Went to the gun show yesterday. Even though Im not necessarily looking for guns (or gun related items) gun shows are still outstanding venues for purchasing the sundry items that make the uncertain future a bit easier to bear…poncho liners, ammo cans for storage, first aid gear, optics, camping stuff, mil surp clothing, etc, etc, etc.

Didn’t see anything I couldn’t live without, although there were some very nice goodies. A few .50 bolt actions, a slew of FN products (probably because of a promotion FN has been running where a dealer gets a free FN gun if they purchase five FN guns) with the PS90 being noticeably absent, some decent scopes, John “Militia Of Montana” Trochmann had his usual books and gear although his eyepatch was missing, and no sign of Randy Weaver at this one.

I wasn’t really looking for much. Cant really afford much right now. I did pick up a few pairs of EMT shears which my first aid kits have been lacking. Otherwise I pretty much passed on everything. The only things that even tempted me were some SA .308 battle packs for the FAL. There was almost no, nada, none,zip Wolf 7.62×39 to be found. Nor were there any of the ‘off’ brands like Silver Bear, Barnaul, etc, etc. Read into it what you will. Also there were plenty of AK’s in attendance but not a lot of steel magazines for them. I did see the new betamag for the Mini-14 (and given the reliability of the Ruger platform, I’d bet the Mini would run the full mag just fine whereas the AR might jam after 75 rounds or so…that’s just opinion. On the other hand, the AR would at least put the bullets where you point them, where they go out of the Ruger is anyones guess.)

Ok, I forgot….there was one item I saw that I wanted and that was the military sleep system. Inner, outer and Goretex bag. Ive been wanting one of those for a while now. One of the LMI picked up a couple and they looked mighty good to me. Usually about $150 and probably worth it.
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Rumblings in the UK about bird flu complete with a recently publicized document about government plans to press former emergency workers into service to drive trucks of food and supplies through afflicted areas. I’m still on the bird flu fence. However, even if bird flu doesn’t make the jump to humans (and I’m not saying it won’t, Im just making a point here) all it’ll take is the announcement of a few dead geese in a Washington cornfield to start the panic buying and shopping that makes these things self-fulfilling prophecies. Take Hurricane Rita for example, the hurricane killed less people than the evacuation did. Bird flu itself might shut down a city but the announcement of bird flu, whether theres a threat or not, will do it just as well. So even if bird flu is a bust in terms of being transmitted to humans you’ll still get the same chaos as if it had.

My interest in bird flu isn’t necessarily that I’ll contract it. I tend to lead a fairly reclusive life with little face-to-face contact with people…its not like I share an office, elevator or bathroom with 150 other people in a company. Its just me, the girlfriend and a few people at arms length at the bank and post office. (And, yeah, both of those places are fine breeding grounds for germ transfer…fortunately both are also completely replaceable with online transactions.)

No, my concern is from the effects of bird flu. Disruptions in trucking and delivery of goods, the fast and sudden disappearance of chicken from the meat department at Albertsons (so stock up now, kids!), the economic slowdown as a result of decreased productivity, etc, etc, etc. Sure, I’ll go through gobs of hand sanitizer and bleach the living hell out things but my real concern is availability of food, travel restrictions, inflation, scarcity of goods and that sort of thing.

The handwriting is on the wall that the natives are restless. Ammo shortages, FDF shortages, .gov plans and contingencies, etc, etc. Apparently theres a large contingent of people out there who are thinking ‘just in case….’

Speaking of spare parts….

The girlfriend shot a few hundred rounds through her G19 the other day and had disassembled it for cleaning. She laid the parts out on the tray table she was sitting at and prepared to clean. She bumped the table, knocking the recoil spring assembly and slide off the table. The slide landed on top of the recoil spring assembly and broke the plastic recoil spring guide. The usually captive unit was now non-captive.

Could the Glock work in this state? Yes. However, disassembly would be harder because the spring would have to be compressed to remove it from the slide.

So…OEM part is $5. There are four on the way. So then the question became one of:
Glock OEM @$5 vs. aftermarket steel assembly for ~$25

Here’s how I see it.

OEM parts are always the first choice in most cases. (Yes, there are exceptions like some AK, AR and 1911 parts but Im makeing a sweeping generalization here) The OEM assemblies will be used and extras kept on hand. Since they are OEM they should be 100% reliable as the previous ones in terms of gun functioning. However, if some circumstance arises that precludes getting replacements in the future, the steel one is available.

Why not use the steel one upfront and just not bother with the OEM ones? Because I think the reliability of the gun will be better with jen-yoo-wine Glock parts rather than aftermarket. I cant prove it, I just feel that way. Is the OEM part better than the aftermarket one? Probably not…it is, after all, plastic. However, this part didnt break in use…it broke when it was removed from the gun and subjected then to impact. ALthough Im sure it has happened, it seems less likely that this sort of breakage occurs in actual use.

Regardless……..

OEM parts for the Glock and a couple aftermarket versions of those parts in case the OEM’s become unavailable.

Resident Glock guru smjayman was nice enough to give his suggestions and I recommend he be heeded. Recap:

He also mentions the takedown lever and spring in later posts.

Sources? http://www.lonewolfdist.com/ http://www.topglock.com/catalog/extras.htm

girlfriend: ..I need to put some fertilizer in the ground when we ge tthe rototiller.
commander_zero: Great, we’ve got a bunch of Mircale Gro that we can use.
Captain Insano: Miracle Gro? You cant mix that with diesel and make anything interesting!

Just another day at the Zerostead…………

,Rawles SurvivalBlog has a mention today about spare parts. This is something I’ve thought about a good bit. After all, if the situation is dire enough that you need to carry around your firearms every day and depend on them then the situation is also probably going to be dire enough that heading down to the local gunshop for a spare recoil spring or roll pin is going to be out of the question.

I try to keep all my stuff for my various guns in one place (excepting of course, redundant backups). That is to say, in this example, I try to keep all of my 1911 ‘support gear’ in one convenient bomb-proof container…in this case a ‘tall’ .50 cal. can. Contents? Have a look:

LJ cut for your pleasure

Shortages, unavailability and outright “we haven’t had those for a while now” are usually the hallmarks of Something Going On. Usually it takes place immediately before or during a Big Event. Much like trying to buy snow shovels right before a blizzard or bottled water during a hurricane.

The two biggest examples of shortages that I am aware of taking place right now are a) ammo and b) FDF (freeze dried foods).

Anyone who is looking for cheap .223 and (esp.) 7.62×39 can tell you that it’s fairly hard to find at the moment. I have heard many rumours and only a few of them seem plausible.

• AK/AR ammo, like Wolf, is being diverted to fill overseas demand and contracts due to the war (given the huge amounts of 7.62×39 being found in Iraqi bunkers this seems unlikely, although logistically it may make sense to simply order in containers full of ammo rather than try and coordinate bringing it in piecemeal from across the war zone.)
• AK ammo, like Wolf, is being used to fill huge contracts with the US military to be used for foreign-weapons (meaning “AK47”) familiarization training with troops here in the US before they ship out (This seems very plausible to me.)
• The largest importer is tangling with BATFE/other agencies and that’s slowing it down. (Heard one person ‘in the biz’ mention this but that doesn’t explain the lack of ‘no name’ ammo out there.)
• Increased fuel costs have led to prohibitively high shipping costs and that is affecting imports.

Please don’t add your own theory or facts about this…my point isn’t about why theres a shortage. My point is that there exists a shortage for some reason.

FDF is also in the ‘backordered’ category these days…at least as packaged in #10 cans. The guys at Mountain House tell me that after Katrina, product demand spiked and then calmed down a bit but is now high enough again to result in backorders. Cause? Beats me. Im guessing bird flu hype and continued Katrina aftermath.

Will these shortages end? Of course…nature abhors a vacuum and so does business. As long as theres folks wanting cases of FDF and 7.62×39 theres going to be someone willing to fill that need. In the meantime this is an excellent example of why you stockpile this stuff when the sun is shining, the paychecks are steady and all is right in the universe. “Don’t wait until you are thirsty to dig a well”, etc, etc, etc.

I’m doing ok..I’ve got a good stash of .308 and 7.62×39 in the bunker…not as much as I’d like (it never is, y’know?) but its enough to handle anything short of a Somalia-type of infrastructure collapse. Plenty of #10 cans of Mountian House but these shortages definitely make me want to stock up on more when they become available again.

On the other side of the equation, now is an outstanding time to stock up on 8×57 ammo and 7.62x54R guns & ammo. The Mosin Nagant rifles are dealering out for less than $75 each and a case of ammo is cheap enough to get a gun and ammo for less than $125. Order it through Century Arms and pay flat rate shipping for it…a huge savings when youre shipping 70# of ammo across country. These guns won’t be around much longer….the Yugo SKS’ are starting to dry up and the cheap Nagants won’t be far behind. For a little over a hundred bucks you can have a rifle and a case of ammo to stash away.

There are a few goodies that we all need to stock that are impossible to manufacture ourselves or to find multiple sources for… FDF is usually limited to just 2 or 3 manufacturers. Same thing for lithium batteries, quality radio gear, etc, etc. Some items, like knives, for example, are available from so many different quality makers that a shortage of one manufacturer doesn’t mean much to you. If Buck is out, get Gerber, or Becker, or Glock, or Remington, or Cold Steel, or CK&T, or Spyderco, or…. Get the idea? But some products just don’t have that many alternates. FDF is a very good example of that. Batteries are a good example…I like lithium AA batts for my smaller gear but AFAIK theres only one or two brands offering them. I can get alkaline AA from anywhere but lithiums…that’s another story. Im sure if you sat down and thought it out carefully you could think of other necessary gear/products that have a similar bottleneck.

Obviously one of the biggest possibilities when it comes to a shortage is firearms. They can be made unavailable, literally, with a stroke of the pen. Don’t think so? Think about the 1986 prohibition on new machineguns for civilians and where prices and availability went afterwards. Also OEM (‘factory’) parts can be hamstrung almost as easily. So if you don’t have a spare copy of your favorite gun, at least get some spare barrels, springs and other parts…and for Crom’s sake get another couple of magazines, will ya?. Ammo is also an easy target, so to speak…during the LA Riots the local government there suspended the sale of ammo and guns. If you were out of #4 buck for your 870 you better hope the looters will be sympathetic to your plight.

If you really think youre going to be able to buy what you need when you need it you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. When the power goes out don’t expect to be able to wander down to the local stop-n-rob and pick up a pack of Duracells.

So, todays project, mi amigos y amigas, is to think about what kind of shortage would cause you some grief right now and then go out and negate that problem by stocking up as best you can… take the hundred bucks you were gonna use for steaks, beer and a movie this weekend and buy something a little more lasting and a lot more useful….

Schools Told to Prepare for Bird Flu

The nation’s schools, recognized incubators of respiratory diseases among children, are being told to plan for the possibility of an outbreak of bird flu. Federal health leaders say it is not alarmist or premature for schools to make preparations, such as finding ways to teach kids even if they’ve all been sent home.

Best way to prepare the public for something and avoid a panic? Get them used to the idea of something. Lets say that scientists discover little green men on Mars. Knowing that just coming out and announcing that will cause all sorts of wild episodes from the public, they build up to it…they’ll start with ‘mars may have supported life’, then move to ‘possible evidence of life found’, massage that for a while and then go with ‘life still may exist’, get people used to the idea that Mars might have something on it, go through a few more generations of ‘might,could,possibly’ and then cuminate with ‘Ambassador Molari will be at the UN Thursday for a treaty signing’.

Maybe its the same thing here…they know its going to happen and they know its going to cause ‘panic’ amongst the population…so they warm us up to get us used to the idea that its ‘remotely possible’, then ‘unlikely’, moving onto ‘possible’ and , as Gale norton just announced, ‘likely’. Thus, when it does happen we can all say ‘oh, I saw this on the news last year its not a big deal’.

Bird flu as a non-event? I dont think it’ll be anything like the 1918 Flu pandemic but it doesnt have to be to make everyones lives a bit more interesting (thats ‘interesting’ in the Chinese sense.) As Bin Laden showed, a strike against a countries economy is as good, if not better, than a strike against its population.

Moral: be prepared.

I usually don’t post much about bird flu because I dont really need to..you can see articles about it everywhere. Someone pointed out to me that even if it doesnt ‘jump’ to humans theres still going to have to be a massive cull of fowl. The practical upshot of thismeans that if you like chicken and have a deep freeze, now is the time to stock up. Between mad cow, bird flu and who knows what else its start to not leave alot of options for us carnivores. And before someone suggests cannibalism, thats the most likely candidate for tainted meat.

Even in countries that have/are experiencing bird flu there doesnt appear to have been much of a panic. On the other hand, few of those countries had a population that travels internally as much as this country. NY-to-LA, Chicago-to-Denver, Florida-to-Phoenix, all those traveller just doing regular travel, let alone holiday travel, are all happy little vectors.

(shrug) Have food, have water, have ammo, have fuel…bolt the doors, pull the blinds and hermit for a month or two.

Broing post about shooting the .308

A generous guest picked me up a package of CCI BR2 Benchrest Primers and a box of Hornady 168 gr. A-Max. So, I figured it was time to assemble the best handloads I could, using top-notch components, and see if my CZ could do any better than it has.

Boring, technical reloading geekery follows