If there are 50 of them, on the other hand, operating in a power vacuum created by atrophied states and supplied by corporations free of governmental oversight...

I think that hits much closer to the "realities" of the 2070s. Besides: Since the beginnings of Shadowrun grenades have always been standard issue for Shadowrunners.

After which you get complaints from GM's that Shadowrunners are bringing too much hurt. Grenades (etc.) are Military Grade for a Reason. Their use should be an escalation of response that they likely will lose. Players LOVE to bring the Pain, but often balk when it is applied against them, especially intelligently.

I'd rather just make my Runners work extra hard to get the big toys, and keep the amounts limited.

It just doesn't feel right to offer players an easy and obvious choice of gear that appears flatly superior to many others, and then turn around and tell them, "Sorry, the option you chose is simply too effective, so therefor the universe requires me to bring the hammer down on you!" It's just bad game design to punish players for making choices that the game's mechanics incentivize them to make.

So I just make grenades hard to find. Your average gun runner doesn't have 'em. Even the specialty guys only have a couple every now and again - and a high grade contact requires high grade maintainence. You basically need a full blown military contact of some sort to have any sort of truly reliable supply chain - and even then, those kinds of merchants usually deal in bulk, not individual sales.

So if one of my runners really just wants some grenades, I say "Sure - you're just gonna have to work to find them". And if they do the work, dig through the leads, go to all the effort, I figure they're entitled to a couple - after all, they're still hard to use without blowing yourself up too, and they sure aren't stealthy. Besides, a few grenades aren't really going to accomplish much in the long run. All it really does is give your players the chance to play around with a couple big booms - rolling the dice and seeing whether they hit the jackpot, or went bust instead.

~Umi

Then the availability should be pretty low. The fact is we have a high availability and a low price. It's illogical and the availability isn't so high that they're hard to get for even a slightly competent face.

You call items with an availability that allows a player to buy them at character creation "high availability"?

Higher availability just means there isn't an unlimited amount of grenades available at the market at any given time. As you realized yourself genades aren't unachievably rare, considering their availability.

Price on any given market is determined by supply and demand. Supply in this case seems to be limited, although I'm not sure if that's really the case or if it isn't a problem of the shadow market lacking transparency and inefficient logistics owed to the need for secrecy.

The big problem is that grenades tend to be LOUD. Chances are, unless the runners only pack semi-automatic sidearms, shotguns, and sport rifles, they are sporting some military grade bang bang. The application is the real important bit. Outside of smoke grenades and maybe a flashbang, they really ought to be saved for when your neck is seriously on the line... unless the run in question is just about raising hell and causing property damage.