09:24 – It was 60.9F (16C) when I took Colin out at 0630, overcast. We’re supposed to start seeing the effects of the hurricane late this afternoon or this evening, with heavy rains and wind tomorrow and Monday.
A couple people emailed me about the bump-fire stocks. They’d attempted to order one before any new regulations come into effect, and found that there are none to be had. Again, I wouldn’t worry about it.
First, anyone can produce a very high rate of fire with an AR-15 simply by pulling the trigger as quickly as possible. It may not be up to the 800 or 900 RPM cyclic rate of the bump stock, but it’ll be closer to full auto than what most people would expect. Back in the 70’s, I tried this and had someone use a stopwatch to time how long it took me to empty a 30-round magazine. About 4.5 seconds, which meant I was firing about 400 RPM. That’s roughly what an M3 Grease Gun SMG does.
Second, back before bump stocks were introduced, several vendors sold modified triggers for AR-15’s. These flick triggers were designed to allow you to fire rounds as fast as you could vibrate your finger on the trigger. I assume they’re still available, but I have no interest in those, either.
Yesterday morning, Barbara suggested we repackage the 50-pound sack of flour that was sitting in the laundry room. So we transferred the flour into 19 of the 1.75-liter Tropicana Orange Juice bottles, at an average of 2 pounds, 10.1 ounces per bottle. (Ranging from 2’8.9″ in the lightest to 2’14.1″ in the heaviest.) We’ll add oxygen absorbers, label them, and haul them downstairs today.
That 50 pounds of flour totals 83,160 calories (1,663 calories/lb), or about one person-month’s worth of raw calories, assuming 2,750+ calories per day. Looked at another way, it’s sufficient for 25 two-loaf batches of bread dough, 50 pancake meals for four people, or (with 60 pounds of cornmeal) about 180 batches of cornbread.
Nor will we worry about shelf-life. In heavy PET bottles with oxygen absorbers, it’ll stay good for a long, long time. LDS rates their white flour at 10 years shelf life, and they’re conservative. I’ve mentioned before that back in the 70’s I ate bread made from white flour that had been stored in canning jars for 25 years or so. The bread tasted normal. The raw flour had a tannish cast and caked badly, but it had no unusual odor, and merely sifting it eliminated the caking.
Barbara also mentioned that she wanted to go through our stock of LTS canned goods to look for pop-top cans. She decided independently that they aren’t nearly as good for LTS as standard cans that require a can opener, and she’s right. The integrity of the can is paramount for LTS, and pop-top cans have been scored for easy opening. That calls into question the long-term integrity of the can, as far as we’re concerned.
So Barbara wants to locate all of the pop-top cans and move them from the LTS food room downstairs to the upstairs pantry. We’ll use them, assuming they pass the sniff test, but we’ll avoid buying anything else in the pop-top cans.