It has been brought to my attention that this weekend is the 15 year anniversary of the expiration of the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban. Fifteen years. If you remember the ban expiring, and you are, at this moment, scrambling to find ARs and mags “just in case”, then you’re one of those fools who, as the saying go, “…does not remember history is doomed to repeat it.”
If, after the ban expired, you had bought one AR mag a month, and one AR per year, you would have 15 AR’s sitting in the safe and 180 magazines to go with them, for a somewhat-comforatble gun:mag ratio of 1:12. And it would have cost you, by my math, $75 per month.
Not an AR guy? Well, you could be sitting on around 540 Glock mags for that same $75/month
“But I only came to guns in the last ten years!”, some will say. Or the last five years. So what? That’s still enough time to have put away an AR and a dozen mags every year.
Kids? Job? Car Payment? House payment? Sure, that gets in the way. But you make room in your life and your wallet for that which is important to you. $75 a month is about $2.50 a day… drink one less Starbucks coffee each day, smoke two less packs of cigarettes a week, or just cut back from eating out once a week to once every two weeks.
I guarantee you that 95% of you make more money than me and even then I am still able to squirrel away a few (ahem) guns and ammo. The difference isn’t financial, the difference is intentional. To me, it’s important enough to give up buying a new bicycle, to pass on buying the expensive groceries, to make do with a ratty pair of shoes for another month or two, to ride my bike rather than drive, to eat another plate of rice and chicken rather than go out to dinner….because, to me, I’d rather have the guns in the safe.
No matter what it is you want out of life…money, fame, cars, women, expensive toys, whatever….if you want it bad enough, really bad enough, you will find a way to get it. You just have to want it more than the other things.
This is why I have no sympathy for anyone who, fifteen years after the ban, is suddenly now worried about getting more mags and Evil Black Rifles. You had fifteen years to get ready by doing something that takes most people one year. If you get caught with 10-round magazines and neutered rifles this time around it’s poor planning on your part, buddy. (and, of course, the fault of those idiots in Washington.)
Some people prioritize fancy cars, clothes, vacations, and dining over everything else – usually at the expense of their fiscal health. My priorities include a hot shower every night, food on the table, a place to lay my head, and supplies and equipment to survive the coming economic winter.
Having said that, I feel pretty good too. Just got back from a shop in the nearest big town where I converted about 500 units of paper into: Assorted liquors for trading, several 6 gallon water storage cans, OTC medications and razor blades, 400 rounds of .45 ball, and ~ 50 gallons of gas –
fill up now. That attack on that Saudi oil stabilization plant is going to spike chaos in oil prices. Don’t believe me? Check into CNBC commodities prices at 6 ET and watch the fun when oil markets open in Asia. Easily a .30 – .50 cent increase in gas prices this week and could go a lot higher depending on how long HALF of all Saudi production is off line…
Regards
Saw about the attacks on zero hedge while i was at work Saturday and filled up everything when i got home…… Don’t just think about gas though because an increase in fuel costs boost the price of everything else. Hopefully its back up and running soon though.
A quick strategy option: I took 33% of cash savings and bought 40% guns/ammo, 40% silver and 20% feed store food. If silver goes up to $100, and it should for many reasons, I get my savings back, plus free guns and food. Now, I don’t normally believe in selling silver. It goes into Deep Stares. But I made an exception this time, just for this strategy. It is still a risk, but a tiny one IMHO. It might do for those really short on savings needing more survival items. Buy now, before shipping soars on those cases of ammo. Mags- PSA still has $9 aluminum. Midway has $7.25 plastic. SG Ammo still has 20 cent a round Tulammo AFTER shipping and insurance, 223. Not ideal, but just wait a bit and they will seem like screaming bargains.
Im not sure but I think theres a reasonable argument that if silver gets to $100 then cashing it out would, on paper, give you a profit since $100 is more than $17 but for it to have hit that $100 mark the economy would probably be in such a condition that $100 cash isnt worth what $17 was was worth when you bought the silver. Or, put another way, Selling your $17 silver for $100 isn’t really a financial gain when a loaf of bread now costs 85$.
I grant you, inflation doesn’t factor into that figure exact. When I first started buying silver at $6, fifteen years later it was worth three times as much while inflation doubled. So my real price in gains was less. What I did was use my “unemployment insurance” money ( self employed ), which will only be needed for food ( no rent or transportation cost ). If I have to sell silver for food, I might still lose money, also ( the way food prices are headed back up soon enough ). But at that point, the cash savings would be worth crap, also. I look at the true cost of silver without Derivatives manipulation at a much higher cost due to Industrial Use Destruction as much closer to gold. I used the $100 as a minimum it will go up. All of which is to say I minimized the risk . And I still have SOME cash savings. Just 66% less than two months ago. I went from three years expenses in savings to one year. Still not bad, even if I never cash in silver.
Oh, I agree….inflation doesn’t factor into that figure. My point was that for silver (or gold for that matter) to jump to previously-unheard-of-levels in a short time would seem (to me, anyway) to indicate some sort of financial turmoil that would make your paper dollars worth less than they were. This is why I get a little annoyed when people talk about ‘investing’ in gold when that they really mean is ‘converting’ into gold. As I see it, the purpose of gold (and silver) isn’t to *make* money but rather to preserve the value of that money. If silver is $20 and I have a twenty dollar bill, I suspect that when silver hits $100 the $20 bill won’t buy as much as that formerly-$20 silver will. In other words, if I can buy a tank of gas now for $50 and I buy $50 worth of silver, down the road that $50 of silver will still buy me a tank of gas where the $50 in cash might only get me a gallon or two.
“Amen”. (Yes I DID maintain a prudent stock of PM’s till I lost them all in that terrible boating accident…)
Regards
Why is $100 silver at “unheard of levels”? It was $50 just a few years ago. It was $50 in 1980, several hundred inflation adjusted for today. That is my point. Derivatives manipulation has given us an unrealistic low price we think is normal. Even if all you do is return silver to the historic 16 to 1 ration with gold, silver should right now be almost $100. Believe me, I completely understand what you are saying about inflation. This is why I never had any intention of ever selling any silver. It was a vehicle to get savings THROUGH the collapse. This is just a short term strategy, for when silver is priced correctly, not when it goes crazy with inflation.
You have to admit, though, the $50 price in 1980 was very much not driven by economic turmoil as much as it was by a couple clever guys from Texas.
Yup, food prices will increase due to increased ‘shipping cost’, this will roll down hill for sure.
Transportation has been crashing for a couple months from a boom to almost bust with rates/demand tanking. This will only affect the fuel surcharge.
One of the most insightful things I took away from Ferfal’s book about the Argentinian currency collapse was that gold chain can be sold an inch at a time. You can bitch and moan about the need to sell granny’s necklace the whole time too. Ask your local gold buyer about buying some “broken gold” and put it in the
strategic reservebig pile.nick
Added- selling an inch of gold necklace is going to attract a LOT less attention than selling Kugeraands too. If you’ve got ONE gold coin, I’m pretty sure you’ve got a whole bag full somewhere. If you are selling the family jewels, you might be just as bad off as me.
Frankly, I never gave any thought to selling mere pieces of gold chain. Selling/trading Krugerrands and the like always seemed problematic to me. Gold will skyrocket in a crisis and make trading it even more troublesome. Yet, how do you trade for five gallons of gas with a Krugerrand if gold is worth only what it is today?
Cutting it into “pieces of eight” would still mean that you were a loser unless that gas is the last five gallons of gas in the world, or unless lives will be lost unless you obtain that gas.
Of course, even trading pieces of gold chain assumes that there is a system in place (that is, a person who, as an intermediary, can weigh the gold and accurately assess its weight, karat content, etc.) and this person may not be easy to find in a serious meltdown. On the other hand, almost everyone recognizes junk silver for what it is, actual US coinage made of silver. Transactions could take place anywhere and on the spot.
I have a limited amount of junk silver, and I will stick with it for use in “spicy times.”
Commander Zero, you nailed it when you said, “The difference isn’t financial, the difference is intentional.” I belong to an organization where we sometimes depend on individuals completing certain work. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, “I didn’t have time to do that.” What they mean is that they didn’t have time to do a certain thing after they did what they wanted to do MORE.
Sometimes, I hear, “I’ve already got other plans for the weekend.” Well, since the weekend dates have been set for months now, it is clear that the person made his plans without concern for them, and they hope that the listener doesn’t notice.
As a clear example of spending priorities, one my brothers stopped smoking for a few years back in the ’90s. He said that by the way he calculated it, he should have a few thousand additional dollars in his bank account by then yet, he didn’t.
Concerning those, in particular, who sat idly by and failed to obtain guns, magazines, and weapons over the last few years, many Californians dawdled during “Freedom Week” and failed to stock up on higher capacity rifle and pistol magazines. When the window for ordering magazines closed after a week, they used one excuse or another to explain their failure to act.
The obvious fact is that many of us spend money on the things that are most important to us–and then offer excuses later about the choices we made, the view being that a poor excuse is better than none. The rest of us simply have to recognize the poor excuse for what it is.
Agree completely. I told as many of my CA bretheren to but NOW during freedom week and many did. Thankfully I did and now have magazines for firearms i don’t have…. YET plus all those I ad preban years ago and rebuilt those GI mags with Brownells refurb kits.
Unfortunately for some of us, age restrictions have kept us from legally buying them until very recently as well. That is a difficult obstacle to get around.
I suppose its possible that some places have age restrictions on purchasing magazines, but I’m not familiar with any. Guns, sure…mags, not so much.
I bought my first AR 30rd magazine(didn’t own an AR) while still in High School around 1981 or 82. Even took it to school and showed my friends without any problems. I wouldn’t recommend taking one to school these days, I suspect an automatic suspension and a call to the cops would happen now!!!
Something to think about- the future. My house mouse loved her Mini 14, but to make it hit required a barrel strut, scope and bedding. Now weighing near 9 lbs, it just got too heavy for her age. So we sold it off for a 7 lb AR. Worked for a while but suddenly again we got older. Now my WASR was feeling mighty heavy for me and her AR ditto. A AR pistol worked out nicely for her while I sold the AK and took over her AR. The 10.5in barrel moved the effort back enough she can shoot it well. Now I saw a pattern here. Soon will purchase a either a 8in Ar pistol, perhaps in 300 BO, to compensate for the shorter barrel or one of the Keltec Sub2000 9mm Glock mag folding rifles. So not only stock up with what you use now, but also what you just might need in the future. Because it might not be there when you need it. Getting old sux swamp water.
While a shorter barrel might be nice, you lose the rifle velocity that is created through barrels longer than 10.5 inches. An 8in barrel is just a pistol shooting a rifle caliber at pistol caliber velocities.
While you are correct, what are the options? Using a Glock 19 9mm pistol at 50 yards or a 55gr soft point from a AR pistol? The AR still wins. We will do the best we can, with what we can manage to use. Both of us have major health problems so we don’t expect to last long anyway. But we don’t plan to go out with a whimper. I just wish we were back in 1970 at our peak. I forgot, planning for getting old buy cheap reading glasses in every strength. Maybe 3 or 4 pairs each. Without a optician around you can get by. Start lowest and work up when needed.