American Mercenary has been on fire recently with great fiction. Sam the Sheriffs Deputy's little vignette has all kinds of worthwhile points to consider. Sam might be more of an asset passing intelligence and such but that would require somebody to pass it too. As noted before it is sort of hard to work your way into or create a group if hostilities are actively going on. Also sabotage might be something to consider but that is another topic. Let's ignore that Sam is a deputy sheriff for a minute.
Having some private party firearms is probably a prudent thing to do. I have some suspicions about firearm confiscation and how our defacto refistration via record keeping system would or more accurately would not work but regardless the benefits of having a gun or two that are 'unpapered' are still evident.
Sam's efforts to scrounge reloading components to load his unpapered rifle were interesting. Now I am sure AM was pushing at a point. To be honest the phrase proper preparation prevents piss poor performance immediately came to mind. If you are going to store weapons then have sufficient amounts of ancillary stuff to keep them working. This means slings, optics, cleaning kits, magazines and such. Also of course lots of bullets.[Your strategy will sort of dictate how much ammo is really needed. Raids and ambushes burn up a lot more ammo than a designated marksmen shot or two now and then. That being said to actually win you have to get close to people and kill them. ] For $230-350 you can take a good jump toward being OK in common calibers like 7.62x39, .223, 7.62x54R or to a lesser degree the more expensive .308 or 30.06.
Think about it. Instead of scrounging and doing crazy stuff I would rather have the right supplies and equipment. A fairly small purchase now will go a long way towards ammo security. Are 500 or even 1,000 rounds of rifle ammunition a stopping point? Not for me but it is a heck of a lot better than 2-3 boxes of 20 each with a couple rounds missing which is the situation for too many households.
The topic of reloading came up. I think too many people consider reloading a cure all of ammo supply issues. It isn't like garden seeds but is more like cooking in that you have to have the components. Assuming you can scrounge lead and reload brass that means powder and primers. There are of course benefits to economics and portability that come from a small reloading setup. I was reminded of an old post by Commander Zero on a very basic survival type reloading kit. Here is a video of a fellow using that sort of setup to reload .223. One might want to consider a setup like this in addition to storing ammo and whatnot.
Mentioning solutions like this that cost money has sort of been bothering me lately. It is easy to say "if you are committed you will find money to buy X, Y and Z." There is some truth to that statement as we all make choices. Instead of buying a new IPhone you can get a gun or a bunch of ammo. Instead of going out to a decent dinner and a movie you could buy a reloading setup like CZ mentioned. Ditching the cable package gives you money to put into food storage. You get the idea. That being said I know there are a lot of right minded people who have generally made the right choices but are really struggling. When folks are deciding which bills to pay and which to put off things like preps are not really in the picture.
The best I can say is to do what you can. Time, money and life situations all affect what we can do. Comparing yourself to somebody else doesn't make sense. Take the money and time you have available and put it into preparedness in a balanced and thought out way. Don't blow your whole wad on food or ammo or medical stuff. Put a bit of money into each and make slow balanced progress. Personally if something happened and I was caught short but genuinely knew we had done the best we could it would just be part of life. There are always things you can't afford to prepare for. That being said if I had not done my best or had poorly used precious resources I would feel pretty foolish for failing Wifey and kiddo.
Julies view definitely has some stuff to think about also.
Anyway I have got to go be productive.
Having some private party firearms is probably a prudent thing to do. I have some suspicions about firearm confiscation and how our defacto refistration via record keeping system would or more accurately would not work but regardless the benefits of having a gun or two that are 'unpapered' are still evident.
Sam's efforts to scrounge reloading components to load his unpapered rifle were interesting. Now I am sure AM was pushing at a point. To be honest the phrase proper preparation prevents piss poor performance immediately came to mind. If you are going to store weapons then have sufficient amounts of ancillary stuff to keep them working. This means slings, optics, cleaning kits, magazines and such. Also of course lots of bullets.[Your strategy will sort of dictate how much ammo is really needed. Raids and ambushes burn up a lot more ammo than a designated marksmen shot or two now and then. That being said to actually win you have to get close to people and kill them. ] For $230-350 you can take a good jump toward being OK in common calibers like 7.62x39, .223, 7.62x54R or to a lesser degree the more expensive .308 or 30.06.
Think about it. Instead of scrounging and doing crazy stuff I would rather have the right supplies and equipment. A fairly small purchase now will go a long way towards ammo security. Are 500 or even 1,000 rounds of rifle ammunition a stopping point? Not for me but it is a heck of a lot better than 2-3 boxes of 20 each with a couple rounds missing which is the situation for too many households.
The topic of reloading came up. I think too many people consider reloading a cure all of ammo supply issues. It isn't like garden seeds but is more like cooking in that you have to have the components. Assuming you can scrounge lead and reload brass that means powder and primers. There are of course benefits to economics and portability that come from a small reloading setup. I was reminded of an old post by Commander Zero on a very basic survival type reloading kit. Here is a video of a fellow using that sort of setup to reload .223. One might want to consider a setup like this in addition to storing ammo and whatnot.
Mentioning solutions like this that cost money has sort of been bothering me lately. It is easy to say "if you are committed you will find money to buy X, Y and Z." There is some truth to that statement as we all make choices. Instead of buying a new IPhone you can get a gun or a bunch of ammo. Instead of going out to a decent dinner and a movie you could buy a reloading setup like CZ mentioned. Ditching the cable package gives you money to put into food storage. You get the idea. That being said I know there are a lot of right minded people who have generally made the right choices but are really struggling. When folks are deciding which bills to pay and which to put off things like preps are not really in the picture.
The best I can say is to do what you can. Time, money and life situations all affect what we can do. Comparing yourself to somebody else doesn't make sense. Take the money and time you have available and put it into preparedness in a balanced and thought out way. Don't blow your whole wad on food or ammo or medical stuff. Put a bit of money into each and make slow balanced progress. Personally if something happened and I was caught short but genuinely knew we had done the best we could it would just be part of life. There are always things you can't afford to prepare for. That being said if I had not done my best or had poorly used precious resources I would feel pretty foolish for failing Wifey and kiddo.
Julies view definitely has some stuff to think about also.
Anyway I have got to go be productive.
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4 comments:
I was wondering why my blog stats showed an old page getting a surprising number of hits. Thanks for the link.
Welcome! It was one of those that just stuck in my head and seemed to fit the occasion.
Thanks for the link love :-)
AM, Welcome.
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