Article – What Venezuelan savers can teach everyone else

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ASK the chief investment officer of a fund-management firm how to spread your investments and you will be told to put so much in stocks, so much in bonds and something in hedge funds or private equity. Chances are that white-elephant buildings, eggs and long-life milk will not feature. But in Venezuela, where the inflation rate is in the tens of thousands, things that people elsewhere would shun for fear they will lose value have become stores of real wealth.

The old standard for guarding against hyperinflation has always been gold and, to a lesser degree, silver. But, as seen in many wartime economies, certain goods hold their value across board… most notably cigarettes, booze, and …ahem…’personal services’. There’s a handful of occupations that are, basically, recession- and depression-proof: food, medical, weapons, entertainment, and sex. Doesn’t matter if it’s a war or a depression – everyone wants to eat, everyone wants to live, everyone wants to protect themselves, everyone wants to forget, and everyone wants to get some action.

Of course it’s kinda hard to transport some of those goods in a convenient manner which is why we have a medium of exchange – gold.

About this point in the conversation the shortsighted jump in and say that if you can’t eat it or shoot it, it’s worthless. After all, they argue, if you were dropped in the middle of the Andes with a suitcase full of gold you’d starve/freeze/etc.

This is, of course, quite true. But it fails to take into account that economic disasters rarely happen overnight. They are usually a gradual-but-increasingly-steep slope. The gold gets you the things you need to survive that drop into the Andes. Somewhere between “normal” and “Mad Max” is where the gold come into play. When the local backpacking supply shop won’t accept currency, the gas stations won’t take plastic, and the gun stores won’t take a check….that’s where the metals come in handy.

But…thats my opinion. I hedge my bets….metals, ammo, fuel, food, etc.

Mossberg blues

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Sometimes a deal thats too good to be true…is.

Case in point, the Mossberg 590A1 I picked up. Took it to the range today. Loaded it up, brought it up to my shoulder, pumped the action and…..a shell popped out of the mag tube, missed the carrier, and landed at my feet. Hmmm.

Apparently, every time I worked the action, the shell lifeter would go down but no shell would be released into it by the magazine. You don’t have to be a genius to figure it’s something with the shell stop tab or shell interrupter.

First things is first…hit YouTube and get a disassembly video. Pulled the gun apart, cleaned everything, light oil, and back together.

Same problem.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. One of the cool things about having redundant backups is that rather than guess what part was giving me trouble, I could simply swap parts from a gun that I knew was functioning perfectly, put them in the trouble gun, and see if that made a difference. I pulled a Mossberg 500 outta storage, disassembled it, pulled out the stop and interrupter, exchanged them, and….joy. But because I had a similar model to swap parts from, I was able to swap parts to find what was the problem part. The alternative was to guess, replace several parts, or hand the thing over to a gunsmith.

A quick trip to Mossberg’s website got me several replacement parts for $30. That puts my basis on the 590A1 to about $165. Still ahead of the game. And, as a plus, I learned how to completely take the bloody thing apart. And I picked up some spare parts.

I’ll take the 590A1 to the range again later this week to confirm function, and when the replacement parts get here I’ll put them in the ‘donor’ 500, function test it, and put it away.

Moral of the story? A handful of 12 ga. dummy snap caps would have tuned me into the situation ALOT earlier.

Triple header

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I bought a bloody 590A1 today and am picking up the Glock tomorrow…why must these people go to the well so often????

:::Text message:::
“..” …Actually, lemme just screencap it:

I already have a Model 12. I bought one a few years back, had the barrel chopped down, and it makes for a handy takedown shotgun that just barely fits in my backpack. But…it’s an old design that features parts that havent been made since they lit Kennedys flame at Arlington. It’s not exactly a primary, secondary, or even tertiary choice for a shotgun. BUT the fact that it takes down is handy.. so I bought one.

This one, which is actually cheaper than the first one I bought, is in pristine condition except for a hairline crack in the stock and some freckling starting to form. 1914 manufacture and it is a strong 90%+. The crack and the slight freckling are all that I can find wrong with it. All the edges are sharp and it’s a gun that looks like it rolled right off the factory floor. Too nice for me to cut down. I’ll take it to the gun show this weekend and see if someone will gimme $300-$350 for it.

But…good grief…July has been a gun heavy month…Win 1200, Win 12, Mossberg 590A1, Ruger AR, Glock .357… I really went overboard this month.

And then it just lowballed from there…. Pt II

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Buy some AK mags so I can keep buying guns I dont need!

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:::Making the bed::::
Phone: !beep!
:::Text message:::
“Mossberg 590 12 ga with extended tube. extendable stock. interested?”

Dammit.

Why does this happen a) right after I get paid and b) when I have to be somewhere in 15 minutes?

Short version: someone bubbatized a 590A1 with some cheapo M4-style stock and a coat of spraypaint. But..for $135 I can just rattlecan the whole thing.

Need to contact the guys at Choate and see what they have for a replacement stock/forend.

And I was just recovering from the Ruger last week.

But…then it got worse. I somehow managed to say yes to a NIB Glock 32 for …. $300.

Double dammit.

I’ll keep the 590A1 for a stash gun, but the Glock is getting swapped out for the first Glock 9mm I can find.

On the bounce in class

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Reminder: AK mags

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Scenes from a classroom…….
Read the question carefully. Pay particular attention to the third part of the question. Think about the answer you’d give. As I was reading it, I was reminded of this scene from ‘Starship Troopers’:

The way she answers that question about what the city fathers of Hiroshima would think… that was pretty much the same answer I gave: an answer that ignored the question because the question was moot.

“Okay, question three, what costs are relevant in a decision of whether Bill should give up hunting?
:::crickets:::
“Anyone?”
:::raises hand:::
“Yes?”
Me in a clear, authoritative voice: “None of these costs are relevant. The only thing that’s relevant is whether Bill wants to hunt or not.”
“Exactly! Very good!”

I should also note that the original problem listed ‘whiskey’ as an expense. The teacher actually changed it to Diet Dr Pepper because she felt that encouraging alcohol consumption and hunting was a bad idea.

I was expecting that my answer would an unwelcome digression from the goal of the lesson, but there was no way I was going let go unchallenged the assumption that someone had the right to tell someone else how to live.

AK mags

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Hmmm…a quantity(!) of Tapco 20-rd AK mags in black and dark earth wound up in the back of my vehicle. I was going to stick a couple hundred back as an investment against Assault Weapons Ban II: The Next Generation……

If anyone wants some, they’d be in a 10-pack, postage paid, for $100. We’d do it just like we did the awesome 10/22 magazine deal from last year. You email me and tell me how many you want (increments of 10, please) and I’ll email you an invoice you can pay online. Shipping by Priority Mail and you’ll get tracking info when its on its way. Only have a couple dozen of the dark earth ones, so unless you’re one of the first purchasers your choice will be black or black.

The Magic Number

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NOTE: This post has been sitting in my “Drafts” folder for three years now. Figured it was time to finish it up.
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It seems like every time I mention to a friend that I picked up a gun they seem to respond with, “Don’t you already have a couple of those?”. Why, yes….yes I do. But, contrary to appearances, there really is a Magic Number that I am shooting for. It is the number at which I feel I will have enough to last me the rest of my life, which is, arguably, about 30 years.

The number is 10.

No, not ten guns total. Ten of each. Ten AR’s, ten 870’s, ten 10/22’s, ten 9mm Glocks, etc.

Its important to have goals.

By and large, when someone on a survivalist forum somewhere starts talking about ‘survival battery’ (whatever the heck that is), the result is something very similar to that. Throw in a ‘hunting’ or ‘precision’ rifle in there and you have pretty much 90% of the responses.

Many of us stockpile stuff on the PACE paradigm – Primary, Auxiliary, Contingency, Extra. I suppose I’ve added an R in there with Redundant.

That’s a total of five. Where does ten come from? Might be more than one person in the household, right? Hence, two times five is ten.

So thats it…once I have ten of what I feel is necessary, in regards to boomtoys, I can back the throttle down a bit in terms of acquisitions.

Those numbers, by the way, only represent firearms….my opinion on firearms accessories (like magazines) is a completely different number. And it’d be foolish to keep a buncha eggs in one basket like that so these things would get spread around a bit.

But thats the number.. five of each type of gun, per person, gives me enough room to keep one at the Beta Site, use one, loan one, sock one away somewhere else, etc, etc. I’m the fist to admit that comes out to a fairly large (though not by Montana standards) amount of guns but if I can afford them…why not? Plus, it’s really kind of an Alpha strategy…theyre just going to be more expensive later so if I just buy ’em all now I can be done with it and move resources elsewhere.

Is it a realistic number? Well, I think so. It gives me margin in case something gets stolen, broken,confiscated,lost, abandoned, etc. It’s rather foolish, I think, to believe that you can buy something and expect to keep possession of it, and have it in good working order, for 30 years. Sure, someone may have grandads Win 94 thats been in the family for 80 years but much of that 80 years it was just sitting in his closet, waiting for the one week every year that he hunted. And no one was trying to ban it.

This ‘Magic Number’ theory extends to non-gun items as well…the number may be different, but there’s still that goal-orientation. How many extra boots, socks, rolls of TP, etc, etc…..that sort of thing. (For example, 210 is the magic number for TP [ 30/package x 7])

Tappan, in his classic tome ‘Survival Guns’, advocated a mixture of guns that eventually added up to about 40 different handguns, rifles and shotguns. I remember thinking it was excessive at the time. Tappan differentiated between ‘working guns’ and survival/defensive guns. I don’t make such a distinction. The End Of The World stuff gets the layers and layers of redundancy…the Walking Through The Woods stuff can be much more freestyle.

Anyway, that’s the plan – ten each of the important thundertoys. Keep ’em identical, scatter ’em around, keep tabs on them, and hopefully thirty years from now I’ll just hand ’em off to someone I like.

ETA: I should also mention ten is MY Magic Number. You may have your own. Or you may have none at all. But, for me, I’m going with ten…you pick whatever number you think works for you. You go do your own thing, man.

It never stops

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In, of all places, the bloody shower….

:::ring:::
:::ring:::
:::ring:::
::rii…”What!?”

“Want a Rugger 556?”
“How much?”
“[price]”
“Dammit.”

I had about fifteen minutes before I had to be somewhere but that was enough time to go to the bank, grab cash, head to the store, and literally walk in the door, hand the guy the money, say “thanks”, grab the box, and walk out. Total time on target: less than 60 seconds.[1]

So, yeah, this happened:

But for $450 it’d be pretty hard to pass up. I’ll function fire it this weekend and then put it back in the box and probably stick it in the rafters or something as a beyond-tertiary backup AR.

The Ruger 556 has a slight ‘bargain’ feel to it with it’s milled front sight tower, but I’d take it over a Palmetto, Delton, Core, or other lower-end AR for the same money. And, yes, that’s green cerakote finish..Model #8504.

 

1 = Yes, there was no paperwork on this transaction. He simply moves it from his license to my license so there’s no real paperwork like a 4473 or anything for me to deal with. I’ll log it into my my book and then write a 4473 to get it off my books to me as a personal gun.

Tourniquets

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Man, I remember years ago when tourniquets were considered some ghastly relic of bygone days and that using one was pretty much a one-way trip to having to buy only one shoe or one glove for the rest of your life.

Tourniquet Use Should Be One of Your Basic First Aid Skills

Now they’ve come into their own, and utilized current technologies, to become kinda de rigueur for ‘serious’ first aid kits.

And, in typical fashion, the Chinese have wound up making low-quality knockoffs of the higher-end stuff.

  • https://www.cbsnews.com/news/counterfeit-tourniquets-could-cause-catastrophic-consequences/
  • https://medium.com/homeland-security/a-fake-tourniquet-could-cost-your-life-e095821c61f0
  • https://www.jems.com/articles/2015/08/counterfeit-tourniquets-found-in-new-hampshire.html?c=1
  • http://soldiersystems.net/2017/03/27/caveat-emptor-counterfeit-tourniquets-remain-an-issue/

Yeah, its kinda-sorta old news, but it’s worth a reminder since, periodically, we all update our various FAK’s or create new ones and the last thing you want is critical gear like that failing because you tried to save ten bucks by buying it from a no-name seller on Amazon or Ebay. I like saving money as much as the next guy, but for stuff that’s going to be keeping me somewhat alive  I’ll spend the extra money and order straight from the manufacturer.

Outage

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I was talking to a guy from New Zealand today and he pointed out that Britain’s largest export is independence days…. they’ve created something like 90 of them. I was amused.

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Had some good rain the other day. For some reason my part of town lost power and I had to haul out the generator. Second time in the last three years I’ve actually needed the thing for a genuine event. Function? Worked great. Had internet and television. The battery backup for the security cams worked fine as well, although I need to disable that annoying warning beep that keep playing the whole time…as if I’m not going to notice that the power is off.

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It was about this time last year we had the ‘big” earthquake. Definitely a reminder that I might need to do some special disaster-specific preps like tying down that other hot water heater.

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Hope you all had a good Independence Day and got to the range.