Simplicity

The word simple has gotten a bad rap in recent times. We either think of it as a psuedonym for crappy or ugly or a nice way of refering to the developmentally disabled 30 year old who lives in his mom's basement, rides a bike and does handywork/ semi skilled labor. I don't see it that way.

 

Some of my favorite things are simple. One of my favorite meals is a good steak served medium rare with nothing on it, a potato with some fixings and some vegitables. My favorite drink is Scotch (blended typically but occasionally a single malt if I am celebrating or feeling fancy) with a handfull of ice. In a pinch the ice isn't essential. I like simple guns like AK's, Glocks, pump shotguns and double action revolvers. It is hard to beat a plain black wool pea coat.

 

When it comes to saving and investing simple things make or break you. If you simply live on less than you make and put the difference (after setting some aside for a 'rainy day') into a diversified set of instruments that make money things will go quite well. The way people mess up isn't by (assuming reasonable diversified choices) going with the wrong stocks or mutual funds or whatever but by not putting money away. See it is really simple.

 

I don't think simple vehicles or homes are a bad thing either. A simple reliable vehicle that will run reliable and get you where you want to go is a good thing. Often with reasonable planning you can (GASP) actually pay cash for them. Personally I would rather have a simple home, that I can afford to pay off in a reasonable amount of time and have money to save for the future, fund my child (and his planned sibling yet to be born)'s education and to be comfortable instead of having some cheesy wanna be Mansion which leaves us stretching and straining every month. It doesn't have to be a shack (though a small cabin or cottage if your family situation fits in it) but the idea of a normal modest 3-4 bedroom house with a couple normal bathrooms has slipped away recently. Not that a big house is bad if you can actually afford it but most folks, me included, can't. Why people set themselves up for failure buying stuff they don't need to impress people they don't like escapes me.

 

Simple plans are best too. It is said that a simple plan boldly executed will consistently give good results.

 

My point is that simple things are good. We rarely get ourselves in trouble by doing something in too simple of a fashion. Ever heard of that highly paid doctor who got himself in huge trouble by purchasing and living in a simple little house? I don't think so. Ever heard of an average Joe who got himself in trouble purchasing and living in a McMansion he just couldn't afford? I think we all have to realize that starting with a simple foundation and then, if we are truly able maybe expanding a bit is a prudent course of action. However I think that once we get past the silliness of it all, many folks are pretty happy with simple things and even when able see no reason to move away from them.

Homework Assignment of the Week

Go to the range. Take the pistol you most regularly carry concealed and whatever long gun you prefer for home defense. It doesn't matter if you can shoot the eye out of a squirrel at 30 yards with a 6" .357 or a customized 1911 safe queen if you are carrying a snub nosed .38 or a mini Glock. If you can't hit squat with your carry piece it either means you need to practice more with it or start carrying a gun you can actually hit stuff with.

 

To be honest if you can't hit targets at home defense range (say under 30 yards) with a long gun it is either time to check your equipment or to go back to the drawing board in terms of basic marksmenship. No shame in either though macho pride will take a hit. Better to learn that the rifle you zeroed with one box of ammo 5 years ago has had that zero bounced out in 12 road trips and 3 moves, or that you need some refresher training, at the range this week than when you need to use the darn thing for real.

 

Bonus points for taking the spouse or kids.

Reevaluating

Realizing that a plan is not working is hard. First of all, especially if the plan has a timeline measured in weeks or months instead of hours and days, some sort of deadlines or record keeping are essential. It is fine and dandy that you weigh 200lbs and can do 12 pullups, unless you  have been trying to weigh 180 and do 20 pullups but have been stuck in the same place more or less for a year. Clearly something is not working as well as you would like.I know a trainer who mercilessly mocks the fat girls who go to the gym and do 20 minutes at a leasiurely pace on a glider while reading a magazine. He says they are always still fat 6 months later. Mean but pretty true.  Maybe you have been working on baby step 1 (saving $1,000) for 6 months and have only stashed $500. For a single mom or family on a real tight income that might have been very difficult and genuinely the best they can do. However for most folks if they took a look at their behavior and had a few less five dollar Cappachino's or Carmel Machiato's and evenings drinking microbrews at a hip pub they could have been well into other goals (baby step 2 or saving a solid emergency fund, whatever) in that time. It is also hard because we have to admit that our brilliant plans didn't quite work out as well as we hoped. Nobody likes to do that.

 

I have had to admit failure in my own life recently. My exercise plan isn't working as well as I would like. I am getting stronger and increasing muscular endurance but not losing any weight or drastically improving my running/ cardio. I am ratcheting down on my diet and going to drastically up the amount of running and cardio that I do. Remember that you can never be too strong, just too slow.

 

If you  are not meeting your goals then start changing things. Maybe you aren't being very honest with yourself or maybe the plan just isn't working. Admitting failure sucks but not as much as continuing to fail.

EDC Belt Knife

I have been thinking that I might go away from the super common EDC one hand opening pocket knife with a clip to a small fixed blade knife. Maybe this is looking for an answer to a nonexistent problem but who cares. One nice thing about knives is that they are, provided you stick to standard consumer brands, affordable enough to do some experimenting. I am looking for a fairly small (3-4in) blade in a relatively small overall size. Something with a good blade and a handle/ sheath which are rugged, probably plastic. I don't want to spend a bunch of money. Price between about fifty bucks and a hundred but probably closer to the bottom end. Knives of Alaska makes a novel and useful looking compact knife which seems to fit the bill. It has a large hole which your pointer finger goes through. Reports say it is very handy and I think that makes up for the handle's relatively short length. I am curious about your experiences and ideas.

Random thoughts on Rifles

Aside from hunting I find they have two real uses. The first, for the right kind of rifle, is home defense. Sure you need a pistol, both to carry outside your home and for those 11pm knocks on the door which are almost surely the next door neighbor wanting to borrow ice or needing help with something. Don't need to scare them half to death with a rifle but you do want to be armed. However if you are reasonably certain there is a person or person's in your home a reasonably compact semi automatic rifle is a great choice. In fact it is very arguably the best choice. The next category is for worst case scenarios where you may need to defend yourself or otherwise project your will past pistol range. That being said rifles have a far more limited role than one might think.

 

I personally like to take a rifle with me for long trips, both for defense and in case something happens. There are situations where the presence of a semi automatic rifle will make people see the light about their evil ways when a pistol might not.

 

I hate to tell you this but scenarios where you would openly carry long arms while going about normal visiting, commerce and errands are quite slim. That stuff just doesn't happen much outside fiction novels.

 

However lets just say something did happen. What, where and how would you be carrying a rifle. One thing that I have seen personally is how convenient fully collapsible (H und K type) or folding buttstocks are. They make the package of a rifle much more compact. One of the real flaws of the M4 in my opinion. Obviously you will need some sort of a sling. There are many types so find one you like and don't pinch too many pennies.

 

Next comes ammo. Over here in Iraq and Afghanistan we carry 1 mag for our weapon while doing stuff around the base. The thinking is that 1 mag is enough to deal with any immediate threat from direct fire or action. Is that enough for you around the house/ barn area if things get wonky? We have lots of other friends with guns as well as guys on guard and QRF forces that beat what even the biggest survivalist group could realistically put out. Also we all carry the same rifle so I could grab a mag from somebody with their loaded vest on. That is yet another reason to standardize rifles. I would probably be inclined to have 1 extra magazine, either attached to my weapon in some fashion or on my belt. Clint Smith promotes having a small home defense pouch with a reload for your weapon a flashlight and a charged cell phone. To be honest in and around the house if you need more than 2 20-30rd mags either you are back inside in a prepared defensive position, have won or are dead. Sorry but it's true.

 

If I was taking a walk to the neighbors or the corner of my property maybe a couple extra mags (2-3) wouldn't be a bad idea. The new camelback's have the PALS system of webbing so you could easily stick 2 spare mags on one. If I was going to town, or ye olde barter faire or really anything except some sort of intentional military operation I would feel fine using this sort of setup and having my full out chest rig sitting on the seat of the car or whatever.

 

I guess the likelihood of contact, speed of backup if applicable and the group you are traveling in would dictate what is reasonable. If I was walking around in Mad Max ville 7 mags doesn't seem like a bad idea but I probably don't need that to walk to the neighbors or around the block.

 

Really I would probably put more emphasis on being able to carry multiple mags for the pistol, concealed or not, which is far less likely to cause me any problems.

 

Thoughts?

Book Review: The Ascent of Money By Niall Ferguson

I got this book for Christmas from my brother in law. Didn't really get a chance to start reading it for a couple months and just finished it today on a wonderfully relaxed day. Onto the usual format.

 

The Good: Niall Ferguson is a heck of a writer with an ability to go deep into history and explain events and themes. He has also written a couple of other very interesting books. In his typical fashion it explains complicated subjects and also keeps things light and interesting through various anecodal stories that blend into the subject at hand. It is a real credit to the author that it reads more like a history book than a college text. I found this book particularly valuable in that it explains, in a way average laymen can understand the history of so many parts of modern financial life. It explains how they came to be as well as how they interact with eachother. It moves along in chapters that are logically grouped by theme (banks, bonds, stocks, insurance, housing, etc) and all wraps together very well.

 

One of the most interesting things is that it shows so many things are more cyclical or reoccuring than genuinely now. Finance is sort of like movies in that if you boil it all down there are only a few real unique plots.

 

Also it is very interesting that despite what some hard money folks like to say all currencies were not genuinely 100% redeamable in gold until the early to mid 20th century. It is however true that the long term stability of non redeamable currency is at best questionable.

 

The Bad: The writer is probably closer to Keynes than Friedman, let alone Mises. Sometimes it shows in his writing. However this does not detract from the overall quality or value of the book.

 

The Ugly: On the whole this book did a great job at explaining very complicated financial subjects in a manner where moderately intelligent laymen can understand them. However at times a couple sentences of explanation or background would have been very helpful. It is like the author occasionally forgot his audience is made up of people who like nonfiction books and had $16 in their pocket instead of Harvard finance majors.

 

All things considered I would suggest this book to anyone who is interested in our current economic/ financial system and how it came to be. I got a deeper understanding of many parts of it by seeing where, when and how it all came to be. It wasn't too expensive and was an easy read.

Quotes, Inflation and Hyperinflation

 

I underlined and bent the pages in The Ascent of Money for these quotes. They interested me and may interest you.

 

"Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, as Milton Friedman said. But hyperinflation is always and everywhere a political phenomenon, in a sense that it cannot occur without a fundamental malfunction of a country's political economy."

 

"Only entrepeneurs were in a position to insulate themselves by adjusting prices upwards, hoarding dollars (TOR adds they were talking about Germany post WWI so the dollar was a safe currency, comparisons could be made to the Canadian dollar or Swiss franc today), investing in real assets (such as houses and factories) and paying off debt in depreciating banknotes."

 

Inflation is on my mid term worry calender. At some point a couple to several years from now employment will start rising and we will finally have worked the glut of housing inventory out of the system. Things will start to get better and consumer confidence will rise which leads to more spending. When those dollars banks, businesses and people have been hording under the mattress in case of emergencies start moving it will eventually become noticable that there are lots of dollars chasing the same amount of goods and prices will rise. Our benevolent banking friends the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates to try and slow the inflation. I am less than confident it will work.

 

On one hand I am not that worried about inflation because our income is secure and we live well below it with no debt. Remember that while inflation makes debts cheaper in real dollars and thus easier to pay off, it also hurts the economy and leads to layoffs and failed businesses. It doesn't matter if your mortgage or bills cost 20% less if you are laid off/ business goes under and you make 100% less. In this respect we are in a good spot as we don't owe anything.

 

However I do have some worried because we couldn't raise my wages/ prices 20% tomorrow like a small business or whatever could. Since I am pretty happy with my job this is not going to change any time soon. That leaves us managing it. We don't have any debt, let alone variable interest rate debt or a frickin ARM mortgage but if we did I would be trying to get those accounts settled in a hurry.

 

We own some precious metals which would hold their value and be very useful if inflation became truly ruinous. We also store some food which would help us get through issues with JIT inventories. In this sort of situation (high but not hyper inflation) most likely our biggest savior would be that our normal lifestyle is well below our means. It would mean saving less and our travel budget (destined to drop 50% or more anyway when we return stateside anyway) would drop significantly but our day to day existance would be the same.

 

Obviously that sort of plan would not work well in hyperinflation. For that sort of scenario I have less of a warm and fuzzy but since it is so unlikely my underoos aren't all twisted up about it. As soon as practical we are going to start growing some of our own food which will help. Of course stored food and pm's would help in emergencies or as a short term stop gap measure.

What are your preparations for inflation? What are your preparations for hyperinflation?

Hard Truths

If you grow up, get a skill (degree, trade, whatever), get married to a person you have known for awhile, then have kids your odds of economic and social success are pretty high. If you do things in the right order all, don't spend more than you make and ideally stay married (this is where knowing someone is so huge) things will go resonably well for you. However if you mess up this order in any way the odds of success and stabilty drop. The more you mess it up the worse they get. I am not coming at this from a moral angle but a practical one. It is just cold hard truth. I know more than a few people who have intentionally or otherwise messed up the order. I really hope it works out for them (and for some it does) but it is definitely a lot harder road.

Today I was reading Survival Blog and interestingly Jim Rawles said it was time to back off of purchasing Gold and Silver. To put it into perspective The Godfather loves PM's more than about everything except his kids, 1911 pistols and long term shef stable food. I personally made my last purchase a few months ago when silver was $28 or so. To be honest I don't plan to consider making more purchases until it retreats back to that area. I am not a professional advisor or anything and if you follow my ideas you are truly on your own. Consider yourself disclaimed. Personally I will not be doing any selling because we are not yet at what I would consider our desired "core holding". However if I had more than that I would seriously consider selling. I am just telling this to you guys to counter all the hysteria out there in our circles. I also have to note that the people promoting said hysteria almost always directly or indirectly profit from it.

The smart money is not buying into PM's at these prices.

The Long Haul

Earlier today I got to wondering what to do now. Not so much for me, right or wrong that path is pretty clear in my head, but as general themes and advice. Well the massive market swings, huge institutional collapses and fear of 2008 are gone. For awhile it was really touch and go. If you had asked me what the odds of a banking holiday were at least one weekend (somewhere in Aug I think) I would have put it at 50%. All of that is old news now and has been for a couple years.

Depending on who you ask we are either out of the great depression or it is dragging on. Given that every meaningful indicator except the stock market (oh unemployment, housing prices, PM prices and the like) say things are still bad I subscribe to that viewpoint. This brings up a couple of interesting topics.

The thing people fail to realize is that aside from disasters and such, most real world events aren't quick and then over. The Great Depression lasted from somewhere around 29-30 to the onset of World War Two so roughly a decade. Most Civil Wars last several years and insurgent type campaigns regularly measure in decades.

I don't believe that we have seen the last of this economic mess. Too many people are still in homes they simply can't afford, there are way too many homes on the market and lots of people are still out of work. Until these circumstances change we won't be out of the proverbial woods. When they change there might be a brief period of sunshine but sooner or later when people start spending inflation may (and almost surely will) rear it's ugly head.

The thing is that people get fatigued. Living cheaply and stuffing money under the mattress is less fun than having a good time and buying a shiny new car. It isn't that things have changed that much from say early 2009 but that folks are just getting tired. Kind of like a boxer in the 5th round knows he should keep his hands up but well, he is tired and starts getting sloppy.

What should you be doing? Well the same stuff that made sense a couple years ago, except you should be further along by now. Paying down debt, saving money and learning to live comfortably on a bit less are key to these times. Maybe you won't lose your job/ income, and I hope you don't. However with fuel and food prices rising that check is effectively a bit smaller every month.

It takes stick to it ness and a long term vision to keep with the plan you know is right. It is sort of like a deployment. It sucks a little bit (more at times) but sucks for a really long time. Losing focus is heavily punished.

The Importance of Saving No Matter What

One thing about the military is that we get paid regularly. It doesn't get much more predictable. Though for reasons I cannot understand it always varies by a dollar or two we know 99.5% of what we will get paid and exactly when. Unfortunately this makes a lot of military families (we also have some weird excentricites but that is another discussion)

 

Given the whole mess about the budget there is talk that the government might shut down and we would not get paid. I believe this has actually happened twice, during the Revolutionary War and the Clinton era. Most likely they will do a series of short extensions and then figure it out however we might have a gap in pay.

 

Wifey is active, or at least a lurker, on a couple of those military wife type boards. There were women talking about how if this happened they could not feed their families, not dramatically but literally. Also I am not talking about after weeks or months of no paychecks but immediately. If that check didn't hit on the 1st and the 15th like clockwork they would be screwed. The point of this is that even the most secure jobs and income streams can have disruptions.

 

Also a bunch of Navy families got evacuated from Japan and the immediate surrounding area. These folks left, with little notice and I imagine very limited baggage. They got put on a plane and landed somewhere to stay for awhile. Maybe they will get some sort of lodging but there will certainly be expenses associated with living out of some sort of temporary lodging. Wives will need hygiene and beauty items, kids will need toys and kid stuff, over a long enough timeline everybody will need some more clothes and without access to a full kitchen it costs a lot more to eat. The point of this is that all sorts of emergencies may happen that, while they have nothing to do with your income stream, will go beyond it's ability to absorb.

 

Basically no matter what your situation is, or how secure your income stream you need to save.

Multi Tools

These things are so darn useful. They are pretty much a whole tool box, minus a hammer, in a single compact item. Especially in a scenario where you are limited in terms of space these things are awesome. It is reasonable to have a compact tool box/ kit in an RV or a boat but if you are living out of a ruck and a couple duffels a whole tool box isn't going to happen.

 

I personally do not carry a multi tool on my person every day. I don't live a life where I turn a screw or need pliers on a daily basis so it isn't an issue. However I do keep one in my car and another in my ruck.

 

Like any sort of compromise they aren't going to equal the performance of a whole box of full sized tools. If you are going to turn dozens of screws or loosen dozens of bolts in a day a multi tool is not what you want. I own, and you should too, full sized tools for those circumstances. However if you are like me, and most people it is a lot more likely that you will need to turn 3 screws. I certainly do not have the need to keep 2 screwdrivers, a pair of pliers, and numerous other items in a backpack.

 

As for brands as long as you stick with a legit name brand like Leatherman, Gerber or SOG you will be good to go. Spend the $45 for the basic model and don't lose it or let it rust. You won't be dissapointed.

 

Anyway get a multi tool

Please Welcome eFoods Global

If you are looking to increase your stored food, take a look at eFoods Global.  They offer gourmet meals with a 15+ year shelf life.  Right now they are offering 6 free meals to start you off.  Check it out.

Going Galt

The topic of "Going Galt" comes up now and then. The relatively recent bail outs and health care legislation have made some normal productive and even successful people consider a radical change in lifestyle. Having just finished Atlas Shrugged last night I have some thoughts.




Bottom line up front the premise of my belief is to do whatever is best for your life as an individual or a family unit.



Continuing along that premise. Unless you are a doctor who just found a cure to cancer or a physicist who just figured out cold fusion or the like what you do as an individual isn't going to make jack squat of a difference to anybody who is outside of your family or is seriously economically involved with you. If you run a business that employs 40 people in a town of 750 there would be some impact on the town. However if you have 3 employees (or none) and live in a town of 5k do you think the town as a whole, let alone the county or nation will feel a difference if you decide to stop working? No is the simple answer.



Yeah if everybody did the same thing the county/ state/ nation would change but you don't influence (let alone control) everybody, just yourself.



Also I have a hard time seeing how one can truly "drop out" unless they decide to go be a hermit in a shack or a cave somewhere. We have a highly complex world with great division of labor. A single person doesn't even have enough knowledge to make a darn #2 pencil. Also with the multiple complex methods of taxation it is basically impossible to not be economically contributing to "the system". Maybe you could dodge income taxes (we will revisit that) but good luck dodging taxes on fuel and basically everything you can't produce yourself. Even if you don't pay taxes on something and the person who sells it to you doesn't report it as taxable it has already been taxed. Aside from maybe small farm products from someone who grows the food that feeds the chickens or cows good luck. Also that farmer is going to have a hard time avoiding property taxes and taxes on the diesel he uses.



Since "going galt" typically involves leaving the normal economy and going to the underground economy we need to revisit "the wedge". First we need to look at the difference in your pay if you do not pay any taxes. Next in a more confusing way comes the fact that your earnings will change. Some jobs simply can't exist in an entirely underground economy (though they can with one foot in and one foot out). Other jobs will earn a heck of a lot less money. If you have a great job working for X major corporation it is unlikely that they will be willing to call you a consultant and pay you with a personal check or cash. Also you can't get an under the table job with a comparable company.



Will the lives of you and your family really be better if instead of making 100k doing whatever you make 19k digging ditches? It is a lot harder to buy a chunk of land or pay off a mortgage when you barely make enough to live. It is also a heck of a lot harder (or impossible) to pay for good health care or finance a child's education when you make just enough to scrape by.



There are some benefits that can be gotten from really changing your lifestyle and potentially working under the table. You might be able to spend more time with your family or otherwise doing whatever gives you joy. The need to earn a good living to support a certain type of lifestyle being removed means you could move to an area you want to live in where it is hard to earn a good living. I am not saying that "going galt" can't have some real benefits. I am just saying that you need to make that sort of decision based on what will (however you define it) make your life and the lives of your family better, not because of some sort of pie in the sky conceptual ideal.



Thoughts?

Getting Along

I do not live in a Communist society or a third world thugocracy or an increadibly courupt place. However I have definitely seen the benefits of being able to establish relationships and shmooze. In life, work and especially large organizations I have difficulty properly emphasizing how much relationships can get you. From a guy at a gunshop who might give you a call when something that is your style comes in to being able to get supplies, speed something up or generally bend the rules a little bit. I'm not talking about ripping anyone off or cheating or anything like that. Just maybe you need approval from an agency that usually takes 4 months and you have 2 weeks. It is amazing how a few kind words and treating someone with dignity can get your stuff shuffled towards the top of the list. If you need something that a store has limited amounts of do you think the guy is going to sell it to someone who has a nice conversation with them regularly or a jerk? A smile can sure do a lot for you.


I also think that using some discretion is important. Even if you have a pretty solid connection with a guy sooner or later it will get burned out if you are always coming to them for a favor. I think of it like I can potentially get a certain amount of help/ favors/ whatever based upon my relationship with someone. Thus I try to do this sparingly. Also you need to remember that it works both ways.

Helping people whenever you can. Even if you really don't want to and it hurts a bit, in addition to being the right thing to do for a buddy, ensures that when YOU ask for something you will likely get it.

Just Deal With It

Sometimes for whatever reason you cannot pursue an area of preparedness. Hard to buy stuff if you are broke, hard to work on your cardio when you just had surgery, etc. We all fact a time where, if just temporarily we have to put the breaks on some of our goals or efforts. This is one of those things that you have got to embrace because you are stuck with it anyway.




I encourage you not just to think about what you cannot do. Think about what you can do and go for it. A twelve hour flight isn't good for much and you could either try to sleep or read a useful book and learn something new. Never know when that knowledge might come in useful and it is certainly more useful than having a few drinks and taking a nap. Instead of wasting time you can do PT.



My point is to constantly be moving to improve your position. Instead of saying 'I am broke' or 'I am busy' look at the what is available in your situation and go for that.

Discretionary Firearms Purchases and Modifications

Firearms accessories and modifications are an interesting topic. First of all just to clarify I am talking accessories which are not essential such as lasers, optics, bipods, etc all (as opposed to accessories which are really more like ancillary equipment such as magazines, slings, holsters, etc). I think they are sort of like Whiskey, great if used properly with some moderation but the potential is there to get stupid in a hurry.


Lets break these accessories and modifications into 2 groups. The first group are replacements for an original part of the firearm that (rightly or wrongly) are perceived to be better than the original part. Switching out a stock collapsible buttstock on an AR for one of those sweet Magpul ones is an example of this. As are a gazillion "competition" or "tactical" parts on the market for all manner of guns. The other group would be parts that are add on's which do something the stock weapon does not. Optics, lights, buttstock shotshell carriers and the like are good examples of these.

Back to my Whiskey analogy. The same way that 2 drinks make everybody a bit more sociable at a semi awkward randomly thrown together cocktail party I do not know a single person (especially at distance) who doesn't shoot better with a magnified optic. Also a mounted light (especially one activated by a thoughtfully located pressure switch:) is pretty darn useful for a gun that may be used at night. If you think about the intended purpose of a weapon a well thought out quality accessory or two can greatly increase the weapons usefulness.

In particular I like night sights on pistols. I also think every long gun should have the capacity to store some extra ammunition on it. This means buttstock mag pouches and shotshell holders.

It is easy to get stupid with accessories. I personally don't see a need to buy a "competition extended mag release/ slide release/ safety/ etc". In almost every instance I have been in the stock stuff works fine for me. More importantly if the stock stuff isn't working fine the issue is probably what we call "Operator head space and timing". In other words I am messed up, not the gun. One notable exception would be lefties who find themselves using fight handed firearms. Lucky for them the market on truly ambidextrious or dedicated left handed weapons seems to have gotten a lot better in recent years.

Today I got the pleasure of using an M4 with a Magpul MOE type collapsible stock. It is more solid and has a far better cheek to stock than the original collapsible (or for that matter normal) stock. When I get home I'm going to order one. This is a great example where an accessory just does what the original piece of equipment does but in a better way.

There are almost more types of slings than rifles these days. Personally I have tried pretty much all of them but keep coming back to a normal long piece of nylon that is mounted at the front and butt so the weapon hangs in the ready configuration (mounting points at the side or top of the weapon vs the bottom). I find the 3 point "tac slings" to be far too busy and cumbersome. Single point slings leave your weapon hanging way too low to be practical. A notable exception is if you are wearing heavy body armor and getting in and out of a vehicle all the time a short "wolf hook" works very well for M4's. Just clip it to the vest and it hangs in place whilst out and about then unclip it to get into the vehicle. Getting in and out of a vehicle with slings wrapped all around you (especially those "tac slings") just turns into an awkward mess.

Anyway I am going to go eat some lunch. What sort of weapons accessories and modifications do you like?

Welcoming Shelf Reliance!

I am very happy to announce that Shelf Reliance as the newest advertiser on our blog. They are a great company that offers awesome products at very reasonable prices. The money you save by effectively rotating your canned food will likely pay for their products in a reasonable period of time.

 

I have experienced first hand that their customer service is great. They are quick to respond to your issues and very helpful. Also they are not outsourced to India which is something I am appreciating more and more as time goes by.

 

If you aren't doing as well as you would like to be at storing and rotating shelf stable food I encourage you to go check out their stuff. Even if you are happy with your current system I would still check out their site, never know if you will find something great. With an outstanding inventory like theirs most people will find something to add to their list.

 

Please check out their store and if you make a purchase mention that Total Survivalist Liberterian Rantfest sent you there.

Dealing

Things are not great right now. Our economy is at best floundering and will take several years for a full recovery and at worst, well I hope you have bullets, beans and bandaids. I think it is important to keep a sense of perspective and a positive attitude. First of all Americans, even 'poor' Americans are rich by world standards. If you can turn on a faucet and have all the clean water you want you are rich and most of us can do that (the ones who can't have chosen not to for whatever reason). Seriously we all have our wants and struggles but we have it pretty darn good. Attitude is just so darn important. A person who ends up in a bad situation with a good attitude and the willingness to move forward and deal with the new reality is always better off. There are numerous cases of people who are well prepared and essentially die of giving up and other cases of people who are in horrible situations and get through almost exclusively on good attitude and willingness to do what must be done. For Americans and most likely other folks it is really hard to accept reality and a change in standard of living or life patterns. Unfortunately the idea that you cannot have a 'middle class' lifestyle is tantamount to accepting defeat and failure as a person. I encourage you to ignore what other people think. Other people are poor and have seriously skewed values.

Also I think it is important to remember that broad trends are made up of a very large amount of individuals. I think we are facing an overall drop in quality of life of the American middle class. Call it whatever you want, inflation, market cycles, changes in labor patterns, depression, etc but it seems to be the situation. I urge you to work to either move against this trend or at least mitigate its effects on you and your family. Just because there is an overall 20% decline in standard of living doesn't mean it has to happen to you. Or in a more extreme case if most people lose everything and you just lose something you are better off. I think it makes sense to work along both traditional lines of effort such as good financial choices, increasing your earning power, etc as well as more preparedness oriented ones like tangible stores of wealth, primative and survival skills, alpha stragegy type purchases and the 3 B's. In the real world your finances and other boring stuff are almost surely more important for your ability to deal with realistic situations then the kind of semi automatic rifle you choose, the bullets that are in your handgun or whatever.