Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

See, I’m never clear on this….the rioting thats going on in London..is that rioting in Britain, rioting in England, rioting in the UK or all of the above?

Regardless, it’s nice to know that when you feel like looting department stores, burning businesses and generally checking out of civilized society you can do so with relative impunity because the cops arent armed and the business owners won’t brandish a shotgun if you cross them.

In this country, rioting and looting is usually the exact circumstance for which short barreled shotguns were added to our gun safes. Its grisly, but true…mob violence tapers down considerably when you start shooting into the mob.

Remember the first rule of preparedness? When disaster strikes, don’t be there. I live in a small enough town that the largest possible riot that could be mustered would still be outmanned by gun toting guys like myself. (What if it’s guys like myself who are rioting? Guys like me don’t riot. Indiscriminate destruction of innocent third-party’’s property is NOT my forte.)

These riots will be spun as the result of ‘austerity measures’ and cuts in social welfare systems. To me, when you have to pay someone or else they burn your downtown that is called ‘extortion’. No mistake, the economy is tough everywhere…and its probably going to hurt everyone, poor and not poor. But I think what were seeing in London is going to be seen around the world, to varying degrees, and may even wind up happening in some of our larger cities. If you live in those areas you may want to start making plans for what to do when that happens.