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...

 

Loe..... It Has Come To Pass.... Ammo Is Gone

  

Not surprisingly, folks are a bit nervous these days. The reasons are many, and this post isn't really about politics or even about folks being just plain foolish.

But, the fact is; the 1st is just as important as the 2nd Amendment. That being said, all this "stuff" in combination with Covid-19, and everything else has created a run on gun stores the likes of which hasn't been seen for quite some time. 

Remember, these are "new" gun owners, meaning they don't have any ammo. It's not like me buying another 9mm with quite a lot of it put up. You combine all that with today's consumer going to Youtube for information and what you get is a bunch of new to the gun-world people watching videos telling them they should have at least a thousand rounds of ammunition for every caliber or every gun and there you go! Did I mention that it's also an election year with the results being very iffy regardless of which side you're on.

To give you an idea how bad it is out there; here's a little story. First, in case you haven't heard; nobody has ammo (other than pure hunting stuff like .243 Winchester). The big retailers are all out. The only places that have any are the small "mom & pop" gun stores like the one in my town. I was in there the other day, and sure enough, he had a case that he'd broken open and selling by the box instead of the whole 1000 rounds. A guy came in and wanted 2 boxes. THEY WERE $45 EACH!!! These were the normal 50 round boxes....

So, what do I do? More correctly; what did I do? The last 3 years after President Trump was elected, the firearms industry has experienced an epic slump. Everything from ARs,handguns, to ammunition was cheap. AR's between $400 and 500, $200 9mm semi-autos and 100 round boxes of 9mm at Walmart for less than $17. 

I filled up a 50 Cal ammo can with 14 boxes of this stuff, bought one or two at a time from 2017 to 2019 at about $17 per box, making it 17 cents per round. Over this same period, I bought close to 1500 rounds of .223/5.56 ammo at about 25 cents per round. The same goes for .22LR, 12 gauge shot shells of various types and some 300 Blackout as well. This is just the stuff that's sealed up in ammo cans waiting for a rainy day.

Just as, if not more importantly, I picked up several pounds of powders for each of my main calibers, several thousand primers and over a thousand projectiles. 

I'm not telling you all this to brag. What I'm saying is that I can still shoot because of the preparation work I did when times were good. I can shoot reloads because I have the supplies and equipment to make them. I have 22LR versions of my main guns (AR and Walther PPQ), so I can shoot that as well. I'm betting that, this too shall pass and prices will once again drop, but it's going to be awhile and I'll keep on shooting till then! 

Backing Up Back Up Power

The one thing that everyone is afraid of is........ the blackout! Not the Zombie Apocalypse, not a "Red Dawn" invasion, not an Ebola Outbreak, or even another Democrat in the White House. It's the lack of electricity. 

With today's increasing use of electricity for everything, we're all on the hook. Most states don't have their own self-sustaining grid. Amazingly, even California has to buy electricity from neighboring states and is often a a sum-deficit during the summer months. However, with the interconnected aspect of the whole system, we're all pretty much in the same boat to one extent or another. 

Every day there are more and more folks installing solar panels on their homes, but do you actually know how that works? During the day, when you make more than you use, your meter runs backwards as the electricity goes into the grid and your provider pays you in credits (at about 1/3 of what they charge you). Then at night or on the weekends, you're still using electricity as normal and they charge you. The fact is, we're still connected to the grid and beholden to it. But, is there a solution to this?

We'll yeah..... you can buy Tesla's Power Wall to store up your excess electricity, then use this storage capacity when you need it. As you can imagine, it's kind of pricey right now and won't pay for itself any time soon, but it's out there. 

There are of course, DIY solutions where folks are building their own, often using 18650 lithium-ion cells harvested from old laptop batteries, but that's quite a commitment requiring over 4000 cells to get started. 

Ideally, a person would do a hybrid system with both wind and solar input to have more possibility of being able to store power and I'd love to head off in that direction. When we move out of our large kid-driven house, we'll seriously look into it. Until then, all I can do is to prepare for emergencies.

In that direction, most people go for something like this and I'll probably do that as well at some point. But our teenage kids budget can't stand that level of emergency power right now, so I'm starting small......

This small. I recently bought a 230 watt-hour "Portable Power Station". It's not powerful enough to run a fridge, but it has pure sine-wave output so it'll do sensitive devices such as medical devices or computers. The various ports can power pretty much most modern devices and importantly, it's small enough to take camping! 

At some point before this summer, I'll also buy a portable solar panel as well. The way I look at it, a 60 watt panel should work out fine. These devices usually deliver about a quarter to a third of their rates power, so if my calculations are correct, anything around 20w per hour should be able to recharge the 230 Wah portable power station over the course of a day even if I pretty much discharge it. So, that this is, would be a small model of what I like to do one day with full-sized solar panels and a power wall at home. Until then, this rig will be an emergency stop-gap that can go camping as well!

"Catch-22"!

I'm a little different than most people...... I do things differently and my re-entry into the firearms world has followed that pattern.

Most people start out with something like this. A bolt action rifle/carbine chambered in the venerable .22 long rifle cartridge. They are accurate, slows the shooter down so they can master the fundamentals of shooting. However, I really started shooting by qualifying "small bore" while in ROTC at Texas A&M, so I really didn't need to go that route. 

So, the first thing I bought was a sell-defense/service weapon. Specifically the HK VP9 which got traded around till I got the Walther PPQ that I have now. So, the whole scenario progressed via the self/home-defense path going through, a 12ga pump shotgun, and the AR world until I finally got to where I am now...... which is just plain "fun-to-shoot", range/practice firearms.

So, I started with one of these, essentially a full-sized replica of my regular PPQ, except in .22LR vs. 9mm. This gives me the ability to spend a lot of trigger time at a few cents per round. Then came this.....

 

The Ruger 10//22 in Stainless Takedown version which I promptly put into a Magpul X22 "Backpacker" stock. It also got an inexpensive Bushnell TRS-25 reddot on the Magpul barrel mount. Let me just say, I'm HOOKED!

On Sunday afternoon, I spent an hour and a half at the range with 4 guns. My new to me, Magnum Research MR9 (long-slide version), and also new to me Just Right Carbine (Glock 9mm version), the Walther PPQ/22LR and Ruger 10/22 Takedown. I spent twice as much time shooting the 22s! There were some extenuating circumstances, but I was just having a ton of fun shooting those 22s! Most of that time, I spent with the 10/22. Both of these guns ate up both types of bulk ammo (Federal & Winchester) I used without issue. I'll leave you with this: I can completely see why people say that folks who buy one of them, end up with multiples.

The "A" in the "A Module"

As much as I love my firearms, the fact is; without cartridges, they are some high-priced paperweights! So, when it comes to getting prepared for scarcity, possibly sky-rocketing costs, one of the first things I prepared for was the ammunition. 

And it all started with being smart with the calibers I have guns cambered in, so I'm not trying to stock too many different types of ammunition. For handguns, it was a relatively easy choice. When you look at the factors of stopping power, common availability, cost, and a wide selection of firearms; it was pretty simply the 9 x 19, or Luger/Parabellum. That choice has allowed me to find both a "service" type weapon and a "concealed carry" option, along with a "pistol caliber carbine" that fit me. Why not the 40 S&W, which is more powerful? In my opinion, it's only marginally so, and more expensive to buy and shoot. It's also a caliber on the wane so would be more difficult to find in a pinch. Remember, the "9" is the primary caliber of both the armed services (in most of the world even) and civilian law enforcement agencies as well. 

My other main "stocking" caliber is of course ".223/5.56". It is again, an easy choice to make, being a standard of military and law enforcement. Depending on ammunition, it can be used on virtually anything ranging from small game to deer sized ammo. Now, before anybody gets all "up-in-arms"; I'm aware that it's not a legal deer hunting caliber in most states. However, in an extra-legal environment, this caliber can certainly bring down deer-sized game especially if used with heavier bullets like 77gr. I typically keep about 1500 rounds of this on-hand with three-quarters of it being the standard 55gr, but also keep 62gr "green-tip" as well and intend to have some of the heavy stuff as well. 

There is one other "standard" caliber that virtually everyone stocks (if they prep) and that's 22LR. It's cheap (right now), small and easy to keep. It's WAY quieter and easier to shoot than center-fire calibers. It can be a good bet to bring home small game and if push-comes-to-shove, it can be used for defense as well! While I try to keep around 1500 rounds in my other stocking calibers, I keep several thousand rounds of this. I keep two types; high-powered such as CCI Mini-Mags, but the majority of it is bulk/white-box stuff that's cheap to buy and store.

Then, there's the "others", stuff that I keep but don't keep a ton of around. Here they are and the reasons for their existence in my world:

Shot-shell. I have 12ga now in 00 Buck for home defense as well as some #4 shot. I also have some #6/7/8 "Birdshot" for food gathering purposes if it comes to that. I'm not a bird hunter, but anyone trying to bring home some food is more likely to hit something with a shotgun than a 22lr. If I pick up a 20ga, I'll pick up some shells for that as well. I don't keep a lot of this stuff. It's bulky (making it difficult to store) and I don't shoot it regularly, so I only have a couple of hundred round of it.

Then, there's the random center-fire. Although I've purposely kept my number of calibers to a minimum, I do have a few that aren't covered by the 9mm and 5.56. That's the 380acp and the 6.5 Grendel which I can shoot in an AR platform firearm and capable of bring down most anything in North America. Also, I keep ammo for the 300 Blackout giving me hog-hunting capabilities, it commonly runs wild throughout most of North Americas, but especially in the South. 

Along with factory-loaded ammunition, I also have the capability to reload/handload all of the above calibers with the exception of shotshells. Hopefully, this will not only be prepared for disasters of both natural, socio-economic and political. 

My Wife Thinks I'm Crazy

OK, maybe not exactly crazy, but she certainly thinks I'm paranoid. I'm not going to get into a prolong discussion about my rationale, but suffice to say that I'm increasingly concerned about a number of trends in our society in general, but I'm of the opinion that not being prepared for emergency situations in general is irresponsible. Even FEMA has very specific recommendations for citizen preparedness for emergencies. What emergencies?

Well, let's start with this...... about a month ago, Dallas suffered an EF3 tornado that was on the ground for 32 minutes. That section of town will have power out for a few days at least. Not that many years ago, our little suburb had an actual tornado strike that was less than a mile from my school. 

You don't have to suffer this kind of catastrophic damage to have problems. What if you're one of the houses down the street where the electricity and maybe even gas is going to be out for several days, if not weeks? What's your answer to that? You could do it the simple (also expensive) way by getting a hotel room......, but for how long, what about looters......., yes; there was definitely problems with that in the effected areas. So, what are the specific items that any citizen has the responsibility (and right) to answer?

So, at the very least, you have a "defend" situation as related to an emergency. Of course, that's not even discuss the famous/infamous "7 minutes" (average time for police to respond in a metropolitan area) that folks are on the hook to defend themselves if there's an issue with an intruder. And these are the least "far fetched" scenarios out there. The more remote possibilities range from frisky North Koreans executing an EMP attack, or a Cyber-attack bringing the grid to it's knees to the Trump vs. China situation getting completely out-of-hand!

At the end of the day, there are any number of reasons to be prepared for an emergency. So, let's take a look at the elements that have to be accounted for in that area. Above are the 3 basic elements, but let's look more deeply within the concept and discuss them. I have them divided up into modules and define them:

• Module A (Armament): Self-explanatory need to be able to defend yourself and your family whether that's for the "7 minute" gap, or more to the point; what if law enforcement isn't coming?
• Module B (Basic Needs): Literally meaning the things that we need to help us survive on a daily basis (with the exception of food which is it's own separate category). This would include clothing, tech to help us live, such as tools.
• Module C (Communications): This if an often overlooked area that's incredibly important. The assumption is that routine communications systems (cell and landlines) will go down in short order, so how do we maintain comms? These are necessary for not only any access to outside information, but also situational/tactical communications.
• Module D (Medical): If the 24hr pharmacy isn't going to refill your meds any time soon and the you can't get through on 911..... then what?
• Module E (Energy): In any even of an emergency event, one of the first things that we'll lose is power delivery. Look at your life: how will you live for the next week or so, if electricity is down for more than a few hours.
• Module F (Food): How are you going to survive when the stores run out of stock? There'll be no Amazon deliveries in a natural disaster. How does your family survive, even if it's only for a few day, or a week? 

These modules aren't in order. I simply used the letters conveniently to represent the major groups of items needed to help anyone to survive after a major catastrophy. The fact is that they are all necessary and work as a system. 

Here's the issue: we're not buddies with Bill Gates, and not going to just contact people to have it done. So, we'll have to get ourselves ready in the old fashion way. Meaning; do what we can, when we can, when we can afford it. Over the course of the next few weeks (hopefully), or months (more probably), I'm going to discuss the necessary "preps" to be able to feel secure if any number of "unforeseen" disaster scenarios occurs. 

 

This isn't the goal. I have what I feel to be a well-grounded faith that nothing serious will occur over the course of the rest of my life, but that being said, I'm going to say that there's not going to be some possibility that one of a number of issues happening. ........ That'd be stupid and irresponsible. 

 

Summer Fun With Guns

After a week of grading Advance Placement essays followed by several weeks of prepping for, then actual painting our house, summer break finally arrived for me! So, this week, along with some little "honey-dos", I finally got around to doing some projects of my own. Much of today was devoted to working on my ARs (yes, I said AR(s), which I'll write a separate post on), I got to spend some time with my favorite gun; the Walther PPQ.

The first order of business is to replace factory sights with some TruGlo "Nightsights"! 

This gives my main 9mm the same sights as my conceal carry piece, the PPS/M1. I really like consistency and having identical sight pictures is a good thing. At some point, I'll probably do the same to the Magnum Research MR9 "back-up" handgun as well.

 

In this image you can see a depiction of the M1 (aka Classic) magazine on the right vs. the M2 or the button (American) style release mag on the left. This is one of the reasons I use the MR9 as my backup gun. It's basically a Walther P99 and therefore uses the same mags. All that is awesome and fits my plan (personal obsession) well. However, it leaves one nagging issue that I wish was different.

Here's an image of the Kel-tec Sub 2000 like the one I picked up a couple of years ago. I really like it and it shoots well. I could wax eloquent about it for some time, but I'm going to go a different direction here. I bought it because it shares the 9mm that most of my guns uses. It's pretty much everything I want except for one thing. It doesn't take the Walther mags. The Sub2K actually comes in a wide variety of versions, ranging from S&W M&P, to Sig P226, to CZ75, to the Beretta 92/96 (which is the one I have) and of course the ubiquitous Glock 17 as well as the shorter gripped 19 version as well. No Walther. This is the price you pay when you choose based on what fits the best versus what's most popular! Currently, Kel-tec even makes a mag catch kit for the Canik TP9, so what gives? The M&P is easily the second most popular 9mm, and both the Beretta 92 and Sig have been around so long that they are considered standards. 

Surely the Walther is more popular than the CZ75 and Canik? There's actually a perfectly logical explanation as to not only why there's not a Walther version, but will likely never be one. 

So, here's the deal. There are actually 3 versions of the Sub 2000/9mm in production; a Glock 17 (the original) version and a Glock 19 version with a shorter grip to accommodate the shorter magazine for the "compact" and most popular Glock. Of course they are going to not only make something to match the most popular striker-fired of the most popular caliber (9mm) on the market! Then they make one other version for all the other 9mm handguns out there since pretty much everyone else's (non-Glock) mags are the same with the only difference being the shape and location of the magazine catch. One catch! All these magazines are roughly the same length; that of the old "full-sized" handgun along the lines of the Sig P226 and Beretta 92/M9. So, the issue for the Walther is that not only is that not the weird (really high) catch slot, but is too short for the grip of the gun since the PPQ is a compact along the lines of the Glock 19! So, what now, give up and just use the Beretta mags?

Heck no! I've got one more trick up my sleeve. If you'll look at the bottom of the grip, you'll see the finger cut-out to allow for a stuck mag to be pulled out. By comparing, it looks to me if I opened that area up more, maybe with a Dremel, I'll be able to get the shorter Walther mag up high enough to feed rounds to the bolt. But what about the PPQ/M1 mags with the "too high" catch slot?

I might have a solution for that as well. It appears that the Beretta have the "lowest" slot of all the ones that Kel-tec makes catch kits for......., and that if I turn it upside-down, it'll be in roughly the right location for the Walther mags! Now, it's going to require me to do some filing and maybe some "Southern Engineering", but what the heck? Ordering a catch kit is only $15! Stay Tuned!