From Bad to Worse: The Guns & Ammo Situation 2020

 

For a lot of people, this is what it feels like right now. And this thing with the West Coast fires is just the latest. It breaks my heart! I've actually driven around in that area just enjoying the trees. For a guy who grew up on the treeless plain of the Texas Panhandle, it was amazing! Ironically, that was the year of the never-ending rains which caused all manner of havoc with mud-slides! It seems like a lifetime ago....

And then you have this.... 

After this......

With mayors in various places literally ordering police to NOT "police".......hmmmm So, what's the upshot? Well, you have lots of nervous folks. And nervous folks buy up all the guns and ammo they can lay their hands on.

So, philosophically and realistically, here's where I think we are: although many of us adhere to the belief that we are ultimately responsible for defending ourselves from the miscreants of society, we thought we lived in an advanced nation with functioning policing. Then the craziness started. We all know what those are, starting with the pandemic and currently sitting in hurricane season and watching wildfires on TV that probably are the result of us stopping forest fires and may or may not be worsened by global warming!!! From a rational non-extremist standpoint, what should we be doing right now instead of just watching in horror every evening on the news?

Here's what I'm doing..... the NON-doomsday version of prepping and my rationale behind it.

• 1st of all, I don't believe there's going to be a societal collapse SHTF situation. I'm not going to go into why I believe this right now, but I just don't!
• 2nd. I do believe that they'll be chances of some societal unrest in the next few month/years? Yes, I do, but with the proviso that it will vary quite a lot from region to region and certainly being in big cities of "blue states" would be the iffy-est situations. 
• 3rd. I absolutely believe that all these uncertainties will create a continuation of the 2020 situation with disruptions and shortages. Because, nervous people will hoard. I lived in New Orleans (pre-Katrina) and Chicago. Every time there was something on the horizon, weather-wise, people freaked out.

Now with the rationale out of the way; what have I done and am I proposing to do for myself and my family?

• Basic Defense- On average, if you live in an urban or suburban location it takes 7 minutes for for police to get to you. If you're rural, it'll probably be longer. If you have a hopped up meth-head or home-invasion gone wrong..... any number of minutes is a loooong time. So, one of the first guns I bought was a 12 gauge pump shotgun and I have quite a bit of buckshot. We have a defense plan for our house and everyone in it know what it is. I also have a number of 9mm handguns, one of which is in the nightstand. It will go into the hands of my wife or son as my backup. It's part of the plan. I have over a 1000 rounds of 9mm, so I don't need to buy any for some time.
• Widespread Societal Disruptions- What I mean by this is, if things get so bad, I'll need to get home and hunker down with my family and go nowhere for some time.
• Have or Prepare to Store from 1 to 3 months of food. I'd say that we keep roughly about a months worth of essentials in our house right now, ranging from food, to other items, like alternative cooking equipment such as propane stoves/fuel just in case there's a power disruption. We also have batteries as well as portable light and power for short term disruptions. This also includes enough potable water, or water that's near potable enough to drink if it come to that.
• Defense- when we talk about defense as related to this scenario, is if absolutely "next-level" stuff. Now you're talking about the possibility of defending against marauders or desperate folks (read unprepared) looking to take what you have. Besides the 9mm handguns that I have, my actual primary defensive arms are AR platform carbines/pistols. They range from the run-of-the-mill 5.56/.223 to .300 Blackout and my current build of a 6.5 Grendel which will give me the ability to keep a "stand-off" distance of over 300 yards plus (limited by eyesight). There's a system here and I will explain in a future post. If my troubles are too much for this setup, then I guess I'm screwed!

• Comms- If "services" get disrupted, there's a good chance that cellphone/telephone service will go out along with possibly radio/tv. Which leaves ham/shortwave. I have 3 of the cheapo Baofeng radios. They're cheap, but they work. My plan is to study for and pass the ham licensing test this coming year. I also have a couple of the FRS radios and have those channels programmed into the Baofengs as well. I don't intend for the Baofeng radios to do heavy lifting as far as long distance shortwave communications is concerned, but they are what I can afford and way better than nothing. They can be used for comms in a pinch. I'll get something better when I pass my exam!

• The last part of this level of my plan is power. Nope, I don't have solar panels, a power-wall or a windmill yet, but don't think I haven't thought about it! What I do have is flashlights and lanterns for every person and situation, along with batteries stored up for them all. I also recently bought a power station that has a portable solar charging panel. It should be able to power/charge up emergency items such as phone, flashlights and radios and charge itself up every day that there's sunlight. 

So, as you can see, at this stage of the game, it's a short-term setup. Something along the lines of a month or so. Would I like to be more prepared, absolutely! I'm working on it though...