Tag Archives: theory

An example of the ‘loaner’ or ‘disposable’ gun

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Tam very nicely linked back to this post and opined in her blog:

But say you wind up with a friend or family member who suddenly finds themselves in a life circumstance where they realize that they need a better way to protect themselves than 911? A crazy ex, a stalker, a neighbor making threats, or just one of those violent criminal incidents that happens close enough to home to be a wake-up call…

If you’re the “gun person” in your family or social circle, this has probably happened to you at least once already. Lately, seeing the occasional sub-$300 fire sale prices on Smith & Wesson Shields and SD9s, I’ve more than once thought about buying one to set aside for just this sort of occasion. “In case of crisis, remove unfired-in-box gat from safe.”

And no sooner had that post hit the light of day than my vehicle decided that it’s alternator had had enough of this mortal coil (get it? ‘Coil’?) and shuffled off to wherever dead car parts go. As a result, my vehicle very inconveniently puttered to a stop. In front of the homeless shelter.

Joy.

So, I called a buddy of mine to come help me push it off the road because I really didn’t want to ask the whiskey-for-breakfast crowd for a hand. My mood was already several orders of magnitude into the red zone and it wouldn’t have taken much to release some pressure in an unprofessional manner. So my buddy shows up and asks how long till the tow truck arrives. “Two hours”, I reply. He looks over at the homeless milling around aimlessly, goes back to his truck, and pulls a beater Beretta 96 out from under the seat. “Wanna borrow this until the tow truck gets here?”, he asks. I thanked him and told him me and my G19 were just fine. But…here’s the big takeaway from that: because he had what amounted to a ‘disposable’ or ‘beater’ or ‘truck gun’ available he was able to offer it to someone else. And a scenario like that is precisely why we have extras, and extras on top of extras – because someday a friend, family member, or other person you care about might be in a bad position and in this way you can offer them assistance. And thats not just guns, guys…. that could be food, ammo, batteries, money, or any host of other things that, when you don’t have it and really need it, are really important.

This is a big distinction from charity. Charity is generalized giving out of some sense of moral or religious imperative or duty. I generally don’t suffer from this particular quality, so my generosity is a bit more selfish – I give to those that add a value to my life, or I give for the satisfaction I get from the act of giving. It may seem like that’s a difference with no distinction, but I see a distinction. I suppose the greatest distinction, for me, is that charity often comes across as an obligation and I am extremely opposed to obligations being forced upon me rather than they being voluntarily assumed.

On a side note, I had my Bag Of Tricks with me as well as my mountain bike sitting in the back of the vehicle so I could very easily have left the area and made it back to base with minimal inconvenience…if I was willing to just abandon the vehicle, which was not called for at that point.

Words have meanings

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Listening to late-night talk radio, especially some of the more…offbeat…programs (looking at you, Geo. Noory) can really mess with your head. On the one hand, the forecast is for economic depression or massive hyperinflation and if you don’t move your money out of currency and into metals you are doomed…doomed! And then there’s an upcoming global disaster that will lead to famine…unless you stock up on food now! But not before the powers that be decide to enact a scheme to repeal your second amendment rights….so get out here and buy guns and ammo!

I don’t know which is worse, the emotional whiplash or the financial whiplash.

I was having a discussion with a classmate today. He said that todays generation will be less successful than the previous one.  I said that without establishing a baseline of what ‘successful’ meant, the conversation was pointless. His grandfather fled the Nazis and got out of Europe with just the clothes on his bank and not a penny to his name. We both agreed that would probably, to him, qualify as ‘success’. The generation after that? Probably saw raising good kids and having a job as success. That led to the question – what did we think success was?

I can’t speak for anyone else but me….to me, success is safety and security. Having constructed a system , or series of systems, to minimize my exposure to risk and harm and having those systems in place and effective…thats success to me. What does that system look like? It looks like a life without debt, some marketable skills, a paid house, with cash in the bank, gold in the safe, guns on the wall, food in the pantry, fuel in the cans, heat in the winter, and good health. I would say I’m a success if I could stop what I’m doing right this second and not have to worry about any of my needs being met for a year.

It’s different for everybody, of course….folks with kids might say that success is raising your kids to adulthood and having them turn out to be fine adults. Or some folks (notably Gyno-Americans) might judge success by how their relationships with other people are. And, of course, a lot of folks figure success is measured by your bottom line.

I’m not saying any of that is true or not. I’m simply pointing out that when you say ‘success’ it’s pretty good odds that what you think of as ‘success’ may be different than someone (or everyone) else. Nothing wrong with that, though.

Speaking of words having meanings, we throw around terms like ‘collapse’ or ‘end of the world’ but we never really specify what constitutes that sort of thing. Here’s a very interesting piece on how we define ‘collapse’:

And that’s why I hate using the words “civil war” and “collapse”, because they’re not specific. Whenever I read the words “societal collapse” or “economic collapse”, I wonder: collapse to what level? 100% collapse? 50% collapse? (Even a 25% collapse in employment and living standards is going to cause significant problems.) One could argue that we’re witnessing a societal collapse right now — a collapse of established, normative sociopolitical behavior and attitudes. It might be more accurate and specific to say that we’ve entered into a period of societal decline, but it only goes to show just how vague the word “collapse” actually is.

RTWT, it’s quite interesting. Words have meanings, and when you talk to someone about something as important as preparedness it’s a good idea to make sure that you both know exactly what you mean when you say things like ‘collapse’.
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Fun ‘gotta share this’ .jpg for the day:

 

Article – Enough is enough: Tenants join landlord in Bay Area exodus

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SAN JOSE – Tony Hicks moved to San Jose in 1981, but he’s had enough.

Hicks told his 11 tenants he would soon place the three homes he owns on the market. He expected disappointment. Instead, most wanted to move with him to Colorado.

“It didn’t take them long,” Hicks said. “I was surprised.”

This article, ostensibly, is about high real estate prices in California and how it’s driving some people out of the state. Really, nothing in the article that is particularly interesting to people who are interested the sortsa things you and I follow.

But….

Read the article closely. Basically, this guy established relationships with his tenants, who became long-time tenants, and many of them are retired or highly mobile so they can really live anywhere. And…they’re packing up to move with him to a new out-of-state location to continue to rent from him in the new properties he’s going to buy/build.

So…do you see what happened here? This guy, totally by accident, is creating an actual community of like-minded individuals. I’m not saying they’re survivalists, but rather that he’s established these relationships, and gotten to be part of these peol[es lives (and vice versa), to the point that theyre willing to pack up and ‘keep the family together’.

We always think about communities and how they would be started… here’s an example of a guy who completely inadvertently created his own community. It’s rather interesting.

Methods to the madness

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Is Preparedness Category based, Linear or All Over The Place?
Such is the question asked by Ryan over at his blog. Succinctly, it is this:

Of the three approaches to establishing a level of preparedness – category based, linear based, or scattershot – which seems to be the way to go?

For me, it’s a balanced approach. My thinking has always been to imagine that I’m dropped naked, in the middle of a winter night, into an empty field. What do I need? And then I work it out from there. I’d want, immediately, a small amount of everything….rather than a huge amount of one thing and no supply of anything else.

Lots of people ‘go long’ in some way…they drop a couple grand on guns and get the sexy part of survivalism out of the way and then go to the mundane things like toilet paper and socks. There is some merit to that, but you leave yourself open to being caught short if you’re still working on that gun/ammo thing when some big event happens and you still haven’t gotten around to buying that water purifier.

Some folks go with a more ‘balanced’ approach and buy everything they need for, say, three days. Then they simply repeat this process over and over until they have their year (or whatever timeframe) supply. I rather like this approach.

And some just keep their eyes open an when they come across something that could be useful, they snag it. In the long run that might work, but it’s a great way to wind up sitting on a pallet of 500 MagLites and absolutely no batteries.

I’ve been doing some form of preparedness (or survivalism) for over 25 years. My experience has been that the most sensible way to do things is to get everything you need for ‘x’ amount of time, and then when you have that do it again…and again…and again. Once you’ve put your ‘weeks supply’ together, do it three more times…and now its a months supply. Do that twelve more times and it’s a years supply. That sort of thing. The alternative is that you shoot your wad and buy a years supply of food up front and get caught with only two weeks worth of toilet paper or gasoline.

The one argument I’ve come across for going ‘all in’ and buying as much of one thing as possible to the exclusion of other things you need (other than a spectacular sale) is when the thing you want may not be available in normal channels later. No one is trying to ban Ivory soap….but it’s entirely possible that in three weeks we’ll never have another ‘high capacity’ magazine available to us. And while gun stuff is the easy answer to ‘what might those soon-to-be-unavailable items be’, there’s other things too. Burner phones, cryptography software, electronic devices without ‘for your safety’ GPS tracking, etc, etc….all things you can have now but very possibly might be on the verboten list next year. If something you feel you need is possibly going to be unavailable later, then it makes sense to get it, in the quantity you want, while you can.

If you haven’t already got your supplies and gear socked away, and are still in the stages of acquisition, the best method…in my humble opinion….is the balanced approach. An increase across the board, on a regular basis, with occasional ‘spurts’ of increase in some categories as finances allow. I’d rather have six months of  food, fuel, power, clothes, medicines, and the like, rather than three years of food and one month of everything else. .

What you do, is of course, is your prerogative. For me, I try to raise the level of preparedness evenly across all categories if I can.