare magazines within short order. So I have spares for every firearm I own, and none were bought out of panic, but out of a desire to have extras.
>IF< someone was just now getting into "evil black rifles" and "Horrible High Capacity pistols" then I would encourage them to start picking up magazines when they come up on sale. They don't go bad, so if you don't use them they do nothing but take up space. I would encourage people to pick up at least 1 AR platform, and then some spare parts to keep it running. Firing pins, gas rings, extra BCGs, oops kits, and the like. If they do get banned from purchase, you should at least plan on having the parts to keep what you have running.
As far as ammo, if you aren't into reloading (I do some pistol at times) I would recommend just slowly building up what you currently own. No need to go buy $5,000 in ammo today if you don't have the cash for it, but if you shoot 200 at the range, replenish by buying 300. Over time, this builds a pretty decent stash. And lets face it...if we can no longer purchase cheap ammo, then the days of mag dumps will be over, and we will be spending time on marksmanship and fundamentals when we go to the range, so blasting 500-1000 rounds per week will be "days gone by". Except for those few who have invested thousands of dollars over the past years setting aside a shed full of ammo.