Tag Archives: cautionary tale

When bellyguns go bad……..

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

So I’m sitting in front of the missus’ Mac, watching a movie (Dredd…way bloodier than I expected), and I see her little KelTec 32 sitting next to the keyboard. I pick it up and examine it. Pull the mag, rack the slide to eject the cartridge and…hey..is that a spot of rust on the breechface? Hmmmm. I stop the movie, Google up some disassembly directions and….

photo-31Someone is going to get a spanking. And not the fun-Friday-night kind. And it ain’t gonna be me and it ain’t gonna be Nuke.

A half hour later I’ve cleaned it up and mitigated as much damage as I can. Mostly cosmetic but…some barrel pitting. How does this happen? Well, really, a maintenance routine would be nice. (Like, maybe every time we switch to/from Daylight Savings Time we should detail strip our carry guns?) But, mouseguns like these are especially prone to this sort of thing.

Here’s a S&W 36 that I carry sometimes when I’m just too lazy to carry the Glock. Please observe it from two sides:

IMG_0608

Not a bad little gun. It’s a former NYPD gun that I got for a good deal years ago. Why so good? Well, lets flip it over and see…….:

IMG_0609Oh! Thats..thats not right! I know, I know…I probably should have warned the weak-stomached S&W fans that there was some gun-gore coming. In my defense, this is how I got the damn thing. I take much better care of my thundertoys than to have that sort of thing happen. As an aside, the Smith works flawlessly…it’s just damn ugly on that one side.

Here’s the skinny – mouseguns and other hideout firearms are usually carried in a manner that is not terrbily conducive towards gun health. Take the case of the Smith shown above…why is all the pitting and funk on one side of the gun? Heck, even only one side of the cylinder has it. The reason is simple – the cop who carried it carried it with the pitted side facing his body. Moisture and corrosive sweat, combined with typical cop gun maintenance, slowly started defacing that side of the gun over time. The other side, which was free to ‘breathe’ didnt suffer as bad. Same story on the KelTec..she carries it in the ‘appendix carry‘ style, which puts it close to her…uhm…well, let’s just say that I bet I could get a lot of money from her fans for that KelTec. But seriously folks….when you carry any small gun tightly against your body you are asking for this sort of trouble. That doesn’t mean you shouldnt do it, it just means you need to have an accelerated rmaintenance shedule for these and other guns that are in the ‘elevated risk’ category.

I carry a Glock, normally, which is fairly difficult to damage. Oh, you can do it, but it’ll take damage that would kill lesser guns. I usually fully disassemble and clean my EDC gun every other month or so. My little pocket guns, like my 640 or 21A, get cleaned and oiled more frequently.

Don’t think that stainless steel is going to get you off the hook, either. It’s stainless..not rustless. I use TetraLube on most of my guns and I’ll wipe it on with my fingers, getting it into every nook and cranny on the gun, and then wipe it all off with a paper towel. This leaves plenty of lube behind but doesn’t leave a gooey mess that can attract pocket lint and become gun-jamming sludge. Use whatever lube you want, but use your head in the selection and application.

Moral of the story: even with the use of a holster (especially with the use of a holster, since if you just leave the gun in it all the time youre leaving it in there trapped with whatever moisture and body funk youve generated) you need to take these things and air ‘em out and clean ‘em once in a while. To quote Michael Ironside from the unfathomably bad ‘Highlander II’ sequel: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if you dont take it out and use it, it’s going to rust”.

 

 

2008 Redux

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

I have a would-be customer who wants me to hook him up with a Stag #2 (with the Plus Package) or a Rock River Entry AR. He asked me about this a day or two after the election and it was about all I could do to keep from laughing into the phone. You want to buy an AR a couple days after Carter The Second wins the presidential election? Why not try buying lifejackets once the iceberg hits the hull? Availability will be similar.

Stag Arms is not only not answering their phones but the voicemail option tersely says “we are not taking any messages at this time.” Rock River at least had a human answer the phone who told me the wait on an AR outta there is currently at four months.

I have been to this dance before and know all the steps. Put your left foot in, put your right foot out, reach for your wallet and wave it all about…..

Oh, and before I forget:

I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.

Now I feel better……

 

Spot the OPSEC fail

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Sold a pistol to a fella today. He counted out a buncha ten dollar bills to pay for it. Take a look at this picture and tell me where (or if) you see an OPSEC fail:

Notice anything, oh, I dunno….unusual….about this pile of currency? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

The obvious answer is that the gentleman apparently paid for his new acquisition using ‘old style’ currency. One or two bills wouldn’t have been suspicious but the entire stack was all old currency. This, of course, would make any reasonable person raise an eyebrow and wonder “Did he have all this stuffed into a mattress somewhere?”. This is an excellent example of something simple that draws attention you really don’t need.

Sure, we all stockpile a certain amount of cash to keep on hand. And, once that’s done, it’s entirely possible that as the years go by the currency will change and you’ll be sitting on a safe full of money that, while still accepted and honored, is going to raise some questions from certain corners. Banks already are told to consider cash deposits or transactions involving large amounts of old,dirty or soiled bills as suspicious. I wish I could find it, but a year or two back there was a news article about a fella who would, periodically, go to his local banks and exchange old money that was sometimes dirty, musty or smelled funny, for new currency. The fact that he was doing this fairly often and in large amounts raised suspicions and the cops were called in to investigate. Maybe he found the skeletal remains of a drug courier in the desert..or maybe his grandmother kept all her cash in the basement since her bad experiences in the First Great Depression…regardless, although no apparent crime had been committed, handing over large amounts of old-style money tripped some flags.

On a more local level, paying a bill with several hundred dollars worth of old currency is going to do nothing but make someone ask “Hey, cool! Where’d you get all the old money?” And that’s really attention that you don’t need…especially when buying guns and ammo. Not only that, the blatantly obvious assumption someone might make is “This guy is hoarding cash at home somewhere” and the next thing you know you come home to a kicked in door and ripped up floorboards. So..if you’ve got a stockpile of cash it might be a good idea to ‘keep it current’ in terms of what the current currency is. Now, having said that, I will admit that I’m going to keep some of these bills just for nostalgia’s sake…but if I ever use them to pay for something I’m not going to use them exclusively.

Article – Alaska militia member receives 5-years prison term

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska militia group member found guilty of weapons charges was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison in a case involving others convicted of conspiring to kill government officials.

Coleman Barney of North Pole held his head in his hands and sniffled loudly while he waited for U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan to impose the sentence Monday in Anchorage.

“I think you got into some real bad stuff here, and this sentence reflects it,” Bryan said.

Pretty standard stuff except that this particular article seems to veer a little off the usual course.

Before he was sentenced, Barney apologized for making poor choices and decisions. A member of the Mormon church, he said he loved his country and that the militia started out as a group of “wonderful Christian men” who wanted to protect their families in case of a collapse. He said he got caught up in the hype and said things he didn’t mean.

Whats different here is that in virtually every article about ‘militias’ there is no mention of how the group started. Was it a rabid, anti-government group from the start? Or was it something benign that gradually shifted focus into something else?

In this case, from the phrasing in the article, it sounds like a bunch of guys who had a common interest and a common concern and somehow got ‘carried away’. This is worth thinking about because ‘conspiracy’ is one of those great catch-alls that is used to nail people to the wall in cases like this. You don’t have to have done anything, and you may not even have to take real material steps, but as long as you and your buddies agreed to do it someday….well, seems like thats as good as doing it in some folks’ eyes.

So…you, your buddy at work, the guy down the block, and another guy from the gun range…….you guys get together once a week or so to shoot guns or watch football. One day a semi-serious discussion about politics turns into a serious discussion about ‘what are we gonna do if TSHTF?’. And the conversation goes on for a couple hours and when its done you’ve got an informal ‘group’. Thats the organic way these things happen.

You and your buddies, you go to gun shows together, check out military surplus stuff, maybe hit the cannery once a month, go in on group purchases to save money, maybe help each other on little projects like setting up radio towers or helping to move a new freezer into a basement…so far youre all a happy little group of like-minded individuals.

One day, after range practice, Steve pipes up and says “Man, you see all that looting in Haiti? You’re outnumbered, like, a million to one in a scenario like that. Check out what I picked up to help even those odds” and he reaches into his range bag and pulls out….what? A homemade silencer? An auto sear? Unpapered SBR or SBS? Maybe a grenade? And that’s right about the moment that your band of buddies who were nothing more than a bunucha guys with a common interest on being prepared suddenly turned into  ‘persons of interest’. And at that same moment, every single thing youve done…the stored food, the piles of ammo, the rack of guns, the gold in the safe, the tweaked out BOV, those new solar panels on the roof….becomes threatened, Now, rather than ‘preps’ those things have become ‘supporting evidence’ when you get accused of being part of some end-of-the-world extremist fringe that was bent on overthrowing the government (or whatever).

Maybe everyone looks at Steve and says “Are you nuts? Put that crap away!”. Or maybe they say “Steve, if youre into that sorta stuff we cant have you hanging around us.” Maybe someone goes as far to say “Steve, it was nice knowing ya, but I can’t afford to be mixed up with that kinda stuff. Don’t ever come by my house again.” Or, more likely, everyone says “wow, cool!” and they pass it around like a party favor. And a week later someone tries to one-up Steve by acquiring something even more questionable.

Or, another likely scenario…..Steve never pulls anything ungood out of his range bag. But one day as theyre all driving back from the gun show he mentions that he thinks someone with a rifle ‘oughtta do something’ about ……and he starts naming politicians. Or local government officials. Or just people he doesn’t like for whatever reason. And someone in the back seat pipes in with “Yeah! And that other guy too! Someone oughtta take it to both of them!”

And this is how that fine line between conspiracy and harmless group of like-minded buddies gets blurred. A casual conversation about what to do about looters in a world ‘without rule of law’ turns into ‘and when those cops or feds show up and start violating their oath we need to……’. I know he didnt mean it. You know he didnt mean it. He probably doesnt even really mean it. But it’s not our opinion about it that matters in these things, sadly. There’s plenty of folks who’ll take what he said at full face value because thats their job.

I almost want to say that the secret to keeping any group of LMI from turning into a ‘ant-government militia that was planning on killing elected officials’ or a ‘group of extremists who were conspiring to blow up the…’ is to simply never talk politics at any of your little get-togethers.

I’ve met quite a few people over the years who would be in the red folder in some federal agencies ‘watch’ files. Usually they are so over-the-top that they’re unable to be taken seriously enough as a threat. But why take chances? When you and a couple buddies are getting together at the cannery and the discussion turns towards questionable things you have one of two choices – put an end to it politely, maybe even obtusely so the person talking doesn’t even notice you’ve changed the topic so abruptly…or…let him go on and be prepared to face the unpleasant possibilities that might happend when someone “hears something, says something” about your conversation.

Me, I’m the biggest advocate of free speech youre ever going to meet. I think you should be able to burn flags, bibles, korans, effigies, and all that stuff.  Nothing gets my ire up like censorship and the notion that you cant express yourself however you like (as long as youre respecting other peoples rights…maybe not respecting their beliefs, or their opinion, but always their rights ). But the sad fact is that there are somethings you just have to keep to yourself if you want to stay out of trouble.

If you’ve got a loosely knit group of friends that you include in your preparations and stockpiling it is important to make sure that you don’t fall into that trap of someone going a little off the reservation and getting the whole group shot down.I hate the notion of guilt by association but thats how it plays out. Four guys are just stocking their shelves with canned goods and building solar battery chargers and one guy is doing that and building auto sears in his garage…or smuggling antibiotics over the border from Mexico…or mouthing off about how the local police chief is gonna ‘get it’ someday. And because of that one guy, four other guys who weren’t doing anything more extreme than building can organizers and working on their ham radio licenses are now caught up in a legal mess that’ll bankrupt them if theyre lucky, or send the to jail if theyre unlucky.

I like the idea of having a close little knot of friends who are on the same page as myself. It makes things easier, it gives me a chance to be myself, and the camaraderie and validation is quite nice. But if someone starts talking about something they shouldn’t, it gets tamped down…fast. It sucks to have to step on someone’s ideas and desire to express them but at this point in the game who needs the hassle of getting pinched for ‘conspiracy to….’?

So….moral of the story: nothing wrong with living a ‘secret life” as a survivalist. The trick is to make sure that things stay ‘survivalisty’ and don’t drift into something that others could, rightly or wrongly, construe as ‘dangerous extremist’. This article about the guys in Alaska sounds like a good example of a buncha guys that started out with noble intentions and somehow got sidetracked into becoming something they now wish they hadn’t. Don’t be those guys.

Article – Wildlife agents kill black bear after attack on camper in Bob Marshall

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Satterfield said a team of wildlife agents flew into the remote area by helicopter to track down the animal, which they spotted 30 yards from the injured man’s campsite. The bear had pepper spray on its fur and blood in its claws, he said.

 

Pepper spray is not the panacea that some would have you think it is. Then again, neither are bullets. I’ve only come across bears a couple times when I’ve been out fishing or hunting. Once, I came across a cub standing in the middle of the logging road at which point every sense went on alert asking “where’s momma bear?”. I was a bit undergunned that time since all I had was my P35 with me. Second time was when I was quietly sitting on the side of a hill and saw a black bear come running across my field of view, follower a few moments later by my hunting buddy running after it. Apparently he liked to chase black bears because if you got the running downhill, their butt end would eventually flip over their head and they’d go cartwheeling down the hill. Whatever. I was a little better armed that time with a FAL.

Sometimes bear spray works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes bullets work, sometimes they don’t. Play it safe and cover all the bases.

True story: I met the guy who developed the Counter Assault bear spray. He’s the guy in the promotional literature with blood all over his head from being mauled only moments before the picture was taken. Back then the stuff was sold as ‘pepper spray’ and the words ‘bear repellent’ on the can had been crossed out. I asked why and was told that to sell it as pepper spray for use against people was perfectly cool, but to market it as bear repllenet you had to do studies to show that it gave no lasting injuries to the bear. Go figure.

 

Link – Company Selling Zombie Preparedness Kit For $24,000

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Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) – Preparing for a zombie apocalypse does pay off, but it’s hard work. Although battling the hordes of eBay bidders and gathering everything piecemeal could be one preferred method, an Illinois-based company has created an easier way.

Optics Planet created a one-stop solution for zombie battlers everywhere called Z.E.R.O.

Z.E.R.O., short for Zombie Extermination, Research and Operations, is a kit that contains everything someone would need to keep alive in the end times. Initially priced at $31,375, the kit has been discounted to $23,999 with delivery available to the customer’s home or armed complex.

 

Okay, I wanna say two things about this…neither of which is directly related to zombies (sorry).

1) I’ve had some dealings with Optics Planet. Neither dealing resulted in a completed transaction. Problem? Well, let’s put it this way: call them to make sure that when they say they have something available and ready to ship they really, actually, honest-to-Crom have physical possession of that item at that time and at that location.

2) There is virtually no kit of anything….first aid, ‘survial kit’, whatever….that is as well thought out and as economical as anything you could put together on your own from stuff you sourced on your own. The trick in putting a kit of any type together is to have the knowledge and information to put the kit together properly. In my experience, especially with the internet, knowledge and information is pretty much free these days.

Now, I can understand the appeal of just writing a check and being done with something, but if you put your own kits together you have a better idea of what you can and can’t do because in the process of putting together that kit you have to weigh the merit, value, and utility of every piece of gear. That, my friend, is how you gain knowledge. Sure, you can start off with someone elses recommended list and that works fine, but there really is no cookie-cutter solution to your needs. So while a pre-made kit of anything is a great place to start, it should never be the end of the equippage process but rather a beginning.