08:16 – The supply of 5.56/.223 ammo is already drying up. I just checked Cabela’s for 5.56/.223 ammunition, and it seems that they’re no longer selling it on their website. I suspect that Emperor Obama’s diktat may have something to do with that. He seems determined to use his last two years in office to destroy what’s left of our Constitutional rights by ignoring Congress and the Supreme Court and ruling by executive decree. Sometimes I almost wish I were religious so that I could hope he’d rot in hell.
Those of you who are prepping might be well advised to treat firearms acquisition as a matter of urgency. If you’re not yet armed, drive down to Dick’s or Gander Mountain or Walmart and buy a 12-gauge riot shotgun or three. Do it today. The best bargain going in this class is the Mossberg Maverick 88 security model, which currently sells for less than $200, but any short-barrel Mossberg 500 or a Remington 870 is also a good choice. While you’re there, pick up as many buckshot (#4 or #00) or rifled slugs as you can afford, but at least 100 to 250 rounds per gun. Do it today, but expect the place to be crowded.
12:19 – Barbara and I just got back from a Costco run. Paul and Mary were busy this weekend, so we took advantage of the extra space in the Trooper by filling two shopping carts and buying bulky stuff like cases of toilet paper, paper towels, and paper napkins. I got very little shelf-stable food this run. Two 3-liter bottles of olive oil, a few #10 cans of fruit and vegetables, six jars each of spaghetti sauce and applesauce, and a couple 5-pound cans of lemonade powder.
As to firearms preparedness, might I add that the two components of modern ammunition which a home reloader cannot easily find or make for him/herself are primers and smokeless powder. Anyone who has reloading equipment should be sure to stock up on those too.
I would also add that every prepared household should own a .22lr calibre rifle or three and a few thousand rounds of ammunition. Again, making .22lr ammunition is not within the power of the hobbyist, so having enough on hand is essential.
Agreed on both counts; shotguns. .22LR and the ammo, ASAP. Very basic.
I need to get some powder and primers in here ASAP.
Temps rocketing into the 20s and 30s here over the next few days. O frabjous joy! Peeps around here treat it like summuh.
In .22LR, the most bang for the buck is the $150 Marlin Model 60. The Ruger 10/22 costs $100 or more additional but is also excellent if you don’t mind buying extra magazines, which are relatively expensive. As to ammunition, buy however much they’ll sell you.
That would be 50 rounds at a time or, more commonly, 0. There aren’t many gun shops around here and they’re low on ammo any time I stick my nose in. Non-chain hardware stores and Walmart sell ammo, but the hardware stores have been really low or stopped carrying and the local Walmart apparently has no one who can unlock the ammo cabinets; at least, I’ve never been able to track down someone who could manage to take some shells and .30-06 out so I could buy it.
Note that this is in New York, where the government would just as soon not allow any firearms in private hands at all. It hadn’t occurred to me until now to ask hardware store owners whether regulations are even tougher than they used to be. I’ll ask next time, if I remember.
I just did our dump run and talked to my gun guy there; he’s had his FFL since the 70s and does gunsmith and custom work out in the real rural sticks up here. He said he’s sold out of his AR 5.56, almost immediately; the big box stores are all out. He also said that this specific ammo is really not that worth worrying about, but the corresponding AR ammo being sold is also gonna run short. And once again Barry Soetero is the greatest salesman ever for the firearms industry; they’ll be back to three shifts at all the factories with mandatory overtime now.
He also said he just got two more orders to build custom AR’s for peeps and he makes $500 to a grand profit on each one he does.
Anyone here had any experience messing around with the Black Lightning .22 WMR semi-auto rifle put out by the Mauser guys? Looks interesting. It’s set up like an AR with lots of options and allegedly spits out .22WMR.
http://www.mauser.org/mitchell-black-lightning-rimfire-rifle/
“Barbara and I just got back from a Costco run.”
Thanks for the reminder; I gotta make sure my “Executive” membership is up to date and start making monthly runs there myself.
By the way, Mrs. OFD will be down in yer neck of the woods tomorrow; Charlotte, NC, for the week. She’s eager to see how much snow y’all got, mos def more than us, LOL.
She’s off the week after that and then will have a week in Mr. Lynn’s neck of the woods, sort of; San Antonio, where, during the week of 9/11, she was stranded with her staff when all the flights were grounded. The folks there treated her and her group like royalty, as did the Canadians in Newfoundland when Murkan flights had to land there. We do not forget. Ever.
We never forget our friends. We never forget our enemies.
“Sometimes I almost wish I were religious so that I could hope he’d rot in hell.”
If you were religious you might have found the Republican candidates in 2008 and 2012 sufficently palatable to vote for them.
What’s the shelf life of ammo? Is it fairly consistent or do some brands/calibre last longer than others?
“If you were religious you might have found the Republican candidates in 2008 and 2012 sufficently palatable to vote for them.”
Yikes.
I give up.
It seems to me that if Miles_Teg has nothing better to do than troll, he needs to go out and get laid or something. I suggest we drench him in Roo in Heat™ and drop him off in a mob of kangaroos. (Make sure to bring a camera when we drop him. Remember the internet mantra: pix or it didn’t happen.)
Let’s not be hasty; after all, that (former) commie PM hen may now be available.
Centerfire ammo has an essentially unlimited shelf life, although interestingly the old corrosive-primed ammo from WWII and before is more stable than modern non-corrosive primed rounds. The difference isn’t huge. With 60-year-old corrosive primed ammo, you might see one failure to fire in every 500 to 1,000 rounds. 60-year-old non-corrosive primed might be twice that. Of course, a lot depends on the type and grade of ammo. I suspect that 70-year-old .50BMG intended for infantry use might have, say, a 0.25% failure rate, while the same intended for use in aircraft guns might have a tenth that failure rate. (Fighter pilots couldn’t climb out on the wing in the middle of a dogfight to clear a jam, so the ammo they used underwent much better QC.)
Rimfire ammunition isn’t well sealed against moisture. Vacuum-packed in Mylar it’d probably be good after 100 years just like centerfire stuff, but sitting in cardboard boxes you can have moisture problems that cause very high percentages of fail-to-fire.
I’ve shot thousands of rounds of military ammo that was 40, 50, 60, and more years old, including a lot of .30-06 that had WWI-era headstamps. We’d run into a bad batch once in a great while, but it was always stuff that had been sitting around in cardboard for decades. The stuff in sealed ammo cans was always about as reliable as the day it was made.
What’s the shelf life of ammo? Is it fairly consistent or do some brands/calibre last longer than others?
I have a .22 LR brick from 1978 or so sitting in my safe. Also several boxes of CCI .22 LR in their plastic cases from the 1980s. And quite a few .38 and .357 from the 1980s.
Is Obola trying to ban ALL 5.56 / .223 ammo? If so, that is a tough hill to climb.
I’ve been waiting on Obola to raise wildlife tax on ammo to $1 or $10. Per cartridge. Trying to ban ammo outright is a big stretch, even for him.
When ammunition becomes impossible to obtain legally and economically, just take it from people who already have it. Tip: police and many other government employees carry firearms and ammunition, and are not hard targets.
Not to mention all those CONEX boxes sitting around out there in the sticks filled with the usual gummint ammo, mainly 9mm, .40 and 5.56 from what I’ve read and heard.
And the various databases/records that can be hacked of who bought what truckloads of ammo.
BTW, I am still negotiating with Verizon about putting a cell phone tower on my five acre property. We have now reached the crazy ex-girlfriend phase. And no, I am not the girl here. These people are nuts, they are trying to get me to give them my financial disclosure and get into my mortgage on my nine acre property. I have told them to go away three times and they keep on coming back.
File a restraining order, like boyfriends and girlfriends gotta do sometimes.
Are they physically appearing on yer property, cowboy? Well cowboy up, and wire that bad boy real good with claymores.
Give Michael Douglas a call or watch “Fatal Attraction” again for tips…
Aw, man, Lynn has a creepy stalker. I’m so jealous! I’ve been trying to get a creepy stalker of my very own for years and just can’t manage it.
How do you know you don’t have a creepy stalker? Not all of them leave pretty drastic clues all over the landscape like the Glenn Close character.
I had one thirty years ago for a short while when I was still doing the cop gig; a fugly pig with glasses kept following me around on my beat and spying on me. I finally got rid of her. I didn’t need to get laid that bad.
Oh no, I am not smart enough to walk away. I keep on responding, like Pavlov’s dog, when they say something interesting. And then they want another disclosure or contracts. They have sent me four different contracts to sign in the last two weeks. A couple of them are multiple page monstrosities.
And to top it off, some dude wants to buy the five acre property and put an office building on it for his business. The problem is the property is appreciating at 10% per year (location, location, location) today and I am not ready to sell it. Today’s value is X per acre. The value in ten years might 2 X per acre. Or, it might be 0.25 X per acre if oil drops to $25.
Ah, I see what we have here…a rapacious Texas land baron…jealously holding onto his estates in hopes of maximizing profits at the expense of the less fortunate, the poor, the downtrodden… the huddled masses yearning to breathe free…
…oh wait, do I have that right? Is it “breathe free” or “live free,” as in endless free lunch?
Before our illustrious Attorney-General leaves office, perhaps he can have his minions pay a visit and seize your estates via eminent domain and simply turn it all over to any of zillions of incoming illegals…
Baron von Lynn, gets his comeuppance at long last…
Yup, trying to cover all my bases. Feel like I am in a game of twister.
I decided what do about my crazy ex-girlfriend. I sent her an email asking to double my rent and increase my upfront payment significantly. I see no downside here. If she acquiesces then I have enough money to get me interested. If she goes away then the twice daily phones calls go away. No downside!
Right on, Baron; you is rockin’ and rollin’ now!
Slap dat beotch upside her dam head, son!
Big Payday for the Baron soon!
…oh wait, do I have that right? Is it “breathe free” or “live free,” as in endless free lunch?
I’ve got a book series for you, “Beggars in Spain” by Nancy Kress:
http://www.amazon.com/Beggars-Spain-Original-Winning-Novella/dp/1612420575/
She genetically engineered the human race so that all you got to do is lay on the ground to absorb the essential nutrition.
Nope, she is the one who did the head slapping. She asked to contact my bank to get a workout clause in my mortgage that they would give Verizon preferential treatment if I were to file bankruptcy. That one turned on the slow burn. I have not even read the two page document yet.
Mr. OFD says:
Coulter’s, for instance. And mainly because of the virulent hate and loathing directed at her by the aforesaid Usual Suspects.
Ann Coulter’s latest article sums up who the real enemy is. ISIS or illegal crimmigrants. Yup, crimmigrants.
“I’ve got a book series for you…”
No time for contemporary speculative fiction…if I want a soporific, I look at OpenBSD documentation or the local cop blotter…
“…That one turned on the slow burn.”
This can’t be healthy, Mr. Lynn. I’d bail out totally on that caper yesterday.
And La Coulter is being just a bit ingenuous; she can’t be that dumb. The successive regimes are always fomenting endless overseas adventures, pretty much like Orwell describes them doing in “1984” and we have our One Minute Hates just like in that book.
“…If you don’t want to be killed, raped or maimed by illegal immigrants in your own country, I have no tips for you. There’s nothing you can do.”
Yeah there is, Ann; cowboy up and stay armed and ready to go at all times. Don’t bother whining to the 911 dispatchers. And let the buggers have the Southwest and their precious Aztlan and they can enjoy the coming blistering heat and dried up aquifer. Or have it out in endless gangbanger warfare with the brothers in the cities, who cares? Hasta la vista, amigos!
We ain’t gotta worry about them much around here; we got our own rubbish of the same race and ethnicity to deal with just up the road. And they pretty much know better than to fuck with us.
Lynn wrote:
“Or, it might be 0.25 X per acre if oil drops to $25.”
Oil prices are heading back up, aren’t they? Petrol here has gone from 99c per litre to $1.19 in the last three weeks.
Retail gasoline prices by country:
http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/
Oil prices are heading back up, aren’t they? Petrol here has gone from 99c per litre to $1.19 in the last three weeks.
There is only a faint correlation between the price of crude oil and gasoline. Gasoline in the USA is less than 90% crude oil, sometimes much less. There are additives such as ethanol and many other products, some of which are natural gas based (hydrogen, etc). Also, both crude and gasoline are distinct commodities and subject to market pricing. Plus, gasoline in the USA has many regional definitions such as California Summer, California Winter, Gulf Coast Summer, Gulf Coast Winter, etc, etc, etc. The main difference between summer and winter gasoline is the Reid vapor pressure specification (summer is less due to the higher temperature to prevent evaporation).
Plus there are two generic prices for crude, Brent and WTI. Traditionally WTI is 10% to 20% less than Brent. But, not always. And it is illegal in the USA to sell WTI outside the USA except to a couple of “friends”. But, you can take WTI, refine it, and sell the products outside the USA to your hearts content. I love our legal system!
http://www.oil-price.net/
After I said all that useless drivel, everything I read says that WTI will probably go through another 50% price drop down to $25/barrel. No telling how long as the crude oil production is still rising in the USA and will probably hit 11 or 12 million barrels/day before the peak in 2016 or 2017.
Thanks for that interesting info, a common rule of thumb here is that a $1 frop in the price per barrel of oil translates in to a 1c per litre drop in retail petrol prices.
I think a price standard based on Singapore Tapis is the rule here, although when oil prices are discussed WTI and Brent are mentioned.
I think we no longer refine our own petrol here in Oz. I think it’s all done in Singapore.
I think we no longer refine our own petrol here in Oz. I think it’s all done in Singapore.
I would bet that you have a refinery or two hidden somewhere. Most countries regard crude oil processing as a strategic need in case of war, world shortages, etc.
You certainly are building LNG liquefaction plants right now. I think that there are eight ??? trains in production in Australia with another eight ??? trains being built or planned (sheer guesses on my part). Each modern LNG liquefaction train is good for around one BCF (billion cubic feet) per day. A couple of my friends at Chevron and Bechtel are working on them, mostly outside the country due to immigration laws.
Well, the Port Stanvac refinery in the southern suburbs of Adelaide was shut down a decade ago, and is currently being demolished. They have a water desalination plant there now, twice the capacity that was recomended (thanks SA government) that is sitting idle because the drought broke and we have enough water from the Murray. But we’re paying heaps to the company that runs it…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Stanvac_Refinery
Turns out we are refining 1/3 of our own petrol. (Thanks Google.)
Shell has plans for major gas production in/offshore of Oz. Near Perth, IIRC. They are also producing off the West coast.