Tag Archives: cautionary tale

That ATFE decision about not enforcing NFA stuff

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First, lets get the funny meme out of the way:

For those who don’t get the joke, just google “gun boating accident”.

The dust hasn’t quite settled yet but after reducing the NFA transfer tax to $0, that move effectively removed the oversight of suppressors and the like since it was a tax regulation that gave them the foot in the door.

So…ATFE now says that, unless your state has restrictions, you can buy a suppressor same as you’d buy a 10/22.

Here’s the catch: any future administration could just as easily re-impose the tax, which means we are back to Form 1 and Form 4 red tape. So, if you believe that you have a need for such items (and you do…or, at least, you will)…buy them now.

According to what I’ve read, fifteen states, including Montana, have state regs in place regarding NFA stuff that keeps you from just treating them like any other type of firearm. Here’s a better telling of it:

It is my understanding that in Montana there is legislation for the 2027 legislative session in Montana to fix things so that Montanans can just make their own SBR’s and buy suppressors over the counter as Crom and nature intended.

In the meantime, strike while the iron is hot. Buy those suppressors and whatnot before the next election cycles put the mechanisms in place to dampen out fun.

So much fail II

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Okay, not my best moment.

Went up to the Beta Site and did some camera work, which I’ll talk about later, and got ready to leave. Locked up the conex, locking all five padlocks on it. Climberd into the truck and…hey, wheres the car keys? And with that sense of dread that lets you know you really messed up, I realized I had locked the car keys in the conex. Where were the keys for the padlocks that were securing the conex? On the key ring with my car keys.

So here’s the situation – it is 5pm, daylight is starting to head for the hills, it is pouring rain. And Im sitting in a truck that cannot move because the keys are locked up. Now, I do have a spare key hidden on the truck but that is just a key to open the doors…which made sense at the time because usually the keys are locked in the truck, not in a cargo container. And, like most modern vehicles, the truck requires the chipped key that is wildly expensive to duplicate. But, I do have a duplicate…at the house in Missoula.

So, there’s no real option here. I’m going to have to break the padlock that I purchased specifically for its breakproofness. How to do so? Well I have access to a small bag of tools in the back of my truck…theres a heavy steel mallet in there. I use that and a combination of wrenches, heavy screwdrivers, and the like to achieve the spectacular result of…nothing.

Now, having to spend the night out there wouldnt have been a big deal. In addition to just sleeping in the truck, there was a cache a hundred yards away that had sleeping bag, tarp, freezedrieds, sleeping pad, cookstove, etc. Staying out overnight wouldn’t have been an issue, but so what? The next morning Id still be locked out of my car keys.

:::sigh::: Okay, I’m not happy about this, but theres only one real course of action left – shoot the damn lock off. Weapon of choice? My bear AK w/ steel core ammo. As you know, the sights on the AK, like the AR, are offset a bit above the bore. I didn’t want to get too close because I really didnt want shrapnel or bullet fragments flying back into my face. First couple shots missed because of the sight offset. Next couple hit the lock but not enough to bust the shackle…my shots were hitting closer to the bottom of the lock, not near the hasp. Looks like the only way to do this is to risk a little shrapnel and stand right next to the stupid thing, put the muzzle an inch from the lock and pull the trigger.

Which I did.

And the lock came apart like a Mexican space shuttle. I didnt catch any fragments but I sure as heck don’t ever want to be in that situation again. Which is why, on the way back from the Beta Site I swung by Home Depot and picked up a half dozen heavy duty combination locks. I’m replacing the keyed locks with combination locks so I never have this problem again.

And, really, this shouldn’t have been a problem the first time. Wargame the scenario – you show up at your hidden supply cache with whatever you could grab as you fled for your life. Where’s the keys? One less thing to have to worry about if you just carry the combo in your head rather than having to frantically make sure you grabbed the keys, or dig through six inches of snow and ice to find the key you cleverly (you thought) hid up near your stuff. No, for me it makes more sense, especially after this incident, to use a combination lock instead.

So, a hundred dollars worth of keyed-alike locks wasted. I’ll find other uses for them, but this was a lesson I’d have been happy to not have to learn the hard way. And you, my friend, can take what you will from my experience. Maybe I can save you the cost of a set of new padlocks and a dozen rounds of 7.62×39.

Packages arriving

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So that happened:


A set of recovery boards for Next Time. Not shown is the bracket set that arrived yesterday as well to allow me to mount the HiLift jack to roll bars on the cage of the SxS. On the way are the shovel bracket and a saw. Still to be purchased is a 12v portable hitch-mounted winch for the ass-end of the SxS.

One other things I’m working on for next trip is a preliminary stash of gear so that if something happens like last time, and I wind up having to stay put, I can do so in safety and security. There’ll be a post about that later.

Nothing modifies behavior (and empties the wallet) like having a Close Call and not wanting to repeat the experience.

And, yesterday I paid off the second third of the money I borrowed to help finance the Beta Site. Or, in other words, I’ve got $9649.63 to go, which I should have paid off either next month or the month after….which would be some thirty months ahead of schedule. Once thats done, the $1000/week that I’ve been throwing at the debt gets diverted into Beta Site Development, Equipage and Stockpiling Fund.

Improving future performance

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So, after the Cavalcade of Fail, it was time to strategize for next weekend. Right off the bat, if the weather is uncooperative, I’ll stay in town. I understand that the apocalypse will not happen on a sunny day, but for right now I’m not taking any more chances than I have to.

So, first order of business is to remediate some of the fails from last weekend. A couple of them were rather standout failures.

The HiLift jack. If I had brought the HiLift jack I would have had a way to ‘winch’ myself out if I hadn’t figured out the winch. The reason I didn’t bring it is because it really didn’t fit into the SxS in any meaningful way. The jack is 5′ long and the SxS is exactly 5′ wide. So, I have ordered a set of brackets to mount the jack across one of the bars on the cage of the SxS. In addition to the HiLift jack, I also have the base plate for it and a few other attachments. I keep chains, tow straps, ropes, and snatch blocks in my Unstuck Kit and used in conjunction with the HiLift jack I think I would have gotten better results than I did just trying to shovel things out with an e-tool.

Speaking of e-tool, I left behind my full size shovel for the same reason I left the HiLift jack behind. And, as with the solution for the HiLift, the solution for the shovel is a rollbar-mounted bracket to hold a D-handle shovel. The Glock e-tool did a really great job and it s a product I recommend, but it is not a substitute for a ‘real’ shovel. To that end, I also ordered up a set of brackets to mount a shovel along one of the roll bars on the cage as well.

Recovery boards. If you don’t know what these are, I suggest familiarizing yourself with them. Its basically a surfboard with a rough cats-tongue pattern to it to provide traction. Beats the crap out of throwing branches, floormats, and passengers under the wheels for traction.

Another failure point was that I broke one of the great commandments of preparedness: I relied on a piece of gear that was unproven and I had not practiced or familiarized myself with. I knew the SxS came with a winch. Thats all I knew. I spent hours digging out the SxS that could have been avoided if I knew where to plug the wired remote into. But…I had never actually hooked it up and tested its function. Unbelievable rookie mistake. I’ll be swapping out the steel cable-of-questionable-age-and-condition for a brand new synthetic rope and carry a spare of the rope as well.

Footwear. I was so excited about getting to take the SxS to the Beta Site that I overlooked all sorts of things…including changing into suitable footwear. The solution is to add ‘Change shoes’ into my pre-trip checklist…and believe me, buddy, there’s gonna be a pre-trip checklist.

I was smart enough to bring my Unstuck Kit, but I need to put in some longer towstraps. And some more clevises (Clevis’? Clevi?) I made a buncha mistakes this last time, but bringing the Unstuck Kit was not one of them. I was able to use the long tow strap that was in the kit to loop to a tree and feed back to the winch hook.

Now, keep in mind, this is a list of what I did wrong. A list of what I did right is a separate list. So if you feel like chiming in with “you should have had x, you should have has y” keep in mind I may have already had those….this is a list of things I didn’t have or do properly.

I’ve spent the last two days researching various gear and ordering it up. Recovery boards will be here today and more goodies throughout the week.

 

Switching over

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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 lessons

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One of my coworkers is still without power, which means she is also without water. She’s been coming into the office and taking our spare 5-gallon water cooler bottles and bringing them home. I asked her how much water was she going through that she needed this many. And her response was….waitforit……”It takes a lot of water to flush the toilets.”

:::shaking my head:::

I grabbed an empty garbage can from under my desk and said “Follow me please”. We walked down the hallway to the maintenance closet where the slop sink was. I filled the itty-bitty wastebasket with about a gallon or so of water.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to show you how to flush a toilet with a bucket. Lets go.”

We walked into the bathroom. “Throw some toilet paper in there.”, I said, pointing to the bowl. She did as I asked.

“Ok, now watch. Slowly and then all at once.” I slowly poured the bucket into the bowl and then dumped the rest in. The water swirled, and -whoosh-, water and TP disappeared. I turned to her, “Ok, that’ll do the job and it uses a lot less water than filling the tank and flushing. Got it?”

After I got back to my desk, I forwarded her the YouTube video you see above.

It’s not her fault, I suppose. No one ever taught her this sort of thing, and its not the kind of thing that it ever occurred to her to investigate on her own. But, still, five-gallons of Culligan drinking water that we pay a guy to deliver should not be used to flush the toilet.

Shes also cooking on her grill but needs propane. Because I’m a soft touch, I pulled two barbecue bombs from my stash and four Scepter cans of water and brought them to work over lunch and loaded them in her truck. (Her husband is outta town on a job for the week and she’s left wrangling kids and job.)

We shall see if I get them back or not.

As for me, I’m using this learning opportunity to reinforce a few things. I’m picking up another couple flats of bottled water to distribute among my freezers, and I just ordered a bunch more Scepter cans.

109-MPH winds

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Thats what they are saying we were hit with last night.

I was out to dinner and around the tail end of things some clouds rolled in and the wind picked up like nobody’s business. The lights in the restaurant flickered a few times, and then *pop* a transformer exploded outside. Lightning hit a nearby tree setting it ablaze. I flagged down the waitress and said I was leaving, gimme a check. All payment options were dead and even with cash she didnt have the ability to print a bill. I had her handwrite a bill, give it to me, and told her I’d be back at lunchtime the next day to square up. The Zero is not getting caught away from his heavily fortified home in a time of crisis.

The wind was outrageous. The interstate was covered in tumbleweeds of various sizes. Taking the off ramp, the traffic lights were all out…of course. There were fallen trees blocking various lanes of traffic as I made it back to my house. Parts of town were in the dark, some parts were not. In one case I got halfway down the block only to encounter a tree complete cutting off the the street. Had to back up and find an alternate route.

Amazingly, the power was on at my house. I staged the generator just in case. Grabbed some iced tea, my police scanner, a flashlight, and an MP5 and sat on my porch watching the lightning and listening to local PD and FD lose their crap. Even if the power didn’t go out in my neighbor hood, that didnt mean it wouldn’t….line crews would, I’d imagine, have to de-energize lines to remove limbs tangles in the wires.

After a while I started working the phones, checking in with the people I care about to see if they had power and if there was anything I could do for them if they didnt. Everyone was fine except for my boss, who did not reply. Just heard from her this morning – power is out at her place and she can’t get her car out of the garage to go to work because of the electric garage door. I told her about that little t-handle hanging off the track and she seemed disappointed…she was looking forward to not coming in. She still might not…no power equals no well pump equals no shower.

Me? Im at work at my desk like a good soldier. I am, however, thinking I may be he only one here today.

Article – A man kills a grizzly bear in Montana after it attacks while he is picking berries

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This actually didnt happen all that far from here.

A man picking huckleberries in Montana shot and killed a grizzly bear after it attacked and injured him badly enough that he had to be hospitalized.

The 72-year-old man was alone when the adult female charged him Thursday. He killed the bear with a handgun, according to a Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks statement Friday.

The attack happened in Flathead National Forest about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) north of Columbia Falls, a northwestern Montana city of about 5,500 people, according to the state wildlife agency.

For bear deterrent in the woods, I have two options. A handgun is no one’s first choice for defending against a bad-mood bruin, but sometimes you just can’t carry an HK91 everywhere.

How do handguns stack up against bears? Glad you asked. 

 

Bumping back

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FriendOfTheBlog(tm), Joel over at The Ultimate Answer To Kings, had a bump-in-the-night episode the other evening. If you haven’t read Joels blog, the TL;DR background is that he’s a one-legged older gentleman who lives by himself in a small cabin in the desert. Lotsa empty lonely space and police response time is measured with a calendar. A prudent man, he carries a pistol when he’s out roaming his desert home. But, one night, some noises called for an investigation and the tool of choice for the job was a light-equipped carbine. You can go read the post and see what the situtaion was, but what’s important to takeaway from the episode is that you never know if That Scary Moment is going to happen in the light or in the dark.

All of my ‘just in case’ guns stashed around the house are equipped with blindingly bright lights. Additionally, sometimes you’d prefer not to light things up by pointing a loaded rifle at them…so a handheld flashlight is in order.

I’ve long believed that the most odds-on likely scenario for needing a ‘house gun’ would occur at night. Probably the middle of the night. When it’s dark. (Although fate has a way of beating the odds.) What do I keep handy for those bumps in the night? Well, there’s an AR with a Surefire light, an 870 with a Surefire forend, and my trusty nightstand gun…a Glock 19 with an Olight Valkyrie PL Pro (I love that light), Trijicon HD sights, and a whole buncha Gold Dots. The pistol, my flashlight, and an extra pair of glasses, all sit on this wonderful glow-in-the-dark tray so I can find them instantly at night.

If I hear something go wonky, like Joel did, my first response, after determining what the threat is, is to buzz the fuzz and watch my tax dollars at work. I will, of course, be watching from a safe vantage point with some boomtoy in my grasp…because you never know what will happen.

In Joel’s case, living in BFE, alone, there’s certainly a reasonable sense of caution when it comes to stranger danger. Someday I’ll have my nice little quiet chunk of Montna with my tastefull, yet tactically appointed cabin. And you can be utterly certain it will have a ‘ready rack’ by the door. (As well as several warning systems and countermeasure systems.)

Anyway, I bring up Joel’s experience as a shining example (seewhat I did there?) of the utility and necessity of having lights on your ‘bump in the night’ stuff.

Article – Michigan sheriff Dar Leaf offers ‘militia course’

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Michigan Sheriff Dar Leaf is offering a “militia course” to residents, according to a Friday Facebook post.

The constitutionalist sheriff posted a graphic for enrollment to “learn a militiaman’s duty” for “potential jurors, homeschoolers, ladies & gentlemen.”

This goes one of two ways: either a) he’s a True Believer and this is something he’s doing in good faith, or, b) this is how you get a list of names and addresses for future roundups and surveillance.

I knew lots of ‘militia types’ back in the 90’s. Heck, I’ve chatted with Johnny Trochman dozens of times at gun shows, met Randy Weaver and Bo Gritz, and been to a few ‘concerned citizens meetings’. By and large it’s all been beer-bellied armchair warriors who would probably not pick up a rifle in ‘defense of liberty’ until the battle was 99% over and there was no risk to their retirements, jobs, mortgages, and dualies. On the other hand, I’ve also met some True Believers and often they were even more sketch because you got the feeling that they weren’t going to support a revolution, rather they were gonna start one. Again, stay away.

If you and four buddies want to take your preparedness to the next level and form a ‘mutual ad group’ or some sort of semi-organized club where you all look out for each other in anticipation of tough times, that is awesome. More people need to do that. And if it incorporates going to gun schools, medical training, finance classes, welding school, extension classes, backpacking weekends, and a touch of small group tactics….good on ya. But for the love of Crom, don’t give your group a name and fancy velcro patch to slap on your cammies. All the badges are gonna be extremely wary of those ‘Paul Revere Militia’ guys that they see tromping through the national forest every weekend in their cammies, and they’re gonna be a lot less curious about the four or five guys with binoculars and bird books they see tromping through that same forest every weekend.

Five Gulf War/GWOT vets getting together on weekends to hike the woods and look for morel mushrooms is a lot less attention catching than those same five guys hiking the woods in multicam and toting rifles. Use your head.

Would I go to a meeting like the one described in the opening paragraph? Probably not. But I wold darn sure find someone who did go and ask them to tell me all about it and share any materials that were offered just so I could evaluate it for myself.