Someday, man…. someday, i’m going to buy a chunk of nowhere, bushwhack in there with a four-wheeler pulling a small cement mixer, shuttle in a some lumber and a whole lotta bags of concrete, and build my happy little hideyhole. I just hope its sooner rather than later, before Im too old.

Vendors expecting a Hillary buying panic cranked up production and….now have a lot of inventory they need to convert to cash. Thats why we see those sub-$400 AR’s and $30 stripped lowers recently advertised.

One of my vendors just dumped a bunch of Butler Creek 10/22 Hot Lips  25-rd mags in my lap. If anyone wants some, theyre $104/12 ($8.66 Ea.), inc. shipping. Any interest or questions, hit me up in email, not comments… zero (a t) commanderzero.com

One of…’several’ (ahem!)..cases of mags that are looking for new homes.

I pretty much predicted this would happen.

“Plainly interpreted, the Montana Legislature has prohibited all forms of local government from exercising any regulatory power over the purchase, sale or transfer of firearms,” wrote Fox, who more than a year before the ordinance was passed warned it “likely violates our constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

The mandated expansion of background checks — to include virtually all gun transfers including private sales — was proposed in Montana’s second-largest city in 2015. It drew almost immediate fire from critics including gun rights groups and two out of three of Montana’s congressional delegates, but, with the support of gun control advocates, passed last September in an 8-4 vote.

Our morbidly obese, and terminally leftist, alcoholic mayor somehow decided that this was a ting that needed to be done. The biggest and oldest gun show in the state happens here every summer and it would have been a tremendous problem if this stupid thing to stand.

Experience is a harsh instructor, but some will learn at the hands of no other.

Ah, the Meat Tray. How I love thee….it’s like a little menagerie of different animals. Well, different dead, cleaned, and butchered animals. Todays flavors: chicken, bacon, beef, and pork. Something for everyone, a carne tonight!

But, as much as we’d like it to be otherwise, meat has to be packaged properly if it’s gonna go take the cryo-nap. Freezer burn (which, really, is more a form of desiccation and dehydration [mummification, actually]) is reduced when you vacuum seal these morsels, so…let’s do that:

And then half goes into the deep freezer as a hedge against the uncertain future, and the other half goes in the upstairs freezer for eventual ‘normal’ use. Does this sort of thing pay off? Well, years back I wound up with around 70# of ground beef at $1.49/#… that went into the deep freeze and by the time it was finally all consumed, that same ground beef was selling for 2.99/#. I go into my locl grocery store and I am aghast to see it selling for around four bucks these days. So, yes, if you can buy it cheap and stack it deep you’re going to come out ahead in the long run.

School starts up again this week, so I need to start doing breakfast. Since I’m incredibly lazy, I want something easy and fast. Cold pizza is my #1 choice, but who can afford that? I figured I’d just have instant oatmeal. Turns out, my pantry was devoid of the stuff. Musta used it all up last semester. Hmm. Well, let’s rotate some out of storage.

Sometime around 2006 I ran into a really nice sale on instant oatmeal.* As I recall it was a package of ten for a buck. Hey, for brand-name instant oatmeal, why not? So I picked up a bunch. As I’m sure you are familiar with, instant oatmeal is usually packaged in paper pouches – not the best sort of thing for long-term storage. As always, I turned to my trusty vacuum sealer. Sealed up ten pouches to a bag, sealed ’em up in a bucket, and tucked ’em away. Until today. Let’s see what we got.

Inspection tag says this was last inspected in 2011. I need to be a tad more diligent about this sort of thing. Every other year should be good. Surface of the bucket is a bit dusty, but that’s to be expected.

Spin off the Gamma Seal lid and the contents are clean and dry…as expected.

A dozen sealed ‘bricks’ of packages of instant oatmeal. Awaiting the day a hot breakfast is needed before a full day of hanging looters, manning barricades, killing zombies, and rescuing desperate-but-grateful coeds from cannibals.

The individual pouches kept their vacuum and everything appears good. No food smells, no insects, no nothin’.

Everything seems good to go. Contents of pouches aren’t caked together from moisture or anything else. Chalk up another win to the vacuum sealer.

Add some boiling water and…tastes just fine. Without a laboratory I can’t tell what nutritional value (if any) might be, but I can tell you that calorically it’s all there. Some canned/dehydrated fruit, powdered orange drink, instant hash browns, powdered scrambled eggs, maybe a freeze-dried pork chop and you’ve got a pretty decent breakfast after the apocalypse.

This vaccum-seal and bucket combo is also how I store 4# bags of sugar and salt. Sugar, especially, works well in this. The vacuum sealing keeps all the moisture out so your bag of salt or sugar doesn’t become a somewhat useless hard brick…and it keeps the bugs out as well.

I’m always gratified when I get to put food-storage theory to the test…empirical data for the win.

* = Not to toot my own horn, but it occurs to me this is the first time I’ve ever seen a blog post anywhere where a person had a post about something they did ten years ago, and then they have the original post from that thing they did ten years ago. Not a lot of blogs out there have the longevity to pull that stunt.

Part of a sweeping package of reforms pushed by Democrats in 2016, the regulations clamped down on a gun industry innovation, known as the bullet button, that flouted an earlier statute meant to regulate rifles with detachable, quickly reloadable ammunition magazines. Under the revised rules, Californians in possession of assault weapons that incorporate a bullet button and certain other features have until the end of this year to register them with the state, a step that some gun owners are loathe to take. Stores like SoCal can’t sell new bullet button-equipped guns, and don’t yet have an alternative that they can be sure will comply with the enhanced restrictions.

But all that could soon change. Just as they did the last time California updated its longstanding assault weapons law, enterprising gunsmiths are ready with new products that could render the tighter restrictions largely moot.

I have a buddy who, finally, left California for the freedom of the mountains of Montana. He said that the first thing he did after he crossed the border out of the state was to pull over, get his FAL outta the case, and replace the ‘bullet button’ with the normal magazine release.

We always ask California gun owners why they don’t just get out of that place and join the rest of us here in the land of 30-rd magazines and flash suppressors. Usually, the answer is either “My wife won’t move, she has family here” (or a similar family-related theme) or they just can’t change careers right now. I have to respect that, after all, a man has obligations and duties that sometimes keep him from doing what he wants.

I feel bad for those California gunnies, though, and I admire the folks who brainstorm rule-beater advancements in technology to try to make the most of a bad situation.

But…nothing makes me appreciate where I live more than reading those outrageous California regs and snuggling my HK91.

Finally got around to swapping the old incandescent light bulbs out for new LED ones. What’s interesting is that the LED bulbs had a ‘soft indoor’ version and a ‘outdoor light’ version. These had nothing to do with venue, but rather color or ‘warmth’. For example, if you look at most of the regular light bulbs in your house, they throw a yellowish light. As a result everything you see in your house has a bit of that color tinge in it..nothing in your house is the ‘real’ color. I swapped out some of the bulbs for the ‘outdoor light’ bulbs and discovered that what they mean by ‘outdoor light’ is that, like natural light outside, it isn’t as tinged with other color. In other words, you put these bulbs in your household fixtures and you get to see what color your furniture, paint and carpet really is. Eye opening.

I replaced the bulbs because I was out of regular bulbs and had to go to Costco. LED bulbs provide the same light at about 1/10th the power usage so that’s kind of nice. The major appeal is the stupid things are supposed to last orders of magnitude longer than incandescent bulbs…and don’t bulbs always crap out at the worst times? So…LED upgrades.

As I was swapping bulbs, I passed a few of the battery operated ‘puck lights’ that are in the basement for use in power failures. They’re little LED lights that run on AAA-batts. I keep them mounted to the ceiling studs next to the regular lights. As I was swapping bulbs I figured I’d test out the lights. And…this:

As is typical when this sort of thing happens, you’ve got a 50/50 chance of the device being destroyed. In this case, a little cleaning with a wire brush and some fresh batts set things in the right direction. This is why, broadly, I try not to store things with batteries in them. I haven’t heard of this sort of thing happening with lithium batts, like CR123 or lithium AA’s, but I suppose it may happen..I just haven’t experienced it yet.

Moral of the story: those battery devices (like flashlights and radios) should probably get a six-month check to avoid this sorta thing. Put it on the same schedule as smoke detector battery changing – Daylight Savings Time changeover day.

You had me at “America First”.

I’ve been doing this for about 15 years now, which makes me one of the longest-lived and most under-read blogs on the interwebs when it comes to the topic of preparedness. The secret to that longevity? Well…not really having any other hobbies.

But…no doubt you have some ideas you want to spray around the internet and get all the accolades, babes, endorsement deals, and big bucks that come with blogging, right? Any yahoo can string a couple sentences together and develop a readership, right? I mean, if that goofball in Montana (me) can do it, how hard can it be???

Ok, if you want to get into blogging, this one is for you.

It’s really simple. You need:

• A domain name
• A host for that domain
• A blogging platform
• An email account
• PayPal account (optional)
• Backup software (optional, but a really smart idea)

Domain name – Something short and catchy. You’ll be surprised at how many names that you think no one would have thought of are actually already taken. Pretty much anything with ‘survival’ in it probably already has someone using it. Whatever you pick, make sure you like it…you may (or may not) be using it for a long time. And the shorter names are easier to remember and easier for people to type. “Holycrapwereallgonnadieinanuclearapocalypse.com” is, probably, still available. And it’s probably still available for a reason – who the heck wants to type all that? Look at some of your favorite blogs and see how they dealt with the name issue.

Hosting – there’s a handful of ways to go. Personally, I went with Yahoo for a number of years and it worked out well. Then they did some changes and things went screwy for a while. I had heard good things about Bluehost and I went with them. So far, been pretty pleased with them. I recommend them, although I’m sure there are other hosts that are just as good. I can only tell you about what I’ve done. Wherever you go, though, try to have the same outfit do the domain registration, hosting, and email.

Blogging platform – the two biggies out there seem to be Blogger and WordPress. I really like WP for all the ways you can modify it, the third-party support is tremendous, and many hosts are already set up on the back-end to support it. When I was shopping for hosts one of the things that appealed to me about Bluehost was that they had WP already installed. It was about as close to -click-n-play as it could be. You literally can be up and blogging in minutes.

Email account – Again, I wanted all my eggs in one basket..hosting, email, domain registration, etc, all done through the same company…this makes a lot of stuff seamless. If you already have a cool domain name registered elsewhere you can usually ‘port it over.

Payapl account – if you’re going to pass the hat around, or sell an item or two on your blog, you’ll want a PayPal account. Get it AFTER you get your domain and mail set up…that way all that annoying registration nonsense goes to the blog email address.

Backups – Dude, we’ve heard it all of our lives – backup your software. There is nothing more frustrating than watching years of posts vanish in a server migration or somesuch. I use Updraft, and I paid for the upgraded version. It backs everything up a couple times a week and dumps it to Dropbox (or wherever you want it..email, Google, wherever). It is absolutely worth the money. Bluehost offers backups as well and if you’re the suspenders-and-a-belt type, you’ll want to take advantage of that as well.

That’s the basics. After that, the rest is up to you. Maybe you want to monetize things with an Amazon Affiliate account. Or you want to be subscription only. Or you just want a place to rant and rave. Whatever. But once you’ve got everything set up, it’s time to get people through the front door. Do not promote your blog by spamming message boards or other blogs. I had some loser do that a few weeks ago…he posted worthless comments to dozens of posts and used his comments as a platform to link to his page. That is extremely bad form in the blogosphere. Go to some blogs that have a list of other blogs and ask to be added to that list. And then make some actually good, quality, readable posts. Blogging is a great example of the free market – put out a good product and you’ll get rewarded, or a bad product and you’ll be quickly forgotten. You want to make the kind of posts that someone will read and send an email to a buddy saying “Hey, check out this blog.” Or, better yet, you want something that a better-read blog will link to. I link to other poeople’s blogs from time to time and they link to mine. (And, theres no two ways around it, if you can get ,Rawles to link to you..well…thats your fifteen minutes of fame and your chance to shine.)

All of this, by the by, also applies to any other type of blogging….gunblogging, in particular. But whatever you decide to do try to stick it out….it’s easy to start off strong and post every day and then slack off and the next thing you know your’re posting every other month. I’ve watched several blogs I liked suddenly stop posting and remain static. Or, worse, come back as 404 or ‘this domain for sale’.

Oh..and don’t be a dick.

Happy blogging.

ETA: Blogs I check daily:

• View From The Porch
• Self Sufficient Mountain Living.
• SurvivalBlog.com
• Total Survivalist Blog
• Troopers Gal | The Life and Times of A Sergeant’s Wife
• Sparks31
• brushbeater – “once more unto the breach, dear friends…”

Oh merciful Crom, the irony is so hard….

Colin Waugh bought a shotgun four weeks before November’s election.

An unapologetic liberal, he was no fan of firearms. He had never owned one before. But Waugh, a 31-year-old from Independence, Missouri, couldn’t shake his fears of a Donald Trump presidency — and all of the chaos it could bring. He imagined hate crimes and violence waged by extremists emboldened by the Republican nominee’s brash, divisive rhetoric. He pictured state-sanctioned roundups of Muslims, gays, and outspoken critics.

“I kept asking myself, ‘Do I want to live under tyranny?’” said Waugh, who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and later backed Hillary Clinton. “The answer was absolutely not.”

With Trump now days away from assuming the White House, Waugh’s preparing for the worst. He’s made “bug-out bags” stuffed with ammo, energy bars, and assorted survival gear for his wife and their three cats. He’s begun stowing water and browsing real estate listings in Gunnison County, Colorado, which he’s determined to be a “liberal safe-haven.” Last month, Waugh added a 9mm handgun to his arsenal.

Ok, help me out here….a guy gets elected president, and a percentage of the population reacts by buying guns, food, and cabins in the woods. If they’re conservatives they are deplorable bitter clingers, but if they’re lefties they’re just sensible? Is that how that works?