Monthly Archives: December 2018

Siege arrival and end of the year

Posted on by

The bundle o’ Siege’s I ordered up from that megasuperawesome sale a few days ago showed up today. One or two will got out this weekend as holiday gifts. The rest…well….Zero needs lighting.

This recent purchase of a fairly substantial quantity of D-batt using devices means that I need to head up to CostCo this weekend and pick up more batteries. I picked some up last weekend and I was rather shocked at what D-batts cost these days. To be fair, I hadn’t bought any in a while but they still seemed egregiously expensive.

And, as 2018 limps to a finish, my goal is for 2019 to not be an expensive year. This year was a tad heavy on gun purchases. How heavy? Uhmmm….six carbines, seven Ruger 9mm pistols (I clearly lost track of how many on that one), four 12 ga shotguns, a couple Glocks,  and one or two pocket guns.But…also managed to sock away a chunk of Mountain House freeze drieds, put back almost 50k rounds of .22, and actually managed to put a bit of money in the bank.

At the moment, my preparedness goals for 2019 are extremely unsexy: pay off house, get money  in the bank, try not to buy All The Guns.

You’d think that wouldn’t be that hard, but you’d be wrong……..

 

The longing for a .338

Posted on by

Well, I hope you guys took advantage of that $20 deal onthe Siege’s yesterday. Some of you must have because according to the Amazon affiliate logs, 96 of them were sold off that link I posted. And even though I had bought three last week, who could resist at $20? So I ordered another three for myself. I’ll hand out one or two as holiday gifts.

For those of you who didn’t manage to read that post in time and get under the midnight deadline they had…well…perhaps next year?
=====================
In other news, my gun buying habit, which is starting to get a tad outta control, needs to be reined in because Ruger has finally come out with their precision rifle in .338 Lapua. I got to handle one the other day and it is…big. It’s about 15# of rifle, which is really, really challenging the idea of man-portability. It’s not easy to imagine this gun as something you’d sling over your shoulder while carrying a backpack. It’s a heavy rifle. Of course, if you wanna dish it out you gotta be able to take it. The tradeoff against the 33% lighter .308 is,  of course, bullet weight and a very pronounced increase in range (and operating costs).

Anyway, I’ve been wanting a .338 Lapua for a while and I was pretty much settled in on getting the Savage but I’d like to read the reviews on the Ruger offering.

How expensive? Well, its going to be about $1500 for the base gun, figure another grand (at least) for the scope. Support gear will be another $500 or so. It adds up in a hurry.

I suspect this is one of those things I’ll daydream over for a year or two until some circumstance occurs that affords me the opportunity to get one of these things. But, in the meantime, I can start collecting the less expensive parts of the package, like dies, brass, etc. As I said, the two biggest hits will be the gun and the glass.

You know, if Ruger would come out with a pump or auto shotgun you could have a survivlist’s armory filled with nothing but Ruger products…AR, 1911,  .357 DA revolver, .22 rifle, etc, etc.

Deal – Siege lantern $20 at Amazon

Posted on by

If you’ve got Amazon Prime, theyve got the Siege lanterns for twenty bucks, inc. shipping. Maximum quantity of three. Excellent deal and an awesome price that lets you get folks a cool holiday gift. Deal ends at midnight. Link doesnt say $19.99, but when you click it and get to Amazon its priced at $19.99. Go!

Thanks to the person who told me about this deal in comments.
================
ETA:
One is none, baby!

Addiction

Posted on by

So this happened today…….

I know, I know.

And before some well-meaning person posts it in the comments, No, I wouldn’t offer this to the neighbor girl. DA/SA autos arent really a beginners gun. If I were interested in offering her a boomtoy, which Im not, it’d be a Glock, M&P40, or an XD.. basically, a reliable point-n-shoot. The notion that revolvers are the best choice for the I-just-want-a-gun-to-keep-on-the-nightstand crowds (especially chicks) is just silly. Someone who has no interest in becoming a ‘gun person’ isn’t going to do terribly well with a DA revolver (the classic .38) with its long heavy trigger pull. Good, solid, DA revolver shooting takes practice. A good bit of practice.

And to stem the inevitable “My wife/girlfriend/daughter shoots a Beretta 92 and thats a DA/SA and she shoots it quite well!”, yeah, but Im talking generalizations here.

This is Ruger 9mm pistol number..ah.well…its up there in the double digits. But..$200 including shipping. Came without a magazine but thats not a problem these days.

The plot thickens

Posted on by

Things are not always as they appear. I was awoken at 2:06 am by the sound of someone trying to open the gate to my neighbors back yard. By the time I got my pants, shoes, and 870 on, whomever it was had left the yard. I looked down the sidewalk and saw a gal staggering down the sidewalk and naively assumed it was her.

It was not.

I reeled back the video surveillance this morning and a few things started clicking into place. When I went outside to investigate (2:10 am) , I found one of my garbage cans, open end down, on the sidewalk by my neighbors front fenced yard. Hmmmm.

I talked to my neighbor this morning, she said that when she went outside to let her dog out into the yard at 3am, there was one of my garbage cans in her yard, open end down. She moved it to its proper place in the alley.

And something in the back of my brain started itching. I found that garbage can, open end down, on the sidewalk by her yard at 2:12am. And put it back in the alley. She found it in her yard, open end down, at 3am and put it back in the alley.

Scenario: Guy on video took the can from the alley, set it on the sidewalk to use to climb over the fence into her yard. But got interrupted. I come along and put the can back in the alley. He comes back later, uses the can to climb the fence, pulls the can over into the yard with him, and then leaves it behind in her yard when he uses it again to climb over the fence to leave her yard. She lets her dog out, finds the can in her yard, and replaces it in the alley.

So this guy creeped around her house, tried the doors, came back within an hour and climbed the fence into her yard, and tried the other doors. Thats more than a bit creepy.

Still assessing the situation. I passed the footage along to the neighbor who was a bit shook up. I suspect it might be a guy from the creepy crazy-people house down the block. But…it’s going to be  gun-intensive next couple days, I suspect.

My neighbor didn’t understand what she could possibly have that she thought this guy would think was worth coming back and trying to break in over. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that people who want to steal aren’t going to try to break into a house that they reasonably expect is occupied at 2am. They break into a place they know is occupied because what they want is the occupant.

I don’t know if my neighbor is a gun person but I’m betting not, nor is she likely to be. I told her to set out motion lights and keep a report with the cops so that if we see this guy we can have a record of what happened. Not much else I can do, although I did get permission to rearrange the security cams to cover more of her property. Also gave her my number and told her I’m just one panicked scream away if she has problems.

A siege of Sieges

Posted on by

Hmmm. Was bopping around Amazon looking for holiday gifts and encountered that age-old problem that occurs when shopping for other people: the gift you’re looking at is so cool you decide you want it for yourself.

It happens, right?

So, the people I was going to send a buncha Siege lanterns to will have to get something else. In the meantime, I have several of them showing up Monday.

Actually, if youre stuck with what to get that survivalist-type person on your wish list, I strongly recommend these things. They’re handy, pretty affordable, and they do exactly what you need them to do. Three levels of brightness, a blinky strobe function, and a red’save your night vision’ mode. I really can’t say enough good things about them. Of course, when you come up with a cool product, there are imitators. Everready and Rayovac make some similar produccts but for a lousy $27 I see no reason to go with an imitator. I mean, if Rayovac made a weaponlight that was a knockoff of the Streamlight you’d have some doubts about that, right? Same thing.

I’d been meaning to pick up a few extra of these for a while now, but I just never got around to it. Now that winter is here, and we had, what, an earthquake two years ago and a couple power outages in the last year, it seemed a good time to move some money out of one budget category and into another.

I’ll head up to CostCo this weekend and stock up on D-batts to load these things up when they get here Monday.

Pick up three or four for the LMI on your gift-giving holiday list.

Link – Pistol Grip Only shotguns video

Posted on by

So those new pistol grip 12 ga. firearms (which, technically, are not shotguns) are kind of the rage these days. I first became aware of them when I saw one on Gunbroker. A little later, I saw that Mossberg was going to introduce them. And then finally I got to shoot one. My ardor was cooled a bit after shooting one.

Unless your plans include spending a lot of time in hallways and elevators, it seems that a shoulder stock would be a better option. Really, a ‘wrist brace’ on one of these 14″ wonders would be the way to go. But, surely at the usual 7-yard distance the advantage of a stock versus stockless shotgun isn’t that great right?

Well, Gun Jesus explores that with some really interesting results:


TL;DR is that unless you’re someone who practices a lot with your pistol-grip-only shotgun, you are going to get better (and faster) results with a stocked gun.

Personally, I keep an 18″ 870 laying around for repelling boarders, but thats only because I don’t want the paperwork hassle of a 14″ or 16″ barreled gun. If barrel length legalities weren’t a thing, a 14″ stocked gun would be my first choice for operating in the confines of my humble abode.

This isnt to say that there is not a situation where something like the Shockwave would be exactly what the doctor ordered. But nine times out of ten, you’d probably be better served with the stocked gun.

This mean I won’t get a Shockwave or two? Nope. Because I love ‘rulebeater’ stuff. And, like wrist braces, I suspect there’ll come a time in the not too far future where ATF will get serious and tinker with their regulations and rulings. (“They can’t make laws! They can only enforce them!” is what I can already hear people typing in the comments. Dude, they’ve already proven they can classify/declassify/reclassify whatever they want. No one wants to be the test case.)

So…the 18″ full-stocked gun remains on night duty. But, an interesting video to watch for those who think about the efficacy of new goodies like the Shockwave.

 

Linj – Do you have a magic “keep you safe” talisman?

Posted on by

From TUAK:

Neither do I. The older I get, the more I have to fight the urge to ridicule keyboard kommandos who think “prepping” is all about guns and gear and a case of MREs. I try to suppress the urge because I despise hypocrisy in all its forms and especially when I’m the hypocrite. And the truth is I was a proto-keyboard kommando: I was into “guns and gear” prepping long before keyboards – and preppers – became so ubiquitous. Yes! I was a faithful follower of Father Mel Tappan. I wore out my copy of Survival Guns in a way that would have made a Christian quite proud if it were his Bible. I was … a dumbass. And I kept it up for far longer than was wise.

Outstanding post and I suggest reading the whole thing more than once. My own impressions to follow.

Butter

Posted on by

Well, I suppose that unless I take a sudden interest in French cooking, 20# of butter should last a year, right? I mean, thats a quarter stick of butter every 5 days. Seems like plenty.

In my experience, freezing butter, as is, from the store with no special packaging other than what it comes with is fine. But…better safe than sorry, y’know? I’ll vacuum seal each 1# brick just to err on the side of overcautiousness.

Yeah, there’s canned butter out there. Good stuff to have, no doubt, in a prolonged emergency but for my day-to-day needs, the stuff I buy at CostCo will do fine. Of course, if I was stocking some remote cabin or somesuch it would be a different story.

Anyway, this stuff will go off to the deep freeze and we’ll see if it lasts to next December. I suspect it will.