Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

An article about how in this time of economic uncertainty some people are burying their money. If they’re smart, that isn’t the only thing they’ll bury.

The day the Dow fell 777 points, David Latham, a 45-year-old Alabama cattle farmer and electrician, was busy doing errands. Driving his Chevy pickup into Montgomery, he dropped by the hardware store, then stopped into the bank, where he withdrew $8,000 from his CD account, all in 20s. Back home, he slipped the four inch-thick bundles into a Ziploc bag, popped them into a waterproof PVC tube and set out for a remote location on his 300-acre property, where he dug a deep hole with a post digger. And then he buried his money.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Under the principle of “Know your enemy as you know yourself….” I try to listen to leftist talk radio from time to time. For the last couple days the topic of gun control has been coming up. I fully suspect this is for a couple reasons…first, the lefties are realizing that ‘the gun issue’ may hurt them and they want to defuse the issue as quickly as possible before it gains momentum. Additionally, the Carter II Obama administration hasn’t been secret about its stance on gun control (although it did try to ‘memory hole’ it with their convenient ‘retooling’ of their website) and may want people to think that theres nothing wrong with ‘sensible’, ‘common sense’ prohibitions….soften up the masses and get ‘em receptive for the next putsch push.

I was only able to get about sixty seconds of listening to the idiot on Air America before I had to turn it off…my vision was going red around the edges and I was driving. But the question the host whined plaintively was ‘whats wrong with licensing guns?’. Sigh.

Lets ignore that there’s no right, as far as I know, in the Constitution that requires .gov pre-approval to exercise. Lets get to the heart of the matter – confiscation is the natural consequence of registration and licensing schemes.

Many years ago I lived in Brooklyn NY. When I turned 18 I got my shotgun/rifle license. I bought a buncha stuff…AK’s, AR’s, even an HK93 for $600 (Ah, those were the days), and that sort of thing. A year later I moved to Montana and never looked back. However, I never updated the ‘Firearms Control Bureau’ with my new address. A couple years go by and Im forwarded a piece of mail from the wastes of life at the FCB. The letter said, succinctly, ‘…you own a bunch of assault weapons and they are now illegal in the city limits. Turn them in to us or get them out of the city. Your choice.’ (It was actually worded in the usual bureaucratic legalese but you get the idea.) Now, I was living in Montana…as far as I was concerned the FCB could come out to Montana and get the damn things if they had the balls. So..I got a marker and wrote across the top of their letter “You want ‘em, come and get ‘em”. (Yes, that’s right…I was ‘Molon Labe’ before Molon Labe was cool) Threw it in an envelope and sent it off. Time marches on. A few months later a family member still living in NY calls me. “Hey, remember the house we used to live in? Well, the cops showed up there the other day looking for you and your guns.”

Imagine that. Now how did those guys know what I had and where I lived? Oh, wait, that’s right….those guns were duly licensed and registered.

So lets talk about ‘papered’ and ‘unpapered’ guns. A papered gun is a gun where you went into a gun store and filled out a ‘yellow sheet’ (ATFE form 4473) and gave all your personal info and submitted to the background check. An unpapered gun is one that you bought from a guy at work for $150 with no paper trail whatsoever that leads to you.

Is the ATFE 4473 a de-facto registration? Yes and no. Those 4473’s aren’t submitted to ATFE unless the dealer goes out of business. After twenty years the dealer may dispose of them. (That last rule may have changed but I don’t think so.) What that means is that ATFE and .gov only have that info on you if the dealer goes out of business or if the ATFE has a reason to come looking for you. Lets examine those two circumstances.

ATFE is prohibited from making a database of gun owners and what they own. This, of course, doesn’t stop them from doing it under other guises. The method they use now is to take a dealers records (because dealers must send all that to ATFE when they close up shop) and create a database of that info. So, if your dealer stays in business for 20 years and then destroys the paperwork theres effectively no paper trail.

Until the dealer goes out of business the dealer sits on those records. He doesn’t send them off to ATFE once a year or anything. If ATFE wanted to find out what guns you own they’d have to canvas every dealer near you and ask to look through their books and try to find your name. A time consuming process. Could they call NICS, ask if your name came through on an instant check lately and from what dealer to help narrow down their search? ATFE would probably say no but lets live in the real world…yes they could.

There is also the chance that a future administration (like the Carter II administration) could simply say that dealers have to turn in the 4473’s every year or fax them in once a month for ‘random compliance checks’ or some other such nonsense.

So, if youre the kind of person who thinks that what guns you own (to say nothing of why you own them) is no one’s damn business but your own then you probably want to own guns that were purchased through ‘private transactions’. Some states make this illegal, some do not. If you live in a state where its illegal then you definitely don’t want to make these quiet private transactions among trusted friends and relatives…although the odds of getting in trouble for it are quite low, and that its simple to just give your uncle $400 and buy the old .357 he bought in 1975, and that as long as you don’t commit a holdup with that gun you’ll probably never come to the attention of the authorities, it would still be wrong. So don’t do it. And although its tempting and the risk is very low, definitely don’t drive over to a state where its legal, purchase guns through a private sale and then return to your home state with them….that’d be very illegal.

If, however, you live in a state where theres no prohibition on these types of transactions, then its certainly an attractive way to fill the gun cabinet without bringing yourself to the attention of Big .Gov.

Is this sort of thinking paranoid? Not at all because I’ve been there. I followed the rules, registered my guns, never committed a violent act with them and they still sent armed men to what they thought was my house to take them away. So this notion that fears of confiscation are somehow the machinations of a right-wing paranoid delusion can be readily disproved with documented incidents.

Its happened in California only a few years ago…the government there pulled a fast one and said that certain ‘assault weapons’ would be grandfathered if you registered them..folks registered them and then once that was done the .gov changed their minds and now, conveniently, had a list of who had what and where it was. Pretty slick, that.

Here in the great state of Montana, despite having a Democrat governor with some leftist leanings, we enjoy the unregulated private sales of firearms, no state bans on any type of firearms, a decent concealed weapons law, no licensing requirements (except on the Fed level for Class III and that sort of thing), and yet we have very little gun violence. No drive-by shootings, very few stickups, home invasions are rare and newsworthy occurrences, and the public display of firearms seldom raises a red flag. Life is good here for us gunnies.

Is it worth a few extra bucks to purchase a firearm without a paper trail? In my opinion, yes. In that case Im not paying extra for the gun, Im paying extra for the peace of mind that comes from knowing that the only person who knows what is sitting in my gun safe is me.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Theres a saying that “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. As of late, my hammer is the desire to not be an unfortunate victim of the times and every problem looks like a disaster in the making.

In short, I think all the doom and gloom swirling about has gotten me into a little funk. Obviously Im still disheartened about how the elections turned out. I read the various news wires about economic failures, unemployment, bank failures, food prices, stock market woes, etc, etc. Couple that with a few real-life incidents of friends and family suddenly finding themselves in economically dangerous waters because of ever-changing circumstances and you’ve got a recipe for feeling pretty darn bleak.

The solution? Well, information and reason go a long way towards relieving fear and uncertainty. I can sit here and know that I have enough fuel, food, guns, ammo and equipment that if the world ended tomorrow, I’d be your king.

But still, on an intellectual level I know we’re okay and that we’d come through prety much anything with flying colors. But at the same time I still get a visceral reaction to the news that makes me wanna run to WalMart and fill grocery carts and gas cans. Maybe thats the problem with being into preparedness – you become so acutely aware of the threats and dangers around you that you can never go back to having a nice, complacent everyday life where ‘planning for the future’ means nothing more than dropping money into your 401(k). But once you take the red pill theres no going back, I suppose.

I think preparedness is like that red/blue pill scene from the movie. You take the blue pill and you keep doing what everyone else does, you never worry about violence or hunger or the myriad of curve balls life can throw at your head. You take the red pill and you look at camping equipment with an eye towards subdued colors, a car’s top speed and styling take a backseat to its ability to traverse crumbled trails and clogged roads, a trip to the supermarket becomes an adventure in shelf life and serving size, being careful about what you say about what you own becomes second nature, etc, etc.

I can see where, when your interest is staying on top of the news of potential Very bad Things, a person could wind up feeling a bit overwhelmed at times but I think I’d rather have those infrequent bouts of sober reflection than to be hungry, cold, helpless and homeless.

I trek to the bunker, turn on the lights, and view the Great Stash O’ Food, the floor-to-ceiling cases of ammo, the stacks of fuel drums, the blue barrels of wheat, corn and rice, the stacks of batteries, the sleeping bags, the blankets, the flashlights, the radios, the water purification, the barrels of clean water and then I feel that maybe I dont have a thing to be worried about.

Given the choice of the blue pill or the red pill, and knowing that sometimes being aware of the fragility of the status quo can be a little disconcerting, I think I’m glad I went with the red pill. Sometimes it may seem a little intimidating, and sometimes I may feel a little out of sorts because of current events, but at the end of the day I can feel safe and secure which makes up for all the other stuff, I think.

These are what will be available for purchase as soon as the next shipment arrives:

#10 cans, rated for 30+ year shelf life:

Rice & Chicken, Spaghetti, Vegetable Stew w/Beef, Chili Mac, Beef Teriyaki, Chicken Teriyaki, Lasagna w/Meat Sauce, Noodles & Chicken, Oriental Style Spicy Chicken , Chicken Stew, Scrambled Eggs w/ Ham, Egg Mix – Butter Flavor, Scrambled Eggs w/ Bacon, Granola w/ Blueberries & Milk,
Diced Beef -Cooked, Diced Chicken – Cooked, Ground Beef – Cooked, Garden Green Peas, Green Beans, Corn, Blueberry Cheesecake

Single serve pouches, rated for minimum 7 year shelf life:
ProPack: Beef Stew, Chicken Teriyaki, Chili Mac w/ Beef
Lasagna, Mexican Chicken w/ Rice, Rice & Chicken
S&S Pork, Spaghetti

Double Serving pouches:
Potatoes n Beef
Grilled Chicken Breast w/ Mashed Potatoes
Scrambled Eggs w/Ham
Prckd Scrambled Eggs
Prckd Eggs w/Bacon
Granola w/Blueberries

Emergency kits:
Just In Case … 72-Hour Kit
Just In Case… 7 Day Food Unit

Cans and pouches are 6/case. Unlike pretty much everyone else on the internet, you can mix-match your case of 6…3 of x, 2 of y, 1 of z = case of 6.
There’ll be an additional discount if you order cans in increments of 6. That is to say, if you order 8 cans of something you would get a better deal if you ordered 6 or 12. Why? Shipping boxes hold six cans…an order thats divisible by six makes things alot easier, and easier for me means cheaper for you.

No minimum order. If you want just one or two cans, thats do-able.
Shipping is actual. The pouches are much, much lighter than cans and can be shipped very reasonably by Priority Mail. One or two cans can go in a Priority Mail flat rate box. More than that and they’ll go by UPS.

Payment can be by PayPal for the usual transaction %, or by US Postal Money Order. Since all of this stuff will be on-hand, it ships the day after your payment is received. No waiting.

Email for pricing. zero@commanderzero.com

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Ah, the fascinating times we live in.

The Carter II Obama administration is ramping up. Did you guys see that one of the questions they ask prospective employees is if they own guns? Presumably this is to weed out people who might later turn out to be ‘embarassing’ to the administration. Personally, I think if youre going to go work for this yahoo then you’ve already pretty much embarassed yourself. Just my opinion.

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I see California is doing its annual self-immolation. Whenever I see a news article about the wildfares that are raging (notice that fires always ‘rage’? They never happen, occur, burn, exist, or spread..they rage) they always throw in the standard photo of someone standing in front of their house with a garden hose. Just once I’d like to see a picture of some guy with a massive pump sitting next to his swimming pool and coils of 2″ hose snaking across his property while he soaks the place down. I mean, if I lived in an environment where these sorts of occurrences were fairly predictable I’d have some top notch firefighting gear sitting in my garage.

Montana does get its share of forest fires. Living in town theyre not really a threat to my property since they’d have to burn through a whole lotta real estate to get to my part of town. But there have been summers where the smoke gets so thick that you literally cant see down the street and you have to keep the windows closed at all times if you want to breath normally.

Someday when I get the much daydreamed about place out in the boonies, it will most definitely be as close to fireproof as one can make such a structure without building it out of solid granite.

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Need to head to the range this week and play with the PTR-91. I have it on a three-point sling and I’d like to practice snap shooting with it. A perfect opportunity to take out the .22 L conversion kit for the PTR and get some use out of it. Still gotta get a conversion for the AR and the Glocks though.

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Gun show coming up in three weeks. It’ll be the first local one since the election. Im very curious to see how it unfolds. I’ll be taking along a hundred or so AR mags to sell. Be interesting to see what the market is like by then. I am astounded that there are people who have waited this long to buy their mags and guns. These elections happen every four years so that wasnt exactly an unexpected event, and it was, I think, a little obvious that the Democrats were gonna win several months before the election. And now people complain that when they try to buy guns and mags prices and availability are problems.  What a surprise, eh?

No guarantees, but its looking like another Mountain House deal is in the works. This one will be different than the others – there will be no requirement to buy by the case. That means that where you previously had to buy 6 cans of one product you can mix-n-match to your hearts content. Six cans of Chicken and Rice or just one can…your choice.

Discounts will be better for 6/case quantity but even buying single cans it should still be quite competitive.

This order will be for pouches and cans, so if theres a particular product youre after…lemme know.

One can or one hundred, no minimums. Same for pouches.
Also, I discovered I can fit one can in the $10 Flat Rate box and two in the $13 Flat Rate box so if you only want a can or two, its gonna be flat rate shipping anywhere in the US. More than a couple cans and it’ll be UPS.

This will be open to anyone who is interested so you can bring in the relatives and the guys at work if you want.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Ok, that Standard Controllability Test that I mentioned? Uhm..an eye opener. That all I wanna say about that. At least, until I throw another few hundred rounds downrange.

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I’d like to take this opportunity to remind folks that while youre scrambling for guns and magazines do not overlook reloading components. Although I havent heard anything about it (yet) all its gonna take is one of those highly touted executive orders for Glorious Leader to reclassify our powder and primers as a ‘permit required’ item. A brick of a thousand primers is, most assuredly, not enough. Remember the great primer scare during the Clinton administration? Alot of us said we’d never get caught flat-footed on primers again. Fact is, while there are some ways to make your own primers and powders nothing works as well or as cheaply as the real thing. Grab some while you can. How much? Well, a brick of 1000 primers lets you make, unsurprisingly, 1000 rounds. Do you think you’ll need more than 1000 rounds over the course of your life? Yes? Then get more. Powder comes 7000 grains to a pound. My 9mm eats about 6 gr. per cartridge so 1# of powder would mean around 1160 or so rounds per pound. Since I figure I’m gonna want a hell of a lot more than 1100 rounds in my future, an 8# keg (or three) might be a good idea.

Bullets are always being threatened with that ‘microstamping’ nonsense. For the lower velocity stuff like handguns I can cast bullets out of lead if I had to. Hence, a few bullet moulds and casting equipment is a good idea to put back.

If you dont reload I strongly suggest you start. You can buy a cheap setup from Lee for less than $150. Its not the best gear on the market but if you try reloading and don’t like it you’ll only be out about $150. If you do turn out to like reloading you can upgrade to some RCBS or Redding gear. (RCBS gets the nod for universal parts and accesory availability, although I think Redding makes a superior product.)

Heres your shopping list:

• Primers – At least a thousand in each size that you use (Small pistol, large pistol, small rifle, large rifle) Store them in a dry, sealed container like a plastic ’sportsmans dry box’ or ammo can. No, it won’t be a bomb,
• Powder – At least enough for a thousand rounds in each caliber you shoot. (Thus, finding a powder that works with a variety of cartridges is a good thing….Unique in pistol, IMR 3031 in rifle) Again, store it in a dry, waterproof container.
• Bullets – .223 and .308 bullets especially.
• Brass – You have been saving your brass, right? And pick up any reloadable brass you find at the range…you can always trade it later.
• Reloading gear – I cant see this stuff ever being controlled (although the Brits were up in arms, so to speak, about being able to buy a ‘bullet making machine’ off eBay) but have an extra set of dies for the stuff you shoot. They can be had used for $15. Get some spare primer punches and that sort of thing too.

I reload for economy’s sake but often I am forced to reload because the gun Im shooting hasnt had commercial ammo made for it since WW2. If the Carter II administration decides to tackle gun control issues dont think they wont have people advising them who havent learned from the 1994 AW ban….they’ll close those little ‘loopholes’ and Im sure gunpowder and ammo will be on their agenda.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Several posts back I linked to Carter II’s website page that had a statement about his desire to renew the Clinton assault weapon ban. Guess what? The link is now 404. Go figure.

Original link

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

As much as I enjoy guns and shooting, it seems I never practice as much as I should. That is not to say I don’t practice shooting as in “go to the range and pull the trigger”, but rather that I don’t practice shooting as in “Set quantifiable goals and rigid parameters and compare against them”. Oh, I do that with rifle, sure…but not often with handgun…and since the handgun is the firearm I tend to have around me the most, I really should get out and practice more with it.

So, whats the drill to practice with handgun? The IPSC guys will give you all sorts of scenarios with cool names like “Three To Go”, “When In Doubt”, etc, etc. I want something a bit simpler but still retaining a good bit of practicality and offering a method for gauging improvement. It would also be nice if it was simple to setup, didn’t require elaborate targets, and didn’t look obviously ‘tactical’.

Mel Tappan, in both “Tappan On Survival” and “Survival Guns”, mentions a drill he called the SCT.

“A good benchmark…is what my friend Jeff Cooper calls the SCT or Standard Controllability Test. It involves drawing your pistol from wherever you normally carry it –holster, pocket, waistband or handbag – and firing five full power combat rounds within five seconds into a 10” circle at 25 yards. This is not the ultimate test of pistol mastery, but if you can do it six times out of ten, the chances are better than excellent that if an armed assailant ever threatens your life, he has unwittingly committed suicide.”

The SCT is again mentioned in “Tappan On Survival”:

“…let me suggest a simple, but revealing test. Find a safe place to shoot without too many curious onlookers and bring a friend with you. Set up a silhouette target or simply a twenty-four-inch wide by thirty-six-inch long sheet of wrapping paper at a measured twenty-five yards. Then with your friend timing you and blowing a start and stop signal on a loud whistle at five-second intervals, draw your pistol of choice (in a serious caliber) and fire five shots at the center of the target mass, within the allotted five seconds. Reload and repeat. If all of your shots can be contained within a ten-inch circle four times out of five, your survival index is probably adequate. If not, you need training.”

A few interesting things about this exercise. The most noteworthy is that the pistol is drawn from where you normally carry it. While IPSC is a lot of fun it seems unlikey a lot of folks carry those high-speed, low-drag holster rigs in their day-to-day activities. Having to factor the fumble-for-your-gun into your time should prove revealing.

Another changeup from most shooting exercises is the use of full-power ammo. Many competitions have a minimum requirement that the ammunition must meet in terms of power, but many competitors don’t go past that minimum. In other words, they use ammo just powerful enough to meet the requirements…anything more powerful slows down recovery time. Real-world usage, its assumed, will have the shooter using full-power defensive-grade ammo.

A ten inch circle is a pretty generous target at first blush. Since Im cheap and prefer taking the easy way out on many things I’ll be using paper plates as targets. They’re already close to the right diameter and a quick tap with the staple gun and we’ll be ready to shoot. Fortunately, I have a competition shooting timer so a buddy with a stopwatch will be unnecessary.

My goal will be pretty simple. Start at five yards in, draw, fire five rounds in less than five seconds, and if they’re all on the plate move back another five yards. The goal will be to find out at what distance accuracy or speed fall out of the established ranges. Once at that distance the goal will be, obviously, to improve to the point that everything is on target within the allotted time. Should be enlightening. Of course, theres room for variations such as weak-hand shooting, one hand shooting, shooting from various positions, etc. but overall I think this drill may have some merit.

I’ll also have to investigate a variation of it for carbine work. Rifle sights aren’t nearly as coarse as pistol sights so perhaps the time element may need to be changed. Be fun to try it and find out.

If anyone else is going to the range soon, I invite you to grab a couple paper plates (or similar size targets) and take a swing at it. Lemme know how it goes.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Okay,

I’m taking a deep breath and moving on.

This is me breathing…

As I have been relentlessly harping about, warning against, and predicting, magazine and AR availability taking a sharp jump for the worse. Somehow, and I don’t understand this, there are people who didn’t think it might be a good idea to stock up on guns and mags until after the election results were in. These are the same folks you see jammed in the Publix four hours before a hurricane hits snapping up milk, bread and eggs (because, apparently, hurricanes are French toast weather). And that isn’t the worst of it…there are still people sitting on the fence who won’t take action until Carter Obama is in office … and then theres another row of fencesitters who won’t take any action until the legislation is up for a vote… and then theres a final row who wont do anything until the legislation becomes law. And during that long, painful period from now until Assault Weapon Ban II the prices will go up and the availability will go down.

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Gas prices continue to drop, although for how long is a mystery. Folks are telling me there are some places in town that are as low as $2.20/gallon. This means that not only will I be done with my fuel storage for now, prices may come down enough that a little in-state traveling may now be in the affordable range. For example, Ive been wanting to hit the gun shows in Great Falls, Bozeman and even Billings but $4 gas made that a very expensive propostion. Montana isn’t exactly a small state and you can travel some pretty long distances between major population centers. Current stockpile is 10 5-gallon cans with one empty Blitz can left over. I’ll fill that one in the next few days, treat it, and be done for the year.

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Last night was an example of food storage paying off. It was late, I hadn’t eaten, and I was hungry but didn’t feel like going out in the cold and trudging to the supermarket. I wanted something hot, filling, satisfying, and in large quantity. So a quick trip into the deep freeze for some vacuum sealed ground beef, ca. 2006; a pound of spaghetti from the short term stage bins, ca. 2007; and a jar of spaghetti sauce purchased on sale back around April. Cook the whole mess up and eat. Didn’t even have to leave the house. And, according to the spreadsheets, I could do this another 30 times if I had to. Convenience, my friend…just another benefit to thinking ahead.

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If theres anyone out there who hasn’t got some spare parts sitting around for your favorite thundertoys, you should probably get busy on that. May not be able to simply buy a new handgun if something goes bad on your old one without going through a hideous amount of hoop-jumping. Assume they even offer a hoop.