Tag Archives: logistics

Trading stock

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I was talking with someone today and they asked me about whether I stockpile things like cigarettes, booze, or coffee for bartering purposes.

I actually do not. The biggest reason, for me, is that I simply do not use any of those products. Whether its inventory for resale or items for my own personal stash, I never acquire anything in bulk that I cannot use for my own needs. To do otherwise would risk wasting resources on something I can’t use.

However, there are things that I keep a rather large quantity of that is so large it could double as a supply of barter goods if it had to. And, if I got stuck with them, theyre things I use anyway. Such as? Well, medical supplies spring to mind. Same for food, batteries, toilet paper, silver, some ammo and guns, clothing, fuel, etc.

Bartering assumes that there is something I need or want that I do not already have. After all, no one exposes themselves (and their goods) to the risk of some sort of post-apocalyptic marketplace if they don’t need to. Would you? Would anyone? Why advertise to the world that you not only have something but you have enough of it that you can actually use it for trade?

Of course, we can’t think of everything. And something may happen that forces your hand. Maybe floss weevils got into your dental floss stash and you’re completely out of the stuff eve though you had stockpiled cases of it. Things can happen.

For my interests, I figure the things I already use (and have) in large quantity will have plenty of value. Will there be people who would kill for a drink? Or a cigarette? Or coffee? Absolutely. And thats why some poeple stock up on that sort of stuff. But there’ll also be people who’d kill to have food for their kids. Or themselves. And since I already am a user of food, it makes sense have that on hand as trade fodder if I decide to have a reserve of some kind for trading.

I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to throw $20 on the counter at WalMart and grab a couple dozen single-serve packets of freeze dried coffee. Or a couple airplane-sized bottles of Jack Daniels. And I might do that. But, for me, it simply makes more sense to stockpile things I can use since a) if I can use it someone else can too and b) if i wind up keeping it then I only wind up improving my situation.

Let me put it another way: which makes more sense..buying $100 worth of an item that may have some barter value but has no use to you individually, or buying $100 worth of an item that may have some barter value AND can benefit your stockpile if you wind up keeping it. Hmm.

Anyway, your mileage may vary but, no, no hoard of cigarettes and Mad Dog in the bunker.

I’m not driving in that

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So it’s about -2 outside, which is bad enough but the wind is insane. And the roads are slicker than Mikhail Baryshnikov at a Wesson oil party. No real reason to risk limb and lira out there on the roads. BUT….I’m trying to clean my kitchen and while I have plenty of fuel for the flamethrower I am out of dish soap. So…do I risk losing momentum and halting my kitchen cleaning? Or do I go driving on the frigid skating rink and risk everything for a $6 bottle of Dawn? Well, neither…

One simply trots down to the basement, peruses the shelves, and finds a half dozen jugs of the stuff sitting patiently on the shelf.

In this particular case, about eight years ago I tucked this guy away in case I needed it. And that foresight is keeping me from skidding through intersections and into traffic this very evening.

The point? Well, we stockpile things against that uncertain future when the zombies rise or the economy crashes. But those same preps have a happy way of coming in handy at opportune moments. In this case, I can completely eliminate the risk of heading to CostCo on a freezing, icy, winter day.

Because this stuff is one of the things I stocked up on (mostly for economic reasons), I can wait until the weather is nicer before I have to go up there and replace it. Sure, stocking the usual guns & freeze-drieds is important, but stockpiling the incredibly mundane day-to-day stuff pays off too.

I have literally not left the house all weekend and I can be perfectly content, fed, warm, clothed, entertained, and secure without exposing myself to ‘The Vortex’. Prior planning pays off, people.

ETA: Since I’m cleaning my kitchen, and scrubbing the floors for the first time in…well…ever. I decided to resort to some…force multipliers. Check out this BAMF:

Man is a tool-using animal, baby. And this tool was AWESOME. My bathtub is so smooth and clean now that I might actually slip in the tub now. And this sucker did some major work on my kitchen floor. Recommend.

Adventures in food storage

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Todays “Lets See What Happens” episode is a six year old can of corned beef hash. Nominal ‘best by’ date was three years ago. So….how is it?

Fine. Of course.

Properly canned food lasts pretty much indefinitely. This can features the pre-scored ‘pop top’ feature that don’t really like in canned goods. If you drop the can or pressure is applied against the pre-scored region the can will fail more often than if it were not pre-scored. But, unfortauntely, these small single-serve cans were not available without the pop-top features. But…they held up just fine.

Storage conditions? Just sitting in the back of my kitchen cabinet for six years. Nothing special.

And that’s sort of the point. While I fully appreciate the nitrogen sealed, ceramic lined #10 cans filled with freeeze dried meats that will last longer than I will…..I also appreciate that modern food canning processes, by first world companies, do an awesome job of creating a product that will last a long time. Sometimes there is a need for a $40 can of freeze-dried pork chops, but sometimes you’ll get along just fine with a case of Kirkland canned pulled pork. It just depends on a few other things like if you plan to transport it, what the storage conditions will be, etc. I love me some long-term food but, really, you can put together a very reasonably long-term food supply without breaking the bank on ‘survival food’.

I bet the folks in whats left of Florida would be happy to have some hash and eggs for breakfast after a long evening of clearing debris and unblocking roads. A case of this stuff, a #10 can of powdered eggs, a case of instant oatmeal, a case of fruit cocktail cups, a jar of Tang, instant coffee, some hash browns, and you’ve pretty much got a breakfast that’ll last five-ten years.

As I’ve mentioned, around this house the food storage paradigm is short-, mid-, and long-term storage. This stuff counts as ‘mid-term’ storage….it’ll be good for more than a year or two but probably not out at the twenty year mark. I wish I had written the price down, I’d be curious to see where the price went.

Ruger Mini-14 magazine followup

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So I had a fairly lousy experience with the aftermarket magazine that came with the Mini-14GB I picked up a few weeks ago. I really shouldnt have been too surprised since the prevailing wisdom is that, currently, there are NO acceptable aftermarket mags. Now, as much as that was a bad experience at the range, paying $30 (dealer cost, mind you) for a factory magazine is an even uglier experience.

Now, an important distinction really needs to be made here. I almost always prefer factory mags (or .gov contract mags) to aftermarket mags for my guns. BUT…for a non-critical gun, or what we can basically call a ‘range toy’, I don’t mind aftermarket magazines. (I mind junk aftermarket mags, but a good aftermarket mag is acceptable.) So, since this Mini-14 isn’t really on my radar for an End Of The World sort of thing, I don’t mind using aftermarket mags if they are good aftermarket mags.

(However, in the name of transparency, I will say that I am going to pick up four factory mags ‘just in case’.)

Anyway…

Over on YouTube there’s a gear/guns channel I watch from time to time that does the sorts of gear evaluations I like – they buy the gear, they test the gear, they beat the gear, the review the gear. They had a video up on the Tapco aftermarket mags and they got great reviews. Ok, let’s get a few and see what they’re offering………

  • Overall Impression
  • Metal reinforcement and lockup
  • Basepad and follower
  • Legacy gear compatability
  • Pricing

Overall Impression

Tapco has been (and somewhat still is) the source of many memes and disdain in the gun community. Their name has even been made into a verb – “Bubba got that SKS and he Tapco’d the hell out of it. Look at all that crap!” But, apparently, they are making a pretty slick Mini-14 magazine.

The Tapco Mini-14 magazine resembles a Magpul PMAG in many ways. The follower is very reminiscent of the Magpul, and the overall ‘feel’ of the polymer/plastic is also very similar.

Metal reinforcement and lockup

These mags are the second generation of Mini-14 mags from Tapco, the first generation did not have a metal reinforcing tab where the engagement/lockup of mag-to-gun took place. As a result, wear and deformation could occur that would cause magazines to seat improperly which, naturally, leads to reliability issues. Case in point: look at this aftermarket metal magazine which it appears could have stood a little heat treating. The post-in-hole lockup area is pushed inward from repeated magazine insertions. As the metal pressed inwards, it made seating the magazine securely more difficult which exacerbated the problem by trying to ‘force’ the mag to seat…which just pushed the metal further inwards.

The Tapco magazine has a steel clip surrounding the front of the magazine to take the wear and resist this sort of issue. Lockup in my particular Mini-14 was good. There was some play, as is to be expected, but it was ‘play’ not ‘slop’. More importantly, there were no reliability issues with feeding. (This can be seen on AK mags, which use a somewhat similar method of magazine retention…there’s usually some play, but nothing that affects function.)

Basepad and follower

The magazine basepad and follower are going to seem familiar to anyone with a bunch of Magpul PMAGs. The followers are very non-tilt and they move smoothly up/down within the magazine body. The basepad is a bit chunky, but has a very easy to manipulate locking mechanism making magazine disassembly a breeze…much easier, IMHO, than GI AR mags.

Legacy gear compatability

A big problem with polymer mags is that, dimensionally, they do not have the same ‘footprint’ as their metal counterparts. For example, a metal Mini-14 mag and the Tapco both hold 30-rounds but the Tapco is longer and a bit wider. This can cause problems in terms of fit in pouches that were designed, ostensibly, for AR mags. ‘Legacy’ gear..those AR pouches you’ve collected over twenty years…may not be the best fit for the bulkier Tapco mag. Modern pouches, though, often have adjustable flaps on them and those help tremendously.

I found that the mags did fit in open-top pouches, although they were a tiny bit snug. In magazine pouches that utilize a flap closure, they did not fit unless the flap was adjustable.

AR mag pouch with a non-adjustable closure flap. Tapco mag is too long to allow flap to close. Fortunately, most mag pouches with flap closures these days are adjustable.

Tactical Tailor stock-mounted mag pouch for AR mags. Note that it has a velcro adjustable closure flap.

This mag pouch can do double-duty …. AR or Mini-14 mag. Or, really, any other similar magazine since the adjustable flap closure provides the ability to accommodate other mags.

Single-mag pouches like this one work fine except the retention straps, though elastic, are a bit too short to accommodate the longer Tapco mag. Left: Metal Mini mag, Center: Tapco mag, Right: GI AR mag. SpecOps magazine pouch.

Double-mag pouch with velcro adjustable flaps holds two Tapco mags with no problem. Heavy ribbing on mags makes withdrawing one mag a little tricky. Pouch: Blackhawk

A possible issue (or non-issue) I noticed is that the Tapco mags have aggressive ribbing on the magazine bodies. You will get a sure grip on the magazine. However, stack two mags together in a pouch and one mag will get a sure grip on the other. If it’s a snug fit for two mags in your mag pouch, expect some ‘rim lock’ as you try to pull one mag out. Again, a single-mag pouch should be fine.

No stripper clip guides on the Tapco mag. Not sure if that’s important to you or not, but sometimes it’s a ‘nice to have’.

So, how’d they shoot? Shot fine. Put about a hundred rounds through them and didn’t have a hiccup. Mags fed fine, locked open on last round, seated and extracted just fine. Certainly a better performance than I got from the no-name aftermarket mag and about the same performance I would expect from a Ruger factory mag.

Pricing

Pricing? Well, retail is for suckers so I usually pay dealer prices. Dealer on these was around $12, so I would expect to see them in the wild around $19.99. For comparison, a Ruger factory mag is, dealer, $29.85. And that’s dealer price.

As I said, this isn’t a run-out-the-door rifle for me, so I’m okay with quality aftermarket mags. But…I wouldn’t feel terribly disadvantaged with these Tapco mags if I got dropped into Katrinaville with a Mini-14 and a dozen of these.

Historically, it has been a bigfoot-hunt to try and find an aftermarket mag for the Mini-14 that was reliable. The only aftermarket mag I ever found that worked perfectly in the Mini-14 platform was the old Eagle 35-rd mags and they haven’t made those since the ’90s. These Tapcos seem to have cleared the bar on a good aftermarket mag finally coming to market. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I ordered a dozen more for myself and think it was a very good purchase.

Boutique or niche items

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Years ago, I had a buddy who thought that, for his needs, the ideal ‘battle rifle’ was a 1941 Johnson. You can go on GunBroker and look up the going rate for a Johnson….I’ll wait.

Kinda makes your eyes water, doesn’t it?

He was adamant that the rifle afforded him all the qualities he wanted in a rifle for the lawless apocalypse he envisioned. And, to be honest, it did. Problem is, he had a rather short-sighted list of qualities he wanted. One of the qualities that he soft-pedaled was affordability and logistics. Break the rear sight on your AR-10 and you can get a new rear sight (or mount a scope) with parts that you can find pretty much in any gun shop. Not so for the Johnson rifle. And affordability-wise, you could get two M1A, three PTR’s, or a couple FALs for what you’d pay for the Johnson.

I was reminded of this today because I took the Ruger Mini-14GB to the range and, unsurprisingly, had problems with the one aftermarket magazine that came with the gun. It didn’t surprise me; my experience with Ruger Mini-14 magazines has been that there are no aftermarket mags that are as reliable except for (in my experience) the old Eagle 35-rd mags that haven’t been made since the last century. In short, unless Magpul cranks out some Mini mags, your only real choice is the expensive factory mags.

Tangent: Tapco, apparently, has evolved a Mini-14 magazine that seems to do a very good job for about half the price of the Ruger factory mag. Might have to try a few.

So, after leaving the range today, I headed over to the local Cabela’s looking for a Ruger factory Mini-14 mag. None. Ok, try Sportsman’s Warehouse. None. And that is, in a nutshell, the problem with niche or ’boutique’ gear: you can’t just find the part or accessory you need as easily as other platforms.

Here’s another example. Years ago Streamlight made a little LED flashlight that I was very impressed with. BUT….it took AAAA batteries. Not AA, not AAA, but AAAA batteries. Good luck finding those in the battery rack at the supermarket.

Sometimes the boutique gear does 100% of what we want whereas the lesser, easily supportable version may only do 85% of what we want. But…when  you cant find a Mini-14 magazine or a set of AAAA batteries, that system is now doing 0% of what you want. I’ll muddle along with 85%.

Does this mean that I’m getting rid of the Mini-14GB? Nope…because the AR’s and AK’s are my ‘grab and run out the door’ guns, and they are a legacy weapons system that has a logistics base that is enormous. The Mini is pretty much just for fun or a waaaaay down the line level of backup rifle. But the experience at the range, and the subsequent experiences at the local gunmarts, kinda demonstrates something that is worth keeping in mind: logistics and support for a piece of gear should factor in to your decision about getting it. (Or keeping it.)

 

Is it enough if you can’t get any more tomorrow

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This is going to be one of those posts thats going to get linked to quite a bit in future posts. Why? Well, because I get tired of repeating over and over again a brief encapsulation of why I buy as many of a particular thing.

Uncertain Goods

I’ve mentioned this in the past, but Uncertain Goods are items whose future availability cannot be readily assured. It’s not a black and white issue….some items will be more uncertain than others. And, depending on the nature of the apocalypse you are forecasting, all items can be Uncertain Goods. Lemme give some examples…

Dental Floss. Those little plastic boxes with the spool of floss and the cutter? Yeah, those. Are they an Uncertain Good? No..I am virtually confident that tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year I will be able to walk into a Walgreens and buy as much of it as I want.

The more forward thinking of you might say “But, in a nuclear war (or similar event) the availability of just about everything would be affected, therefore all goods are Uncertain Goods.” Strictly speaking, this is true. This is where evidence and history come into play. Best I can tell, we haven’t had a nuclear war lately, nor have we had a global failure of the dental floss crop due to floss weevils. Additionally, I’ve heard nothing about dental floss prohibitions, taxes, confiscations, panic buying, distribution chain failures, and that sort of thing. To my way of thinking, dental floss is not an Uncertain Good. Oh, I stock up on it….but not because I worry about it’s availability, but rather because if I can spend fifty bucks and get a few years worth of the stuff tucked away, that’s one less thing to deal with.

Contrast the dental floss with, say, plutonium. Plutonium is an exceptionally Uncertain Good. I can walk out of my house and get dental floss from a half dozen different places without even needing to drive. Plutonium , on the other hand, is something you really have to make an appointment for. Even in ‘normal’ times your ability to obtain it is challenging. Throw some political or social turmoil in the mix and it gets even harder.

These are, obviously, two extreme examples but I think they make the point. An Uncertain Good is one whose future availability cannot be guessed at. Here are some items that, in my opinion, are Uncertain Goods: prescription meds, hard-to-find car parts, clothing in special-order sizes, odd batteries, certain chemicals or mixtures of chemicals, etc. Basically, if the only way you can obtain something is to special order it off Amazon or pay for it with a credit card, it’s an Uncertain Good. (Note that I said ‘the only way’…the fact that you buy your TP off Amazon to save money doesn’t mean it’s an uncertain good. You could buy TP at your local grocery. If you live in Nowhere, WY and you need a forward mounting bracket for the fusebox in your ’89 Saab you’re pretty much only going to get that through Amazon or some other internet contortion…thus, it’s an Uncertain Good.)

Take me, for example. I wear shoes that are, nominally, EEEEE width. (Yes, I have wide feet. I can walk on snow like a moose.) My only source for shoes is a couple specialty outfits on the internet. Thus, for me, shoes that fit are an Uncertain Good. So, I keep several pair on hand.

Alright, we’ve established what an Uncertain Good is. Your idea of what it is and mine may differ due to our regional differences, but, broadly, we should be on the same page. Now it’s a matter of scale.

Relative Uncertainty

Take my 5E shoes and the plutonium, for example. Both are Uncertain Goods, we’ve established that. Now, which of the two is more likely to be difficult to obtain at a later date? Probably the plutonium, right? So in a priority-based system of acquisition, I’d probably want to score the plutonium before I score another pair of black walking shoes. Both goods are uncertain, but one is likely (IMHO) to be more uncertain than the other.

Quantity

Ok, so we know what Uncertain Goods are, and we know that some Uncertain Goods are more uncertain than others. So why do I need several hundred G3 magazines? Or a dozen ARs?

Both of those items are Uncertain Goods with a history of threatened availability, and a near constant threat of diminished future availability. Or, put into simple terms, they banned ’em before and they want to ban them again.

Okay..so they’re an Uncertain Good, with a definite likelihood of future availability being a problem, but why do you need so many???

I have another 25 years on my meter. We’ve established these Uncertain Goods may become unavailable at any moment. So…if tomorrow I couldn’t call up Cheaper Than Dirt and order more, and what I had in the closet had to last me the rest of my life, would I feel comfortable with that? Well…a lot of stuff can happen in 25 years, so I’d want plenty to cover things like loss, breakage, confiscation, abandonment, theft, trade, gifting, and ‘just in case’. When you look at it in those terms, five magazines for your Beretta 92 when your’re forty years old is not a ‘lifetime supply’. In fact, it’s laughably short-sighted.

The Matt Foley suvivalists (You know, the ones who think all you need to survive the apocalypse is a Mosin Nagant and a vaaaaaaan down by the riverrrrrrr.) are aghast at the notion of spending money, but if your career goals go beyond being a WalMart greeter and complaining about ‘the rich’ full-time, you can afford such things. The secret to being able to afford things like guns designed after World War 2, food that isn’t stored in 2-liter pop bottles, and housing that doesn’t have a license plate holder, is to complain less about people who have more money than you and start doing what it takes to become someone who has more money than you.

The paradigm I use is: if I could not get any more of these [items] tomorrow, would I be comfortable with the amount I currently have. I’ts not any more complicated than that.. When I buy supplies and items to enhance my survivability, I’m thinking on the long term. Even a ‘personal’ EOTWAWKI like a job loss or health issue would benefit from such planning… its one less thing to worry about.

Obviously, there will be a couple factors to consider – cost, storage, expiration, opportunity cost, etc. I wouldn’t buy a lifetime supply of Toyota Tacomas because of cost, I wouldn’t buy a lifetime supply of drinking water because of storage issues, and I wouldn’t buy a lifetime supply of bananas because of expiration. But, something like, say, toothpaste? Dental floss? MagLites? Blankets? Lantern wicks? I’d have no problem with several dozen in storage.

So there you have it. Next time you want to comment and say “You have one Blastomatic 500, why do you need fifteen magazines for it” you’ll have your answer. And maybe the rubric of “if I could not get any more of these [items] tomorrow, would I be comfortable with the amount I currently have” might prove useful to you. But, regardless, those are the reasons and logic behind why I buy as much as I do of some items.

Saving space

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So youre a somewhat serious survivalist and you’ve come to the conclusion that a few medical supplies might not be a bad idea to stash back for the day the hospitals are overwhelmed and supplies are short. Off to eBay you go. And you realize that for the price of, say, two boxes of band aids at the local supermarket you can buy an entire case of 2,500 band aids from eBay vendors. Good band aids, too…not made in China crap. Same for gauze, pads, tape, etc, etc.

And then you realize that while 2,000 packages of 4×4 gauze might be useful after the apocalypse, until that time apocalypse happens it sure takes up a lot of room.

Thats pretty much what happened to me. As I was rearranging things the other week it occurred to me that the bulkier first aid supplies took up a lot of room. Not because they were bulky on their own, necessarily…but rather because there was so much of it.

Since I had the vacuum sealer out, I figured that perhaps vacuum sealing some of these items might cut down the space they took up, in addition to providing a lovely level of protection.

How much space? Well, lets grab a couple boxes of 3×8 non-adherent dressings and check…


So there’s a full box of dressings. Fifty per. Let’s see how they stack up…
One stack of fifty compresses down to a rather significantly smaller package.

So after a few hours I compared ‘before and after’. For example, the original box that held 18 ABD pads now held 35. That’s about a 50% savings in space and a thousand percent increase in protection from environmental factors.

The end of this long story is that I managed to clear off almost an entire shelf’s worth of supplies and compact them down to fit into one large plastic tub…and in the process add a layer of survivability to the packaging. (Everything was packaged in paper envelopes, like you get a band aid in, so there wasn’t exactly a tremendous amount of resistance to humidity, moisture, dust, dirt, etc, going on there.)

Do I ever think there’s going to be a time in my existence I need 50 rolls of rolled gauze? Man, I hope not. But once you divvy everything up between your primary location, the Beta Site, first aid kits, vehicles, etc, you can wind up going through quite a bit of stuff.

My first go-to for eBay medial stuff is these guys. After that, it’s just a matter of knowing the SKU or product number of what youre looking for and searching eBay. Oh…and having one of these.

 

Shelf Actualization

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I about twentyfive years ago, I built several really nice reloading benches. Really nice, solid, beasts made of 2×4’s and plywood sheeting. Problem is, I really only use one of them and the others take up space. So…..I chucked a screwdriver bit into the Dewalt and took the thing apart. What to replace it with? Why, more wire shelving of course.

As I was assembling the shelving, I took a few pics to demonstrate those wonderful S-hooks that I highly recommend for folks who use this type of shelving.

Notice that while one rack uses four uprights, the other rack will use only two. The S-cliips hung from the other rack will support the shelf instead of another set of upright.

S-hooks in place with shelf seated in them.

Finished unit. Still have another set of uprights (since each set comes with four and i only used six) so I could make a three-wide set of shelves using only two complete shelving sets.

Once the shelves were up, it was time to rearrange some things and one of those things was all the first aid and medical gear that had been in storage for…well…a while. Naturally, as I was doing this, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to make some changes. Biggest change is that a bunch of stuff got vacuum sealed to help keep the packaging clean, dry, and intact. Those paper pouches that hold the gauze and pads tend to delaminate after a while. I’m hoping that vacuum sealing them will prevent that.

And, while I was doing that, I figured I might as well vacuum seal the contents of the grab-n-go first aid kits. These are a couple milsurp medical bags I picked up off Sportsmans Guide or Major Surplus many years ago. Ideally, it’s not for immediate use, but rather a stash of items to take with you as you run out the door so that when you get to the Beta Site you can unpack them and have a full first aid kit on hand. All the contents of those went into the vacuum sealer too.

Seriously, gang…if you don’t have one already, go get one. It’s one of the most useful survival-oriented gadgets you can buy.

So, once all that was done, it was time to play musical chairs with all the crates, cans, boxes, and drums. Ideally, I’d like everything to be organized neatly and out of the way. The difference between hoarding and prepping is, I suspect, organization.

 

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.