Author Archives: Commander Zero

It followed me home

Posted on by
13

A little bit of proof that not every gun I purchase is for tactical purposes.

I’ve always liked Marlin firearms over Winchester for lever guns. Sadly, Remington’s purchase of Marlin pretty much spiraled the brand into the ground. Quality went downhill in a very pronounced way. When Remington eventually imploded, Marlin got picked up by Ruger and they have done a marvelous job of bring the quality back up, as well as making some nice variations…most notably threaded barrels. (They are a bit more expensive though…but, Ruger’s gotta recover that capital outlay somehow.)

Anyway, pre-Remington Marlins bring a bit of a premium these days. I found this .30-30 336A at Selway Armory on my lunch hour. I already have a nice 336, but its a regular 20″ barrel version. This 336A has a 24″ barrel, Lyman receiver sights, and doesn’t have the annoying cross bolt safety. And Im a sucker for the long barrelled open-sighted guns. So, it came back to the office with me.

Once you get past .30-06 and .308, I think you could make an argument that .30-30 is the next most common big-game round in the US. Regardless, I just liked the looks of this long-barrelled classic. So…here we are.

Still sloggin’ along

Posted on by
23

It’s hunting season in western Montana right now. I was kinda hoping that by the time hunting season rolled around this year I would have a piece of property that I could throw a tent on for a weekend and do little hunting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that this is going to be in the cards for this hunting season. I am, however, very much planning on being on my own little hunting area next season.

How’s the property hunting coming? Well, I had a sudden and unexpected financial obligation come up and until I get that resolved I am not comfortable pulling the trigger on a piece of property. I hope to have the issue resolved in a few weeks, but by then hunting season will be in the rearview mirror.

And while Im on the subject of getting this land thing finished, I need to drop some coin and buy an ATV of some flavor and, probably, a snowmobile of some kind as well. Since virtually all of the properties I have been looking at are in places where road maintenance is a quaint theory I need to have the ability to get in and out of the area. And, on this matter, everyone…and I mean everyone….has an opinion. Get a four-wheeler and snowmobile. Get a side-by-side and a track/tread conversion for winter. Get a four-wheeler and a set of chains. Get a side-by-side and a snowmobile. Etc, etc. I mean there’s all sorts of combinations of these and every possible combination has its supporters and detractors. Clearly I need to do a good bit of independent research and make my own informed opinion.

And, naturally, it doesnt stop there. There’s a tremendous amount of things that need to be purchased in anticipation. Most notably tools, implements, and a whole library of how-to, instruction, and technical books. Fortunately, in the circles I travel in I have associates and friends in fields of expertise that can give me some information and ideas. But theres always something that I’m ignorant of and that I don’t know anyone who is well-informed. And although I try to avoid putting the cart before the horse, I can’t see much reason not to have certain materials, equipment, and supplies tucked away. And, of course, theres the other things I need to have lined up that you can’t just order of Amazon….things like sourcing a real estate trust lawyer, finding someone to do  a survey and maps, that sort of thing.

But, when its all done, I really really hope it’ll be the quiet little hidden private oasis that I daydream about. I guess we’ll see. Gotta get the finances straightened out first.

Upcoming NFA tax change

Posted on by
29

As you may know, after the first of the year the $200 transfer tax on certain NFA items (short-barreled shotguns and rifles, and suppressors) goes away. You still have the annoying background check and delays, but at least you won’t be paying $200 for the privilege.

The demand for those kinds of items (hereafter just referred to as ‘NFA items’) has always been tiny compared to the demand for non-NFA stuff. The reason, of course, is because most people don’t want to go through the hassle…this is evidenced by the fact we have ‘wrist braces’.

Since demand is usually fairly mild it’s not too hard to imagine that production rates of these NFA items is also a bit dialed back.

So, what do you think is going to happen after January 1st when theres no $200 tax to deter people anymore? Demand will go up, of course. But production rates my not be able to meet that demand. So when you go to buy a nice shiny Mojave9 or Sparrow, your dealer might say “Yeah, those are backordered.”

It makes sense that if youre of the mind to take advantage of the new rules on January 1st your strategy should probably be to order the the NFA item now, pay for it now, and have the dealer sit on it until January 1st and then do the paperwork.

 

When you don’t miss the .gov during a shurtdown

Posted on by
11

Its been, what?, a month of government shutdown and…I haven’t even noticed. But, according to the news that may change when the barbarous hordes that rely on government aid to eat discover that the free money isn’t flowing into their EBT card as usual.

The internet, a bastion of truth and fact, has all sorts of warnings that people buying groceries will be attacked by the EBT crowd for their groceries. And that there will be mass shoplifting. And looting. And….well, you fill in the rest.

Will this sort of thing happen? Probably in some cases as people get fueled by these same articles. But by and large I don’t think so. If youre too lazy to work for food youre probably too lazy to steal it. But, I’ve been wrong before.

What amuses me terribly is that there are organizations and food banks that are rushing to cater (literally) to the poor souls of federal employees who may be going hungry as this nasty and evil ‘shutdown’ goes on. The depth of my absolute indifference for the plight of federal employees simply cannot be measured. How can you work at a government job, with government benefits, at government wages, and government schedules, and somehow not be able to put away enough money in the bank to buy yourself groceries for a month? How does that happen?

If you’re folding shirts for $12 and hour for twenty hours a week at Cabelas….yeah, youre living on a tight budget if you have a budget at all. But working as a GS whatever for Uncle Sam seems to give enough that you should be able to tuck a couple grand into a mason jar in the backyard for emergencies.

But…you know what? I don’t care. It’s not a nice thing to say out loud, but I have virtually no concern for anyone on “food stamps”. I absolutely recognize that there are plenty of people who genuinely are unable to feed themselves for very legitimate reasons. And it’s a shame that those people have to share the moral outrage that is directed at the able-bodied and ambition-challenged parasites that most people think of when food stamps are mentioned.

Do you know what happens if someone I care about winds up in a situation where they can’t afford to feed themselves and they need to run to .gov? I feed them. And I help them get back on their feet. And I look out for them as they get their act back together. It is not a financial hardship for me to feed someone I care about. I’ve been hungry before and as a result I’m always sensitive about food. In fact, I generally refuse to eat in front of other people unless theyre eating as well because I can’t shake the feeling that if I’m eating and the other person isnt, then somethings wrong and I need to get them some food.

But for now, this ‘government shutdown’ only affects me in one way: it makes me more careful and observant around food distribution places like Winco, Costco, Albertsons, and any stop-n-rob I happen to be in. ‘Flash mobs’ seeking ‘food justice’ by looting the shelves at Kroegers isn’t likely to be a thing here in flyover country but you never can tell what’s going to happen.

And we have, as survivalists, heard for years that ‘society is three days of food away from collapse’ and ‘hungry people are dangerous people’. Any violence that occurs now isn’t going to really be out of hunger because short of an absolute societal collapse, it seems, to  me, to be pretty difficult to starve in this country. Heck, we’re the only country in the world with fat poor people.

So, as far as Im concerned, the shutdown can go on for as long as it likes.

 

Storage in anticipation

Posted on by
42

Still haven’t dialed in the piece of property I want to buy. But I have no doubt that its going to happen within the next year. I mean, sure, its possible it won’t but I really think it’s a pretty much a lock. To that end, it seems to me that it isn’t a bad idea to start picking up the things I anticipate needing…another generator, four wheeler, PV setup materials, batteries, tools, equipment, materials, storage tanks, piping, wiring, fixtures, etc, etc.

The problem with that is…where do I keep it until I have the need for it? I’m not throwing it all under a tarp in my in-town backyard, and I’m not storing it in my living room indefinitely. It seems to me, at first blush, that the answer is to get a storage unit. (An ideal plan would be to just buy a cargo container to use for storage, but, again, where the heck am I going to keep it until I buy property?) [Although, I could, I suppose, buy a small 10′ conex cube, park it in a storage unit, and have a sort of secure storage wthin a secure storage.]

So, I need to shop around for a storage unit, I think. This of course opens up all sorts of barrels of fishhooks in regards to opsec, persec, and just avoiding general thievery. The most obvious way would be to simply not store anything of substantial value and high portability (guns, for example) in such a place. But…thats not always going to be feasible. While I’d never store guns and ammo in a storage unit that was not under my direct observation, I am going to need a place for fuel cans, water jugs, blue barrels. generator, four wheeler, tubs of clothing, bedding, etc, etc.

I’d like to start amassing things now since a) prices are only gonna go up and b) who knows where availability might go? And by buying before the property is acquired gives me time to research things to make sure I’m getting the best bang for my buck. The major detraction from doing this, as I see it, is that this involves spending money before I purchase the property…which means I may be handicapping myself in terms of available cash when a property comes up that I like. I suppose that can be mitigated by saving the very high dollar items for further down the road after the purchase, but there are definitely some things Id like to have all packed up and ready to go once the ink dries.

I suppose its time to crack open Excel and start a list with pricing, sources, priorities, and that sort of thing.

 

Loewes water container

Posted on by

I was heading back to work from my lunch break and cut through the Loewe’s parking lot and beheld these:

Hmm. Interesting. I was curious so I pulled over to get some detail. Its a 260-gal emergency water storage tank. Conveniently, it’ll fit through a doorway. Inconveniently, it’s about 2200# when filled…so strictly a basement or garage item.

I try to keep at least 75 gallons or so of water on hand at all times, and theres another 50 gallons or so in the water heaters, but if you ever need to break into your stored water you probably won’t think that a larger tank is ‘too much’.

The reason I posted this is because I find it interesting that something like an ’emergency water storage tank’ has gone mainstream enough to be at Loewe’s. I should also like to point out that if youre in Missoula or thereabouts, Murdoch’s and Mountain Supply both carry a very large variety of water tanks…from the convenient and small 35-gal. all the way up to the monstrous and useful 2500-gal.

When I get my little hideyhole squared away there will be at least a couple of these sitting around ‘just in case’.

Switching over

Posted on by

The gunternet is in a bit of an excited state because it has been announced (sorta) that Glock is changing the design of their pistols in order to make them less ‘convertible’ to full-auto using the slideplade-mounted ‘switches’ that are all the rage in certain places.

Here’s the part that has me scratching my head. The Gen3 version of the Glock pistol has hit the stage where manufacturers can make, generally, copies of it. Trademark protections are still there so you can’t make the gun look like a Glock, but you can copy it down to the smallest part. We see this in the Ruger RXM, Palmetto Dagger, and a few other off-brand importers and manufacturers. Additionally, Glock-style frames are 3D printed easily enough, and aftermarket Gen3 slides and components are also well represented in the market.

So, if Glock brings out this model that is designed to be incompatible with the already-illegal ‘switches’, why wouldn’t a potential bad guy simply switch to a Glock clone that apes the Gen3 design? Or will this be the ‘camels nose under the tent’ to create a rubric where a gun has to meet some sort of arbitrary ‘convertability standard’ to be permitted into commerce? (Much like California’s current ‘approved handgun’ scheme.)

Beats me. I’ve a dozen Gen3 17’s and 19’s sitting here, as well as a dozen clones from Palmetto. I’ve never been interested in a full-auto Glock so my only dog in this fight is about the precedent it sets. If there ever comes a time I actually need a full-auto firearm..there will probably be plenty of them laying around.

But…. this is a good example of how, for totally unexpected reasons, your logistics can shift. I’m a devotee of the Gen3 Glocks…and as such I stocked all sortsa parts. Most parts are not generation-specific….Part X from a Gen3 will most likely be identical to a Part X from a Gen4 which is probably going to be identical to a Part X from a Gen5, etc, etc. Not for every single part, but for enough of them to make logistics pretty easy. Now, the man who buys a ‘V’ series Glock may discover that the last five generations of trigger bar…or striker cover…or locking block….may not work in his new pistol.

The moral here is that whatever boomtoy you plan on running through Ragnarok with should have as complete and well-thought-out logistics as you can afford – spare parts, spare mags, etc, etc. And most of the time it won’t be a problem, but sometimes something will happen and the ‘tweak’ made to a particular boomtoy suddenly renders future logistics a bit uncertain. So…don’t hesitate to buy the support material (and materiel) as soon as possible when you introduce a new gun into your life.

More Tapco

Posted on by

I’d picked up a couple Mini-14s over the course of the year and that means that the mag:gun ratio shifted unfavorably after each purchase. Whats that mean for the savvy survivalist? Duh..it means buy more mags:

I stumbled across these Tapco Gen2 mags on Gunbroker and made a deal to take all the guy had. I’ve posted about these mags before and I recommend them. Even the Ruger factory mags arent always 100%….the 20-rd mags work flawlessly but the 30’s sometimes fail to feed reliably. These Tapcos (and the Eagles) seem to work more reliably than the Ruger OEM…and theyre usually cheaper (when you can find them).

As I’ve said, the Mini-14 isn’t even a tertiary level of backup around here but despite that, it doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a decent mag supply on hand for them.

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Posted on by

I don’t know who asked for this, but…..
Admittedly, there arent very many 10mm carbines out there, although there are more now than there used to be. Ruger just came out with one on their LC platform which is doomed for failure. HiPoint, of all people, came out with one. And there’s a few oddball AR platforms out there. But…compared to the 9mm, and even the .40, the field of 10mm carbines is pretty small.

Not sure who the market is for this thing. I mean, the natural answer is that its for the man who owns a 1omm pistol, but if I’m carrying a semi-auto 10mm Im probably want a carbine that is semi auto and takes the same mags. On the other hand, there are 10mm revolvers out there so it might make a good companion for them….but if youre going to carry a revolver and a levergun, why not . 357 or .44 instead of a boutique round for a semiauto?

Will I buy one? Probably. Just for the novelty value. But I admire RugerMarlin for trying new things.