Monthly Archives: June 2025

.22 practice

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Went out to the range the other day to see if a problem I was having with my BRN-180 SBR was resolved or not. I swapped out the extractor and ejector with ones from JP Customs and that seems to have fixed it. I say ‘seems’ because I won’t be completely satisfied until I run a couple hundred more rounds through it. There’s simply no room for doubt and lack of faith in a firearm that you may (or may not) want to keep in a ‘serious’ role.

Speaking of serious, the internet gives me no shortage of pistol drills to use to keep skills sharp and active. However, I don’t see as many carbine drills. So, I am throwing this question out to the collective hive-mind: do you have a source for drills I can perform at the range using an AR equipped with a .22 conversion kit? Most of my rifle drills involve ‘snap shooting’ but I’d like something a bit more, for lack of a better term, ‘practical’ or ‘real world’. There are plenty of drills that require use of full blown .223 ammo, and while some of those may be of use when using a .22 conversion, many are not. Because .22 is less powerful than .223, I’m looking for more ‘close in’ drills. Anyone have any suggestions? Bonus points if its a drill that can involve rifle/pistol transitions that enable me to use my .22 Glock.

By the by, the conversion kit I use is the CMMG .22 conversion kit and I cannot say enough good things about it. Just clean and lube it thoroughly when youre done and it’s good to go. Same for the .22 Glock.

 

Guns of color

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I remember when I was a lot younger and a lot poorer I would take what I could get, gun-wise. I owned one AR-15 and I was happy to have it. Nowadays, its a different story and I can have some ‘first world problems’, and , if I so desire, fix them.

Black is a color you don’t really see in nature much except at night. An ‘evil black rifle’ stands out a bit in most environments. Your eye naturally discerns something that is ‘out of the ordinary’ and a perfectly straight three-foot-long black stick is one of those things.

This sort of ‘problem’ is easily remedied with some spraypaint and stencils if youre of the the mind to go that route. I prefer to just skip the issue altogether and, when possible, get a gun in my color of choice – OD green (ODG).

This brings me to the Ruger RXM pistol I bought a while back. Now, I own Glocks and Sig P320’s and the Ruger combined the best of both worlds (without the ‘uncommanded discharges’). You get, essentially, a 3rd Gen Glock 9mm but you get a chasis system like the P320 allowing you some interesting parts swaps. Such as … colored frames. (Frames of color?)

The RXM came with a bluish/gray frame. Fine, it works, whatever. But, for $27 MagPul is offering a replacement frame in ODG. Sign me up.

It’s a fairly petty thing, to be concerned about your guns color. However…why not?

Article – Rodney King-era ‘rooftop Korean’ calls left-wing riots manufactured: ‘looking for the next George Floyd’

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The patron saint of neighborhood defense, Tony Moon, was interviewed about recent unrest in California. The money shot:

“If it’s a riot or if there’s any sort of mayhem, social chaos going on in your neighborhood, invest in firearms,” he said. “I mean, support the Second Amendment. Buy a gun, buy a rifle. I mean, the most easiest weapon to shoot is a shotgun. So invest in something like that and learn how to shoot it and be proficient with it, so that way it becomes part of your defense, whether it’s for your home or your business.”

This man is also active on the various social media platforms and he’s turned his 15 minutes of fame into a real identity. It appears he’s consistently been advocating for dang near 30 years. He’s not wrong though. Most people call 911 after the event, and afterwards is not when you need the cops most. As the man says, “You are your own first responder.”

Article – Chuck Schumer hospitalized, as DC heat wave rages

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WASHINGTON − Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, was hospitalized June 25, after feeling lightheaded in the gym, according to his office.

“Out of an abundance of caution, he went to the hospital to be treated for dehydration and is now back at work in the Capitol,” Schumer’s press secretary, Allison Biasotti, said in a statement.

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

 

News – Police say a man opened fire outside a church before staff fatally shot him, averting mass shooting

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I’ll bet money that this story is above-the-fold in most preparedness and gun blogs today:

A man with long gun and a handgun opened fire outside a Michigan church Sunday and was killed by two employees who returned fire, police said.

There has been a trend in the last decade or so for members at some houses of worship to be armed to prevent this sort of thing. Unfortunately, some people do not take such steps. I refer you to this post from 2019.

Why attack a ‘house of worship’, which I am just going to blanketly refer to as ‘a church’? Thats where the people are. Small building, lots of quiet and presumably peaceful people, not a lot of police around…no one expects it. Same reason people shoot up schools. Its perceived as a soft target with a certain degree of societal impact when its reported on the news.

We sagely opine to “avoid crowds” but that isnt always possible. I stand on line at the post office, I stand on line at CostCo, I sit at a traffic light with 25 other cars…you can try to avoid crowds but you can’t avoid crowds. What you can do, however, as demonstrated here, is be prepared and vigilant against these sorts of events. Its a wild world, and it shows no sign of getting less wild, so why would you not have a firearm immediately available to you at all times? Throw a spare AR behind the seat, keep the pistol on your belt, and show some situational awareness. Its going to get worse before it gets better…and it may not get better. Best to be ready.

Should I stay or should I go?

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Better too early than too late, right?

It’s a question that was peripherally raised in some comments a post or two back. In preparedness, one of the eternal questions and conundrums is ‘when do you forfeit everything in your normal world to beat the disaster and be ahead of it?’

There are plenty of people, especially ‘first responder’ types, who at some point have to decide, do I abandon my job to care for my family, or do I ‘stay at my post’ and hope my family can get through this without me? In the non-first-responder trades, there’s still that question…when do I walk away from my job/career, pension, etc. in order to get ahead of the disaster?

The problem is, if you wait too long (“Ahh..its probably not serious. I’ll go to work today”) you wind up way behind the curve, caught in evacuation traffic, empty gas stations, roadblocks, and general disorder. But if you leave too early (“This is it. Time to throw it all away and head to the bunker.”) and it turns out to be nothing….well, I hope your resume is current because you’ve probably lost your job.

If you’re going to walk away from your job, your business, your mortgage, your responsibilities, and all that because you think we are about to drop into Mad Max world….you better be right, because trying to undo that sort of bridge-burning is not going to come easy.

For some people, it isnt that big a problem…maybe they already live at their ideal hideout. Perhaps theyre retired with no job to be beholden to. Maybe they live a kind of lifestyle where ‘transitioning’ to an EOTWAWKI lifestyle is no more complicated than closing and locking the gate at the end of the driveway. I suspect, for most of us, it isn’t that easy.

It’s even more complicated when there’s other people involved. Working spouse? Kids? You have to convince them as well that its time to throw away everything you’ve done up to now…career, relationships, etc…because we need to head to Uncle Dave’s cabin to avoid the zombies. Maybe you think the stock market dropping 50% in a day as aircraft carriers head towards Russia is enough to trigger your flight, whereas your spouse may feel that there has to be actual missiles flying and people dying before they’re convinced. Its tough, man.

And, of course, you need to establish that ‘line in the sand’ and then commit to it. “Yeah, there’s a mushroom cloud on the horizon, but…”, “Yeah, the Chinese have invaded Taiwan and sank our carrier group, but…”, “Yeah, a dirty bomb just went off in San Diego, but…” No, you’ve got to really think it through and decide what is and is not your triggering event.

It’s my opinion, and thats it folks..just an opinion, your mileage may vary…that you should have some ‘lines in the sand’ about when youre bumping up to ‘the next level’.

Hamilton Gun Show

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Went to the Hamilton gun show this last weekend. Didn’t really see much that jumped out at me. Really, I’ve got everything I need and most of what I want. At this point, it’s just gilding the lily to pick up another AR or Glock. And, honestly, I’d rather take that $400 and drop it into something that’ll generate a consistent return down the line.

Prices were fairly reasonable at the show. Primers were in the $75/brick range whcih, to my pre-Covd mind, is still an amazing ripoff. Plenty of ARs and AKs out there, as well as mags and ammo. There were the usual tables of ‘survival gear’ but, sadly, no Johnny Trochman. I guess if you go to a gun show and don’t see him it means were going to have another six weeks of nuclear winter.

I also swung by Trader Bros. on the way back to see  how their massive storage food acquisition is going. It had definitely been whittled a bit, but any sales were offset by additional pallets (yes, wrapped pallets of buckets of food) that had been added since my last visit. Apparently they hit the PPE part of this guys stash because there were N95 masks, Tyvek suits, goggles, and gloves aplenty. I gotta hand it to the deceased survivalist….he definitely was walking it like he was talking it. I didn’t pick up anything because, honestly, I’m pretty squared away and don’t really have room for more.

Speaking of space, I’m still looking for that chunk o’dirt. I found a place that ticks off a great many of my little tickyboxes except…it’s too bloody far away. But, oh, its got some sweet features…biggest of which is that it butts up against BLM/state land which, in turn, butts up against a million acres of national forest. If only it wasnt so bloody far from here. So, the search continues on that front.

Link – Let’s Revisit The SHTF Med Kit From 2014, Shall We?

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Friend Of The Blog(tm), Aesop, over at Raconteur Report has a couple posts up that I think are worth going over there and reading. Everyone had their own ideas about what is and is not worth having in terms of medical/firstaid in a crisis (whatever your crisis may look like), but I would give his suggestions and recommendations some weight. He also has a followup post on med texts. Good stuff, kids.

Universal currency

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So that happened……..

Normally I don’t buy these little divisibles because the premiums are way high. But, like the little 1-gram gold I bought a few months ago, these had a stupidly low premium … 1.25% over spot. And, thats actually a worse deal than I got on those 1-gram bars a few months back.

I have absolutely no doubt that someone is scrambling to make a post about how I shouldnt be spending money on this sort of thing and should instead be focusing resources on the land acquisition. Dude..use your head: this gold is part of those resources for land acquisition. If a deal like this comes up, I’ll convert some of that cash into gold. Net effect? $0 difference. $200k in cash, and $150k in cash and $50k in gold is still….$200k. Except theres the likelihood of the gold being worth more by the time its time to make the purchase. And, yeah, could go down too…but thats not really something I’m worried about these days.