Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Gas prices continue to drop. Hmmmm. Must be that ‘Peak Oil’.
Since prices have dropped I took the opportunity to fill up another couple gas cans. At one point, about a year ago, I thought that perhaps I’d gone a little overboard and bought too many of them. Now, as I think about fuel and what it represents, I wonder if I bought enough. I think I have one empty can left and I’ll probably fill that up next week. That’ll give us around 50-55 gallons of stabilized gasoline to have for emergencies. Or, to put it another way, its about three tankfulls of gas and we can get some pretty decent range with three tanks of gas. I like to think it won’t be necessary, but sometimes distance equals safety. Additionally, if we get a gas generator any time soon we’ll need the fuel.
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I received the new, updated ATF Form 4473 (“yellow sheet”) today. They are, indeed, yellow again. In addition to the usual changes theres something new and, in my opinion, sinister. It used to be that the form asked for the type of gun being transferred. The category was “pistol, revolver, rifle, shotgun, etc”. Reasonable enough. Now they give options for “receiver, frame”. What does this mean to you? It means that ATF can determine that, on a particular date, your ‘pre ban’ gun was, in fact, an unfinished gun and thus couldn’t be legally built up into a ‘post ban’ gun. Of course, there would always be the possibility that although you bought the gun as a stripped receiver you later assembled it before any ban took effect. But, of course, little legal niceties like ‘burden of proof’ don’t matter to folks like the goons at BATFE.
I suppose theres an additional question – does your T/C Contender frame count as a ‘frame’, ‘pistol frame’ or ‘rifle frame’? Ah the joy of unintended consequences. Sure, there was that court decision in favor of TC a few years ago but as I read it it, it only affirmed that having the pistol barrel and rifle stock sitting in your gun cabinet didn’t constitute a ‘short barreled rifle’ as long as you didn’t actually assemble it as a SBR.
Regardless, under an Obama administration, despite recent Supreme Court rulings, I have concerns about my gun rights getting…… infringed.
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Its very hard to keep the possible negative consequences of the upcoming election out of these posts. Certainly the current state of the economy is an on-topic subject…after all, an economic disaster is certainly on pretty much everyones list of ‘possible SHTF events’. However, theres a couple things I’ve wanted to remain steadfast about in terms of what I post.. first, that this not be a ‘gun blog’. Guns are an adjunct to being prepared but I didn’t want every other post to be about them. Secondly, it wasn’t going to be about politics. Smarter and more eloquent folks than I have plenty of blogs out there for that sort of thing. And, finally, I wanted it to be about what I was doing and why I was doing it. Not really a preach-to-the-choir blog about ‘you should do this’ or ‘Heres why if you’re not doing this my way you’re an idiot’. Again, plenty of those out there.
Unfortunately, while I think I do a pretty good job at #1 and #2, I’ve been a bit lacking in #3. Need to work on that.
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Hunting season approaches. Actually, it starts this weekend. Now, I’d like to go out for the first day or two but, to be realistic, its gonna be damn busy out there. It’ll be be like a busy Friday night in Beirut. Instead, I think I’ll go Monday and perhaps Wednesday when most folks are at work.
This year I’ll be trying something a little different and taking my Contender pistol, a 14” iron-sighted .44 Mag. Should be entertaining. A friend of mine who has yet to hunt here in the great state of Montana will be coming along and I look forward to him getting his first deer. Havent decided yet if he’ll have to do the ritual face-smearing.
