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

The evil genius at Allied Armament has this to say:

“We just released new web pricing today. NEW MSRP is (hold your breath) $262 ! Now affordable to everyone.”

This brings the price of their 50-rd drum down to about the same level as a Betamag and removes my one and only reservation about the mag.  When they make this thing for the FAL and AR-10 these guys will have a license to print money. Especially if the quality and function are as good as the one I got to try.

EDIT: Whoops, looks like they have a .308 AR drum available. Very cool!

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

I received an order from the folks at Mountain House last week. They’ve had some menu changes for 2010 with the addition of a couple new flavors in the pouches and the retirement of a couple others. In the somewhat more germane  #10 cans there have been no changes. Im the kind of guy who doesn’t mind eating the same thing over and over if it’s something I like so I have some pretty strong preferences. If you find yourself in a position to purchase some #10 cans of the Mountain House, I recommend the Spaghetti, Chicken w/ Rice, Chicken Teriyaki and Lasagna. The other flavors are okay, but those four are my favorites. Whats nice is that those flavors are also available in the pouches as well as the cans, so a fella can simply buy a pouch to try for a couple bucks before dropping the larger coin for the #10 cans.

Although the freeze-drieds are the ultimate in long-term storage (although some would deride them as ‘yuppie survival food’ where ‘yuppie’ is code for ‘makes more money than me’) they really are mostly a luxury. They are, however, an excellent ‘force multiplier’ to help you make the most out of your other food storage. What I mean by that is that the freeze drieds enable me to do more versatile things with the non-FD storage food. Most of us stock up on canned goods (vegetables, fruits, etc) and bulk dry foods (rice, pasta, wheat, corn, etc)  which will certainly fill your belly but can be a little challenging to work with in terms of coming up with something appetizing and unique. The freezedrieds give more flexibility with the meat and egg selections, two staples that are notoriously tough to store long term. For example: Canned tomatoes, bulk pasta, freezedried chicken, dried onions, canned mushrooms, dried garlic, assorted spices, some olive oil and –presto- chicken cacciatore. Or, FD shrimp, canned tomatoes, canned peppers, hot sauce, dried onions, spices, steamed rice and you’ve got shrimp creole. (Come to think of it, Mountain House used to make a very good shrimp creole..I wish it was still offered.) The FD eggs alone are worthy of inclusion just on their amazing versatility – omlettes, frittatas, baked goods, scrambled eggs, and the like are all possible with eggs. The laternative, of course, would be to have chickens and while that’s becoming more and more popular these days chickens aren’t exactly long-term storable.

Still, the bulk of our food storage is non-FD. We’ve a good supply of canned and jarred food, as well as many cases of self-canned staples from the LDS cannery. In addition, we also keep a pretty healthy amount of regular day-to-day use foodstuffs on hand – instant potatoes, stuffing mix, bread crumbs, oatmeal, salt, sugar, seasoned rices, seasoning mixes, etc, etc. On top of that theres the bulk storage of wheat, pasta, rice, and corn. A huge mountain of stored food is a lovely thing to behold, lemme tell ya.

The apocalypse is going to be many things, but it isn’t going to be rice and beans every day for months on end…not if I have any say in it.

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I picked up a few of the Korean contract Glock mags the other day. I am a notorious magazine snob and I have yet to meet a non OEM Glock mag that I approve of. However, the Korean mags are getting overwhelmingly positive reviews so I thought it might be worth trying them out. I’ll probably use them as range mags and keep the factory mags for ‘serious use’ but it’ll be interesting to give these things a workout. Theyre about 1/3 the cost of the factory mag so if they turn out to be reliable there may be a group purchase down the line.

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The more I try to follow the news about the economy, the more I am convinced that if we are in a recovery (which Im not really sure we are) it is, indeed, what they are terming a ‘jobless recovery’.  Businesses are making do with the remaining employees they have and are not jumping to hire any new ones. That’s just good financial sense if youre not sure where your market and sales are going. On the other hand, labor is probably pretty cheap now so it would be a good time to trim the deadwood and bring in better talented/skilled labor. Regardless, I am still pessimistic on the economic outlook. Theres a lot of cool stuff on the market right now at bargain prices as people try to keep their businesses afloat so if you have money its an excellent time to buy, but all I can think is that we should be holding on to whatever we have with both hands because we have no idea if things are going to get worse before they get better. As I told someone the other day, the times I have regretted spending money far outnumber the times I have regretted not spending money…so if there is a recovery going on, Im afraid theyre going to have to rely on someone else to spend money on it.

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

Someone, somewhere printed a statistic many years ago that said that the average gunfight was settled in something like 1.7 rounds fired or somesuch. I’m guessing ‘settled’ means that one participant was incapacitated enough that the fight was over. Its an interesting statistic and if it is to be believed then we could all hang up our double-stack magazines and go back to carrying revolvers. (although some of us out there never departed from wheelguns, but thats another post….) But the funny thing about statistics is that they don’t tell the whole story. (Or, as someone said, statistics are like bikinis…what they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital.)  Those numbers came from somewhere, mostly from a lot of guys who finished the incident with one round fired but there were at least a few who dumped a whole lot more to blow the curve for the rest of the class.

Its generally accepted that, outside of some sort of nineteenth century bandito episode, the most amount of ammo expended by a single citizen in self-defense was 105 rounds expended by the awesomely armed Harry Beckwith, a Florida gun dealer, who responded to the attempted burglary of his store with a shotgun, AR, submachinegun and pistol. The bad guys, naturally, didn’t have a very good time of it and one of them had a terminally  bad time. (As an aside, I actually got to visit Mr. Beckwith’s store about ten years ago and the bullet holes to the building from his adventures were plainly visible and unaltered. Sort of a symbolic ‘beware of owner’ sign for those who might not understand the written language.)

So, somewhere between the statistical 1.7 (or whatever it is) and the 105 rounds of Beckwiths Bullet Party is where real world shootings will land.

The first rule of a gunfight, they say, is to bring a gun. Sound advice. The second rule, Im told, is to bring lots of friends with guns. Personally, I think the first rule of a gunfight is to not get into one but I understand the sentiment involved. If there were a third rule it would probably be something like ‘bring enough ammo’.

How much ammo to bring and how to carry it? My Glock and two spare magazines gives me about 50 rounds of ammo…. I think that for just about any event short of the end of the world thats going to be plenty. However, I usually don’t even carry that much. Nine times out ten I just take the 17 rounds that are in the gun and leave it at that. I do keep two extra magazines in my bag, but I don’t always carry that around with me. If I do feel the need to carry a spare magazine I usually just shove one in my jeans pocket. My goal, after all, when the shooting starts isn’t to run towards it…my goal is to get away from it.

I usually just stick a spare magazine in the back pocket on my weak side. I do face the magazine in a particular direction so that when I grab it I don’t have to change its presentation to the gun. I very seldom actually use a spare magazine carrier for my pistols because I don’t find them as convenient as just sticking a spare mag in my pocket. When I leave the house I really don’t feel like having to stop to thread another piece of gunleather onto my belt. On the other hand, there have been days when, for whatever reason, I’ve been extra cautious and carried a couple spare magazines. For everyday type of use I like open top magazine carriers that hold the magazines in by friction. Usually theres a screw to adjust the tension that holds the magazine in the pouch. In shooting competitions the retention of a holster was sometimes tested by having the shooter do a somersault or two while wearing his gun…if the gun fell from the holster then the retention wasn’t up to snuff. If youre limber and feel like rolling around in the dirt, have at it. I usually tighten things up so that the mags don’t fall out if I bend over or run but not so tight that theres any hesitation or hangup when I go to yank them from the pouch. There are plenty of leather and kydex mag pouches out there and its really personal preference. I like leather for purely aesthetic reasons but I acknowledge that the kydex or carbon fiber pouches (and holsters) are probably superior products for abuse and modularity. For leather, I almost always go with Galco or DeSantis, in second place, Bianchi.

It is interesting to note that the local police department (and probably many others) carries their stuff in a similar manner – an open-top magazine pouch with mags held in by an adjustable tension screw. They normally carry two spares so theyre, like me, carrying around 50 rounds of ammo. You might draw the conclusion that the consensus is that 50 rounds is plenty to be carrying around on your person for most times.

For when Im afield hunting or fishing it’s a slightly different story. If you drop a magazine at WalMart youre going to notice and pick it up. Drop a magazine in the boonies and the odds are pretty good you wont even notice until you get home. When out in the sticks I usually go with a cordura or nylon magazine pouch with a flap closure. Just about every manufacturer makes one and the differences between them can be pretty niggling. I usually go with a double magazine pouch when Im tromping around the woods. The only things I have ever used a pistol for while in the sticks has been dispatching wounded deer and shooting targets of opportunity. However, you never know whats going to happen once you’re out where the buses don’t run so why not err on the side of caution?

Rifle magazines are an entirely different story. Obviously, theyre bigger than pistol mags and very seldom is concealing them a consideration. I do have a buttstock magazine pouch on the AR and it’s pretty handy. If Im at the range and just plinking I’ll usually just stuff a spare mag into my back pocket and call it good. For gopher hunting or spending the day afield the GI 3-magazine pouch seems to be only a fair choice. While theyre cheap and ubiquitous I find that they just aren’t terribly convenient. But, lets say it’s the day after some Katrina-esque episode and its time to become mobile, then what? The classic quick-magazine-change trick has been to ‘jungle clip’ a couple magazines together … two magazines taped or otherwise fastened together  so that you pull the empty mag, flip it around, and you wind up with a loaded mag in the gun. Only problem is that you wind up with twice as much stress on your magazine release as you would normally have and while this may not make a difference in the short term, it seems like an invitiation to problems later on. Going prone with such a rig is also not without issues…feed lips and cartridges jammed into the ground or concrete are feed problems in the making. I would think one way to examine the options for carrying extra rifle magazines is to see what guys in Afghanistan and Iraq are doing. It appears that most of them are carrying their spare magazines on their vest in MOLLE magazine pouches. Chest rigs and vests seem to be the rage these days and they certainly do give plenty of options for carrying mags and gear…but, for some reason, I prefer the belt mounted magazine carriers. (Although I do have a few ‘tactical’ vests…but if things get to the point where youre running around in a piece of kit like that things must truly have gotten interesting.) Any MOLLE mag pouch will slide onto pretty much any belt. I rather like the pouches that have an eleastic loop to hold the magazines in place. Two or three double-mag pouches seem to be the right amount. Of course, in a worst case scenario you cant really have too many magazines and theres at least one manufacturer who makes a MOLLE bandoleer..you’d look like some sort of ballistic nylon Pancho Villa with a string of magazines running across your torso. I’d go with a couple double mag pouches on the belt (preferably so Im not laying on top of them) and then a shoulder bag or pack with a half dozen (or more) extras.

Shotgun ammo is a major pain in the rear to carry around. It’s bulky, heavy and not the least bit compact. I like the SideSaddle shotgun-mounted ammo carriers for a fast five or six extra shells. If I was running around with a shotgun as my primary longarm in some sort of crisis I’d probably go with a ‘dump pouch’ or similar waist-carried bag carrying loose shells. Bandoleers of shotgun shells look cool but theyre a bit impractical.

For those days when I’m feeling a bit ‘old school’ and am carrying a revolver, I’ll carry a speedloader or two. I like the SafariLand ones but theres nothing wrong with the classic HKS speedloaders. I also like the Bianchi Speedstrips for their convenience and flat profile in the pocket. The only drawback to the Bianchi product is that its only available for .38/.357. However, another company has started making them in other calibers and picked up the slack.

So that’s the ‘how’ but what about the ‘how much’? The amount of ammo you carry is entirely up to your personal preference and what you perceive to be the seriousness of your situation. On the average day-to-day  basis I usually just go with the one magazine in the Glock and a couple spares in my bag. When Im tooling around in the sticks I always take two reloads worth of ammo, whether its for the auto or the revolver. If Im carrying something small like my little S&W snubbie, then I’ll go with just an extra five rounds on a speedstrip. However, keep in mind, I live in a fairly low-crime, low-incident environ in western Montana. If I lived in someplace like NYC or Houston  I’d probably never leave the house without at least two reloads.

One last thought, it is never a bad idea to stash a couple spare reloads (either mags, speedloaders or even just a box of 50 cartridges) at places where you spend a lot of time…perhaps in the desk drawer at work, and maybe in the glove box of the car. These things have a habit of being something that when you need them you’ll wish you had as many as possible, so having a couple extras stashed away can be pretty handy.

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

It appears the Feds are going to screw with the currency….again.

Every time they do one of these changes to the money, I lose more faith in it. Fer cryin’ out loud, they turned the quarter into a billboard for whatever ‘commemorative’ cause strikes their fancy. Then theres the changes to the paper money. Sure, I know it isnt backed by anything but money should be like the nuns at Catholic school – eternal, unchanging, unwavering. The money your grandparents carried around in their pockets should look like the money youre carrying in yours. To redesign it or ‘update’ its look every ten years is just counterproductive.

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Speaking of productive, heres a link of possible use.  Fascinating link to a .pdf of the Glock G3 armorers manual. A bit more detailed than you might have a need for, but a very interesting read. If you have an HK91 or a PTR-91, this is an interesting companion to the regular manual. Use it to help figure out what spare parts you want from robertrtg.com and how to use ‘em. Just the section on the official HK armorers tools is enough to justify the disk space

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

Coming to a street near you?

“At least three people have been killed in the Greek capital as protesters set fire to a bank during a general strike over planned austerity measures.”

No doubt there will be people who cheer and say the ‘banksters’ are getting what they deserve and that it should be a warning to the ‘greedy bankers’ in this country. I’m reminded how everyone seems to hate lawyers but the minute they slip on someones sidewalk or the get arrested for DUI they suddenly see lawyers as wonderful people. Sure, Greece’s situation has some parallels to the American situation  but there are some big differences. Same thing…everyone hates bankers until they want to buy a house or a car.

Some moron scrubbing toilets for $11 an hour lies on a mortgage application and gets the bank to loan him $300k on a house, he discovers he can’t resell it in 6 months and make a cool $50k on the deal, lets the house go into foreclosure, gets sued for the money and this is somehow the banks fault?

Anyway, my point is that in this country (usually) protests tend to be pretty non-lethal. Yesterday was the anniversary of the Kent State shootings that left four college kids dead. The outrage was palpable and these folks are lionized as victims of the turbulent times they lived in. On the other hand, its worth noting that through bombings, shootings, and other methods the various protest groups in the 60’s killed a lot more people in this country than the Guard at Kent State did.

I suppose, though, that in this country we have plenty of non-lethal protests because when they do turn violent or lethal they are quickly renamed ‘riots’.

I’m all for people protesting. If youre unhappy with something it is your right to stand on a street corner and yell your lungs out about it to passerby. Good on ya mate. But the minute you spraypaint a building, break a window or throw paint on someone you’ve stepped out of your constitutionally-granted free speech bubble and are now fair game for a knuckle sammich.

They say our economy is improving but I dont see it. Some folks will be looking for someone to blame…’banksters’, ‘big [pharma/oil/brother/sister]‘ , ‘corporate America’ or anyone else that they think is somehow responsible. At first it’ll be small incidents here and there but theres no guarantee that some bunch of black-clad ‘anarchists’ (usually people who will have a change of heart quite quickly about anarchy when they discover that in their dreamy anarchistic utopia they’ll probably get their asses kicked pretty regularly) won’t start setting fire to McDonalds and Starbucks thinking that it somehow will promote ’social justice’.

Interesting times we live in. This is why I  stopped leaving the house without a gun quite a while ago.

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

From the “You Couldnt Make This Up If You Tried” Department….

Wanna take a guess where I was the last few days? I was at a college commencement ceremony in Ann Arbor where the guest speaker was…wait for it…..Obama. Yes, thats right…I got to see “The One” up close (well, about 250 yards away) and personal (or as personal as a guy who only says whats on a teleprompter can be).  He gave a wonderful speech that had almost nothing to do with the graduates (the ostensible reason for him being there) and was more about, unsurprisingly, himself. He went on about how we can agree to disagree but that the name-calling of terms like “socialist” and “soviet-style takeover” were uncalled for and unproductive. I thought it was a bit hypocritical since his supporters have no problem using terms like ‘racist’ for anyone who disagrees with his policies.

What was security like? Interesting. For about a block around the stadium there was no civilian traffic..you had to walk in. No bags, no camera cases, no umbrellas, no camera tripods, no water bottles. Electronic devices were cool as were phones and cameras. The actual metal detector screening process was faster and less intrusive than airport security. Streets that led to the stadium were blocked off with heavy equipment or fire trucks. Sewer openings were modified to prevent access and show any signs of tampering. Barry O came in on three helicopters…obviously to confuse any poor bastard that managed to scrape up a MANPAD and the temerity to use it. I’ve no doubt that radio and phone freq’s were being monitored. There were, of course, the guys on the roof with binoculars scanning the crowds as well as the sterotypical SS guys who looked like the Blues Brothers. Of course, their purpose was to keep you looking at them and not at the SS guys you couldnt see who were mixed into the crowd.

What was tremendously disturbing was the cult of personality that was present. These kids at the graduation were around 21 years old. Their first vote for President was, apparently, for HopeyChangey Guy. They applauded and cheered like he had actually, you know, done something. I would bet you money that not one of them could explain why any of his policies were good or bad…they’d just regurgitate the party line of ‘inherited this mess’ and ‘hope and change’ without actually having any idea about the consequences theyre going to face in a few years when all that ‘hope and change’ hits them like ton of bricks.

It was a stadium that held about 100,000 people, Im told.  The way they all jumped to their feet and cheered when the helicopter came into view was the sort of thing that would have sent Leni Riefenstahl dashing for a camera. It was like being in a room full of preschool kids who wet their pants with glee when Barney the Dinosaur walks into the room. The grownups know what a ridiculous farce it is but the kids just eat it up because they dont know better. I was willing to listen to the guy’s speech but I sure as hell wasnt going to stand up for him when he got on stage…I’ll respect him when he respects me.

Unfortunately, of the thousands of students that were graduating there (giving great, sincere, heartfelt statements about their commitments to ’social justice’ and the environment) most of them are Kool-Aid drinkers of the highest order and, sadly, will be the faces running whats left of this country in a few years. Orwell said “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever”…I think I had a chance to see a possible vision of the future – its a bunch of twentysomethings with no idea of what the role of .gov should or should not be and no sense of the Pandora’s Box theyre opening when they cheer and encourage more and more .gov in their lives.

:::shrug:::

I suppose every generation says that about the next one, but the way these people just rolled on their backs like puppies wanting their bellies rubbed by their Great Leader was just disturbing.

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

On the admin side of things, the software for this blog tells me when something here has been linked somewhere else. Its kinda nice because then I can go over to where I was linked and look around and see in what context it was about. Usually its other preparedness blogs or that sort of thing that I wind up getting these pingbacks from. Yesterday I got my first pingback from a ….questionable…website – Stormfront.org

I’m sure this will somehow put me on the ‘black list’ (or, I suppose, ‘list of color’) with the race pimps at Southern Poverty Law Center. I cant control who reads this stuff, folks…

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

I love getting ‘real world’ reviews of gear. Here’s an interesting post from a board about what worked and what didnt at an intensive gun class.

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

I found this channel on YouTube and am immensley enjoying this guy’s videos. I haven’t watched all of them but they are definitely worth watching.

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

Lately I’ve been trying to cut back on gun-centric posts and limit myself to one every Friday. Oddly, I missed last Friday’s.

Ever see people post about ‘guns as investments’? They’ll point out that if you had bought [gold/index funds/California] a certain number of years ago and at the same time bought a [AK/AR/case of ammo], the gun stuff would have realized a higher percentage profit than the other stuff. Thus, guns are a sound investment.  At least, that’s the argument.

Let’s establish a few terms. An investment is putting capital (money usually) into something with the intention that after a certain amount of time you’ll be able to get back your capital and then some. Contrast this with items that are purchased not to increase in value but rather to hold a value (or a purchasing power)…like gold.

Buying guns as an investment can make sense if youre buying something truly funky and perhaps one-of-a-kind. Pat Garrett’s Colt revolver, the handgun Clinton lieutenants used to kill Vince Foster, Annie Oakley’s .22 rifle, a toolroom prototype from S&W, etc, etc. Sometimes, if you’ve got your finger on the pulse of things you can predict something will be on the market a very short time and therefore become quite valuable..a Colt Survivor, Ruger Hawkeye, Winchester 88, S&W 76, etc, etc. Or…if you like to gamble, you can invest in something that isn’t rare, isn’t hard to get, isn’t too expensive but someday will be. For example, the HK93 I bought in 1986 for $600 would bring about $4000 now. An AR bought in 1993 became worth two or three times its purchase price in 1995.

The biggest drawback to guns as investments is the regulatory aspect. By and large, trading an ounce of gold among people in the US is fairly benign…you can sell it to convicted felons, ten-year-olds, or pretty much whomever youd like, wherever you like. Guns, on the other hand, come with a whole bunch of regulatory strings attached. The longest string and the one likely to wind up choking off your daylight is that if you sell enough guns or make enough money you might come under the BATFE’s definition of being ‘in the business’ which means they will expect you to have a license. Now, every one of us has at some time or another picked up a gun at a gun show for a song, walked to the other side of the show and sold it to someone else and pocketed a good profit. Seems reasonable to me but I saw a fella at the Helena gun show get in trouble with ATFE for that sort of thing. I don’t have all the details, I just know that they paid him a visit and while he didn’t go to jail it pretty darn near wiped him out and shaved a few years off his warranty.

In short, guns as an investment is a mediocre strategy for high returns in normal times. The only way you can really make it work is if you have a huge amount of money to lay out and you can afford to tie up that money for years before seeing a return. If you can afford to head down to your local gun shop, buy five AR-15s, seal them up in a box and shove them in the closet and not touch them for ten years….yes, you’ll make money. Of course in the meantime you probably could have made more money by investing in other things during those ten years.

Now, to be totally inconsistent, there is at least one circumstance where during normal times firearms are good investments for realizing high returns. That circumstance is if you are thoroughly knowledgeable on the guns, have the opportunity to buy them at very low cost (garage sales, gun shows, ‘motivated sellers’) and have an avenue to sell them (GunBroker, a shop, etc.) However, in those circumstances you’ve gone from ‘investor’ to ‘having a job’. Scouring classified ads, Craigslist, gun shows, auctions, estate sales and then purchasing, cleaning and pricing firearms to be sold, if you can find a buyer, is work. At that point, surprise, you’ve pretty much become a dealer. I’ve done it before…I had a guy come in with a Savage 110 in .300 Win. With a Leupold 3-9x on top of it. Gave him $250 for the package. The scope brought $150 and the rifle brought $275. A good investment? Absolutely. Repeatable with any predictability? Not at all. You can go a long time between deals like that. You can also wind up buying a package like that and have it sit on the rack for several long, hungry weeks or months.

But…that’s during normal times.

When the LA Riots occurred, the demand for firearms and ammo was amazing. I’ve no doubt that in the aftermath of Katrina you could pretty much name your price and get it for a Mossberg 500 and a box of shells. If another more oppressive and permanent assault weapon ban comes down the pike you can bet that the price of pretty much anything with a trigger will go up. A fella with a footlocker of cheap AR carbines might wind up making quite a bit of coin.

Is it worth buying guns strictly as investment tools to be cashed in after things get weird? Maybe. A used SIG 9mm will run about $400 right now. When the end of the world occurs you could trade it, quite easily Im sure, for food, medicine or fuel. On the other hand you could also take that $400 today and buy food, medicine or fuel and stockpile it for later. There are folks who feel that should civilization truly run off the rails things like gold, silver, ammo and such will become the new currency. There might be some truth to that, after all civilization is still limping along and you already have plenty of people who are willing to take those things as currency for goods and services.

I almost never pass up a deal on ‘cheap’ (pricewise) firearms. Even if it’s a caliber I have no earthly use for, I’ll go ahead and pick it up if the price is right. Someday that oddball bastard-caliber handgun or rifle, with a box of appropriate ammo, may wind up being just as valuable, to me, as a stack of greenbacks is today. I remember reading a fairly forgettable post-apocalyptic book years ago called ‘Wolf & Iron’. One of the characters was a fella who traveled with his daughter as a sort of traveling merchant. They had a wagon full of trade goods and theyd do a circuit through various towns and villages. Tied to the back of the wagon were horses that were always saddled and ready to be ridden off in case they were attacked or ambushed. Each horse had a pack on it that contained all the essentials of survival including a couple small handguns to be used for trading purposes. For some reason that always made an impression with me.

Years ago I had the opportunity to buy a bunch of police trade-in revolvers. This was back when the transition from revolvers to Glocks was in full swing at many police departments. I think I paid between $150 and $200 for each S&W .38 Special I picked up. Some were in great shape, some were not. All worked, though. I remember thinking that I could take one of these pistols, add a cheap holster, a box of ammo, a cleaning kit and a speedloader or two, throw it in a small ammo can and it would make an ideal package to use for trade someday if I ever needed it. Of course, it also makes an excellent package to hand out to an undergunned friend who may not have a pistol.

“Waitasec, wouldn’t it be foolish to trade guns and ammo to someone who may wind up using them against you?” Yup. So don’t trade them to someone like that. There’s only two ways that’s going to happen – either youre so desperate that you cant be choosey or youre doing it from a position of overwhelming strength.

Are firearms a good investment? If your goal is to spend 100% of ‘x’ on firearms and a year later get 125% of it back, no. It might happen but the risk and opportunity cost probably isn’t worth it. If your goal is to have some sort of high-value ace-in-the-hole for the day you need to bribe someone, get desperately needed [medicine/food/fuel], or equip a trusted friend…then, yeah, it’s a good idea.