Well, first of all, let’s throw in a link to a proposed Mountain House group buy if I can get enough warm bodies on board.

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The folks at Jerking The Trigger have a link to a vendor selling a bulk package of AR lower parts kits…enough to build up 50 lowers.

That comes out to about $43.99/kit…which isnt bad since Stag, my go-to guys, sell them for $54 a set.

Still….$2200 is a lot of money to plop down at once. On the other hand, if you’re sitting on a stash of lowers, it might be just the opportunity to save some money in their assembly.

The PMAG 27 GL9 is a 27-round Glock 9mm handgun magazine featuring a new proprietary all-polymer construction for flawless reliability and durability over thousands of rounds. Meeting the overall length requirements for a 170MM competition magazine, the PMAG 21 GL9 offers additional capacity without the need for expensive extensions.

I haven’t tried Magpul’s new Glock magazines yet. I’m always reluctant to go anywhere for a pistol magazine except the OEM source. I’m especially concerned about Magpul’s magazines not being metal-lined like Glock’s. Way back in the dinosaur days, Glocks mags were all plastic with no metal liner. When loaded, the mags would swell a bit and as a result, many more-than-empty magazines would not drop-free. It’s my understanding that the European methods of mag swapping involve stripping the mag rather than letting it drop free, so perhaps that wasn’t an issue. However, for the American market…us crazy Yank cowboys like our drop-free magazine changes.

An original 33-round Glock happystick is always going to be my first choice for this sort of thing. However, from an investment standpoint, if the Magpul offering is less than $20@ it might make sense to throw a few dozen back. If I ever get around to getting the 9mm Glock-compatible AR that I want, a couple dozen might be just what the doctor ordered.

From the Why-Didn’t-I-Think-Of-That department:

If you’re anything like me (and, really, let’s hope that you aren’t), you probably store a goodly amount of ammo in those handy little plastic 5- and 100-round plastic ammo boxes. They’re handy, cheap, and hold a useful amount of ammo. I usually then stack them up in ammo cans for long term storage. This works great in theory, but in practice there’s a problem – military ammo cans aren’t necessarily designed to perfectly accommodate those plastic ammo boxes. As a result, you get gaps, or the boxes aren’t arranged in the most efficient manner.

I was puttering around Cabela’s and discovered something interesting. MTM, the guys who brought such odd entries to the preparedness market as the Survivor, are now producing plastic ammo cans sized to fit the plastic ammo boxes. For example, the 9mm one lets you stuff 10 100-round boxes in it with a little room to spare for things like dessicant.

Also available in 45, 223, and 308, it seems a nice way to store ammo when you want something more than just a cardboard box on the shelf, but don’t need the overwhelming ruggedness of a .50 cal. military ammo can. I could see these being very handy for keeping ‘shooting/ready’ ammo on hand. Esp. if you keep your stuff out in the garage or something. I might have to get a few of these to play with.

I’m in the market for some more Ruger 10/22 magazines. Having shot the Ruger 10/22 for, well, decades at this point…I’ve got some opinions on the magazines.

The factory 10-rd magazines are great. If you don’t mind being limited to ten rounds of ammo, they’re fine. They’re resilient, reliable, and pretty affordable for what they are. Having said that, I kept virtually none of them…I don’t envision a future where a 10-rd magazine is more useful to me than a 25-rd magazine.

The only two brands of magazine for the Ruger that I have had great experience with have been the sometimes-hard-to-find Eagle brand mags (which are quite good and usually quite cheap), and the ubiquitous Butler Creek mags.

When you get into the Butler Creek mags, you get two choices: Hot Lips or Steel Lips. Bother are very good magazines, no two ways about it. When the 1994 ban took place, the Hot Lips magazines I had were the last ones I could get. In 2014, ten years later, when the ban sunsetted, I retired most of the Hot Lips magazines. While they had served very well for those ten years, a few of them were starting to have the feed lips fray a bit. So…on that very informal bit of testing, I would say that with ‘average’ use a Hot Lips 10/22 mag will last you about ten years.

The Steel Lip mags, naturally, are going to last pretty much forever…the feed lips, anyway. And when you’re packing stuff away for the zombie apocalypse, where the magazine you have me be the only one you have for the rest of your life (however long that may be) it might be a good idea to spend the extra five bucks per mag and get the Steel Lips.

When the Hot lips are on sale, I can usually get them for around $8 ea, and if Fortuna smiles in my direction, I can sometimes find Steel Lips for about $12 ea. When Im off playing at the range, I play with the Hot Lips mags, saving the Steel Lips mags for the day they’re needed. (As much as one can need a .22.)

So…if you’re stocking up on mags these days, which i highly recommend, and you can spend the cash, get the Steel Lips. If you want more mags for your buck, get the Hot Lips. But….get something.

This little bit of news from Jerking The Trigger has been a while in coming…

The PMAG 5 7.62 is an all polymer and extremely affordable alternative to metal AICS pattern magazines. It will work with the above Bolt Action Magazine Well or existing AICS bottom metal set ups. The capacity can be increased to 6 rounds with a simple follower modification.

The Ruger Scout Rifle, supposedly, uses an AICS-friendly magazine, so these should be a cheaper alternative to the godawfully expensive Ruger factory steel magazine, and a more reliable alternative to the affordable-but-questionably-reliable Ruger polymer magazine.

For those of you with the Ruger Scout, this might be an interesting compromise between the two choices of mag.

Joe Biden announced that he isn’t going to run for President, which means that the choices in the Democrat camp are between Bernie Sanders (who I really hope gets the nomination) and Hillary Clinton. This is akin to choosing death by firing squad or death by hanging.

The Republicans, thus far, haven’t come up with anyone that sets the world afire, so I think the election will not be about voting for someone as much as it will be about voting against  someone.

In short, it’s panic buying season. I would be surprised if the Biden announcement, which seems to seal the deal for the Clinton camp, doesn’t tick the pricing algorithms at Cheaper Than Dirt and we see Pmags back at $50 per.

I could be wrong, of course, but if I am…so what? All that means is you bought a dozen Glock magazines this week instead of in three months like you planned. Best deal I’ve found today is Gun Accessory Supply selling OEM G17 mags for $19. I’ve found Magpul Glock mags for $12 but Im not willing to pull the trigger, so to speak, on them until I’ve had one to evaluate.