Category: news

Saturday, 29 August 2015

08:08 – When I opened the morning paper, I was surprised to see a full-page color spread devoted to emergency preparedness. I’d forgotten that September is officially National Emergency Preparedness Month. Of course it was the usual inadequate 3-day list that FEMA pushes, with no mention of being prepared to defend yourself, but it’s better than nothing. The sad thing is that probably 90% of the American public aren’t prepared even at this level.

Of course, that percentage varies with circumstances and region. Right now, for example, a much higher percentage of the population of South Florida is preparing to hunker down to await the arrival of a hurricane. Before long, though, it’ll be back to business as usual for them.

More science kit stuff for us this weekend.


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Friday, 28 August 2015

07:33 – Who would have believed even a few years ago that the European financial crisis, which remains an existential threat to the EU, would turn out to be a mere sideshow? The real threat now is the invasion of Europe by millions of undesirables, mostly muslims. Americans who are rightly concerned about the invasion of the US by millions of Mexican undesirables should thank their lucky stars. Sure, a disturbingly high percentage of those Mexican wetbacks are murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and other scum, but most illegal Mexican immigrants want nothing more than a better life, albeit at taxpayer expense. The muslims who are invading Europe have no intention of assimilating. They intend to make Europe theirs, another outpost of their perverted so-called culture.

And Europe has even fewer controls on illegal immigration than the US does. As of now, Europe has essentially no national borders, and would have no way to defend them against such an invasion even if it did. Even the UK, Europe’s last bastion of semi-sanity, has already been invaded by upwards of five million who were born outside not just the UK but the EU, and Merkel is currently attempting to force the UK to accept hundreds of thousands more of them. Per year. Will there always be an England? Not the way things are going now.

Hint to Europe: the only way to respond to such an invasion is to use armed force. These aren’t “refugees” or “immigrants”. These are invaders, and the proper response is to slaughter them wholesale until they realize that they aren’t welcome in Europe. If Italy had any sense, it wouldn’t be using its navy to rescue these invaders. It would be cordoning off its waters with gunboats with orders to sink any boat or ship attempting to enter their waters illegally. If the UK had any sense, it would block its end of the Chunnel with military forces with orders to machine gun anyone attempting to enter illegally. Haul the bodies in garbage trucks to the sea and toss them to the sharks. Because that’s what these invaders are: garbage. Men, women, and children. None of them belong in Europe, let alone the UK.

Truth be told, it’s too late for continental Europe. It’s toast. Even if it had the will, which it doesn’t, it no longer has the means. The barbarians are not just at the gates, but among them. The muslim invasion has succeeded. But the UK at least still has a chance, albeit a small one, to stem this tide and fight off the invaders. But I’ll be surprised if the UK takes any effective measures to defend itself. The British government isn’t what it once was, nor is the RN, the RAF, or the British Army.

I finished season one of Jericho (2006) on Netflix streaming. This is my third time through. Barbara and I watched it once on DVD soon after it ran originally and then I convinced her to watch it a second time on Netflix streaming a year or so ago. It gets better and less confusing with multiple viewings.

This time through, I’m appreciating more just how nuanced the plotting and writing are. I could have done without the terrorist plot thread that runs through the whole series. I’d have preferred they just deal with the aftermath, its effects on a small community, the personalities, and how they deal with it, but that’s a minor nit. Within the limitations of a network TV series, they did an excellent job. Sure, there are quite a few minor issues with it. For example, a month or two after the EOTAWKI, they have a group gathered in someone’s home, with the room illuminated by literally dozens of candles and battery lanterns. One would think that at that point they’d be trying hard to conserve candles and batteries. And the writers seem to think that barricades of old cars and wooden pallets will stop bullets, when of course they won’t even slow them down much. But again, those are minor nits. The situations and scenarios are realistic, as is the behavior of the many characters. I wish it had run for more than a season and a half.

If you’re at all concerned about the state of things, I’d strongly recommend that you binge-watch this series. Watch it two or three times, and think about it. Think about how you’d deal with the issues that they bring up. It’s fiction, not a non-fiction preppers’ manual, but a key part of prepping is mental preparedness, deciding what you’ll do if a particular thing happens. For that, Jericho is excellent.

Nearly all of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff, but here’s what I did to prep this week:

  • I bought a case of two dozen 12-ounce cans of Harvest Creek Pulled Pork from Costco. I wanted to compare this product against the Keystone Meats pulled pork, which Barbara thinks is just okay in barbecue sandwiches. If she likes this stuff at least as well as the Keystone product, we’ll standardize on it for pulled pork. I’d been paying Walmart $3.59/pound for the Keystone pork in 28-ounce cans. The 12-ounce cans of Harvest Creek pork are $3.33/pound, and are also a better size for us than the 28-ounce cans. Keystone pork is available in 14.5-ounce cans, but at a noticeably higher price per ounce.
  • I bought another case of two dozen 11-ounce cans of Crider Chicken Bologna from Costco. I tried a can of this mechanically-separated chicken. It’s okay, if a bit bland, but it is cheap meat protein at under $2/pound. It can be sliced for sandwiches or cut into chunks for stir-fry, stews, casseroles, etc. It’s basically just chicken meat.

With what we already have, that’ll do for now in terms of shelf-stable meats, other than periodically replacing what we use. If we ever do need to eat solely from long-term storage, our diet will be considerably lighter in meat than it is now, but we’ll have enough to get along.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.


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Thursday, 27 August 2015

07:56 – Many of the alternative news sites are claiming that the shootings in Virginia yesterday are identical to the Charleston church shootings a couple of months ago, a racist shooter killing people of another race and then posting a long racist manifesto. The white shooter in Charleston was described by MSM reports as a white racist targeting innocent black people simply because they were black, which is an accurate summary. The black shooter in Virginia was described by MSM reports as a troubled man who targeted former co-workers in an incident of workplace violence, and then posted a long racist manifesto. The implication is that the Virginia murders were not racially motivated, or at least not exclusively so, and that while the Charleston shooter was an evil racist, the Virginia shooter was merely mentally ill. There’s a kernel of truth in that, because the Virginia shooter didn’t go out and shoot up a bunch of random white people but instead targeted two specific white people who were known to him. But the effect is the same, regardless of the two shooters’ specific motivations. Charleston gave ordinary black people yet another reason to mistrust whites; Virginia gave ordinary white people yet another reason to mistrust blacks. As if either group needed that.

I received the following email from a long-time reader, and am posting it with his permission. I think it provides a valuable perspective on prepping.

Hello Bob!

If you are willing to share, I would love a copy of chapter one of you next book. I think your openness about your writing process, in addition to the work you do in general, is one of the things I admire about what you do.

I am slowly working at building my stocks of useful supplies, food, weapons, medicine, etc. It has been on my list for several years now.

My life took a serious slide sideways five years ago, when my wife, Karen, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She passed away a few months ago, at 48 years old. I am rebuilding everything, almost from scratch, with a new house and what we had in storage. At the end of 2011 we sold our home and eventually moved into my sister’s house to afford medical expenses. About the only thing I gained from the last year Karen spent in hospice care were the medical supplies. I have bandages and medicines by the crate full.

I am sharing this, not for sympathy, but as an anecdote on how preparedness can help, even when disaster is limited to immediate family. It is a bit of a ramble. My apologies.

A few months before Karen was diagnosed with cancer, I was explaining to my daughter, then about ten years old, how even though we have a nice home and I have a good job, there is no guarantee that will always be true. We could lose the home suddenly, and may need to live in a way very different than before to survive. It turned out that we did.

Preparedness is not just about what you have in the cupboards. It is also communicating with your family, your dependents, about what could happen, and what you might do about it. It may not be a written plan, but a form of awareness and expectations. It is about being able to have reasoned discussions about possibilities, and not get stuck in a “this could never happen to us” frame of mind, thereby denying conversation. I avoided unsustainable debts, and now that our circumstances have changed, I am able to afford a home again. That took awareness and planning, and a family that realistically accepted the situation. There were tears and complaints, but no denial. We could always discuss issues freely, and make reasoned choices, even when we had no certainty on what might happen in a week or even the next day.

I’ll leave out my gripes about health care insurance.

Interestingly, my daughter, soon to be sixteen, is now fully onboard with “prepping”. She told me yesterday she is interested in being more comfortable with different guns and how to be a better shot. She already has basic self-defense skills, and various martial-arts weapons, which is nice. She also likes that we are building our food stocks and even suggested we have a practice weekend using only stored supplies. This was not from direct prompting by me, but her realization that it makes sense should the world change around her. I think our experience was a lesson, and she learned from it. Another good thing, I guess, to come from an unpleasant time.

I am also hoping I can un-pack my lab gear soon, which I mothballed. Cancer sucks.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for doing what you do. It is inspiring.


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Wednesday, 26 August 2015

08:45 – The morning paper reports that a woman was killed Monday evening by a dog, which of course was described as a “pit bull”. Another woman who came to the first woman’s aid was also attacked. Fortunately for her, a cop arrived just in time to shoot the dog as it was attempting to drag her from the car in which she was trying to take refuge. The dog had apparently escaped from the owner’s home during a thunderstorm by climbing out of a window. No charges have been filed.

World stock markets are still in turmoil, with mixed results yesterday. The Chinese market was down yesterday by more than 7%,for a total loss of more than 20% over the last four days. The US market was down again, but only by about 1.3%. A few markets showed small gains yesterday, but the trend this morning is down. As I said, the real indicator will be the market closes this coming Friday. If the markets haven’t started to recover by then, things could get dire. Apparently, the hope is that investors will be bargain-hunting and start to scarf up these stocks. The problem is, equities are still way overvalued, so there still aren’t many real bargains to be found even at current prices. I make no attempt to predict the stock market. As far as I’m concerned, J. P. Morgan got it right about predicting the market, so there’s no point to wasting time reading predictions by so-called experts. What’s going to happen is what’s going to happen. We’ll all find out when it actually happens.


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Tuesday, 11 August 2015

07:34 – I see that authorities in Ferguson, Missouri have declared a state of emergency. Apparently, the underclass scum there are marking the anniversary of what’s-his-name’s suicide-by-cop by rioting, looting, burning, and shooting at cops. I suggest a new campaign name: Underclass Scum Lives Don’t Matter!

Because they don’t. I hope they all line up and the cops shoot them. It’d reduce the burden on the taxpayers. Haul the bodies out in garbage trucks and dump them in the landfill. Let the underclass areas burn to the ground. It’s a cheap form of urban renewal.

I don’t expect the violence to spread widely this year or even next year, but it could happen. If it does come to Winston-Salem while we’re still living here, we’ll be ready for it.

More work on science kit stuff today.


14:46 – We just matched our total kit sales for all last month. That isn’t bad for August 11th, which is still in the slower half of the month. I just took a break from building more kits. I’m always paranoid at this time of year that we’re going to run out of kits. With Barbara away on a trip next Sunday through the following Friday, we need to be as ready as possible for whatever happens while she’s gone.

At current run rates, we have about 10 days’ worth of kits in stock, assuming a normal mix of orders, with more a-building. What scares me is that we get unpredictable bulk orders, particularly at this time of year. A bulk order for 30 or 50 of one type of kit knocks all my plans askew. The best we can do is make sure that we have enough components and subassemblies available that we’d be able to build a big batch if necessary.

Email from Jen. She and her husband were thinking about going camping with Jen’s brother and his family last weekend, but they all decided to run another readiness exercise instead. They did completely without utilities, other than Jen’s husband keeping his cell phone on in case there was an emergency at his veterinary practice. They ate only from their long-term food stores, and instead of drinking stored water they used one of their water filters to treat the water from the rear of their property. No glitches this time. Everything went as expected.

Jen said her husband and brother actually seemed to enjoy the weekend. She and Claire enjoyed all but having to use primitive toilet facilities and doing without air conditioning. Still, Jen said that after doing it for a couple of days, she and Claire agreed that they could do it for a couple of months or even a year if they needed to, although it’d get kind of old. They decided to have their next readiness exercise late this year, when staying warm will be an issue.

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Tuesday, 4 August 2015

09:04 – Science kit sales are starting to ramp up nicely. The real crunch starts mid-month. In past Augusts, we’ve done 33% to 38% of total monthly sales during the first half of the month and 62% to 67% in the second half. That continues through about mid-September and then gradually tapers off before it hits another smaller peak in December and January.

I see that Puerto Rico has now joined Greece in official default. They’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. They had a $58 million debt payment due yesterday, and were able to scrounge up less than a million, putting them in default. Of course, the $58 million is a drop in the bucket compared to their $72 billion in outstanding debt, which they have no prospect of repaying. And there’s no provision in the law for them to declare bankruptcy. They’re toast, unless US taxpayers come to the rescue, which I’m betting is what will happen one way or another. Can’t let the banks and funds take a loss, you know. Private profit and taxpayers footing losses is the new normal.

Speaking of Greece, their financial markets opened yesterday for the first time in weeks. The result was predictable, a catastrophic slide comparable to Wall Street on Black Friday in 1929. And today is more of the same. Private investors in Greek stocks, banks, and bonds are being wiped out as you read this. I don’t think Greece has many skyscrapers, which is fortunate because otherwise there’d be lots of people jumping out of their windows, producing a hazard to pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks beneath. I have no sympathy for the Greeks. They spent themselves into this hole, and they’re going to experience biblical suffering as a result. I just hope the same is true for Puerto Rico, although I doubt that will happen. But if it did it might at least provide an object lesson for governments elsewhere.

More science kits to build and ship.


13:09 – I look back fondly to the days when I could remember the name of everyone who’d ever ordered a science kit from us, from day one on. Sitting here, I just realized that I can’t remember the names of even the people who’ve ordered nine kits so far today. My memory is a pale shadow of what it once was, but this is ridiculous.

It’s only going to get worse when Barbara retires from the law firm and comes to work more-or-less full time for our business. That’ll allow me to ramp things up to the point where we’re shipping at least four or five times as many science kits as we do now. So far, I’ve intentionally kept a low profile to keep demand manageable. In 2016 and beyond, we’ll be intentionally growing the business, introducing many new kits and addressing new market segments.

I still want to keep things home-based and avoid hiring any employees, but even within those constraints there’s a lot we can do to expand volume. When we first started up, I remember laughing at the idea that USPS would send a special truck to our house to pick up shipments if we needed them to. At the time, that seemed very unlikely to happen, but it may before too much longer. It’s actually happened a couple times already, when USPS showed up and I had 30 or 40 kits to ship that day. He had to take what he had room for in the truck, go back to the post office to drop off his load, and return to pick up the rest of my packages.

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Monday, 3 August 2015

07:58 – There’s usually no actual news in our morning paper, other than local stuff. But this morning I did read a new-to-me article about a 100% effective Ebola vaccine being rolled out in Africa. That’s very good news. There’s apparently some question about its long-term effectiveness, but that doesn’t really matter. Even if it’s effective for only six months, that’s more than sufficient to break the chain and prevent Ebola from spreading. There’s also apparently some question about the vaccine’s “safety” in children, which is obviously a non-issue compared to the alternative. If the US government and other first-world governments have any sense, they’ll require proof of recent inoculation for anyone attempting to enter the country after having been in Africa.

There was also an article about an unfortunate bakery owner in Denver who refused to bake a cake with an anti-gay message, as is that business owner’s right, and has now been sued for discrimination. A business owner has the absolute right to refuse service to anyone for any reason or for no reason at all. Laws that attempt to force business owners to comply with the progressive agenda are unconstitutional on the face of them, and should be strongly opposed regardless of one’s own political beliefs or those of the business owners whose rights are being trampled.

And there was a front-page article about a business owner downtown who discovered in his basement a large cache of Civil Defense food that was packaged in 1963. At that time, Winston-Salem was thought to be a high-priority target for Soviet nukes, and there were more than 50 public CD fallout shelters in Winston-Salem, not counting the hundreds more shelters in private homes and businesses. The food discovered in the basement was standard-issue CD hardtack biscuits and candy, and I’d bet that the food in the undamaged cans is still as good as it was the day it was packaged. The business owner discarded the damaged cans and restacked the good ones on shelves elsewhere in his basement.

Today I’ll be shipping science kits and building more. Lather, rinse, and repeat for the next couple of months.


10:47 – Another email from someone who wants to remain anonymous. He’s dipping his toe in the water as far as prepping, which is a good start. Few people make it further than just thinking about it.

I finally made two small steps in prepping. I now have a shelf for the basement, so I have someplace to store the food I buy on my first trip to Sam’s Club. I also bought a backpack to use as a bug out bag, and spent a couple of days at Gencon carrying ten to fifteen pounds of stuff with me. After a few miles of walking, I completely agree with your criticism of the book with the 260 pound thirty something carrying a 60 pound pack for 250 miles. I am taller and lighter than the fictional character, and I wouldn’t try 2.5 miles with a 60 pound pack. Although it has been a while since I was a 30 something.

I have decided to do a little bit every weekend to be more prepared.

For the next two weekends, I’m going to make runs to Sam’s Club for food and water.

The following weekend I’m going to make a bug out bag for my car.

The following weekend I’ll make a bug out bag for my wife’s car.

In four weeks I will be more prepared than 90 percent of the population. Which is really just a starting point.

I also need to keep developing my mind. More importantly, I need to develop the habit of regular exercise, because I’m carrying some weight that I don’t need to carry.

I agree with your premise that we are headed toward a dystopia. I suspect life will be filled with lots of little problems. The one potential big problem is that with all of President Obama’s forcing the electricity generation industry to quickly switch from coal to natural gas, we could have a natural gas shortage. Actually I think we would be in the midst of a natural gas shortage if not for hydraulic fracturing. If the environmentalists can figure out how to kill fracking, we’ll have a terrible natural gas (and electricity) shortage.

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Thursday, 30 July 2015

08:01 – Amazon changed its spiff a couple of weeks ago for Prime members who opt for no-rush shipping instead of Prime 2-day shipping. Until then, they were offering a $1 credit per order on ebooks and music purchases. I was just accumulating those $1 credits and using them toward buying e-books. Now, they offer a $5 credit/order on Prime Pantry orders, so I’m accumulating those. Not that it’s really much of a deal, because I can get most Prime Pantry items cheaper locally, but if I accumulate enough credits I’ll be able to get a Prime Pantry box or two for free. Of course, this provides an incentive for people to make multiple small orders instead of one larger one, but Amazon deals with this by not issuing the credit until the order actually ships. Presumably, if I put in a bunch of smaller orders, they’ll simply wait and combine those orders before shipping.

Speaking of orders, yesterday was an administrative day. I put in a bunch of orders for chemicals from different vendors and components for science kits. I was, for example, down to about a pound of rubber stoppers, so I ordered another 20 pounds from one vendor, along with a couple hundred inoculating loops and 5,000 plastic dropper pipettes. I ordered three kilos of salicylic acid from one vendor, two kilos of yeast from another, and a bunch of different chemicals from still another.

And yet another fatal shooting of a black victim by a white police officer, this one in Cincinnati. Well, a kind-of police officer. This guy was a university cop, and from the initial news reports it sounds like he was a psycho Barney Fife. If those reports are accurate, which of course is always questionable, this guy shot and killed a middle-age black man after making a traffic stop for a missing front license plate. The DA has already said publicly that this cop should never have been a cop, and apparently footage from the cop’s bodycam, which I haven’t seen, makes it pretty clear that the shooting was not justified. We’ll see if things degenerate into violent rioting and looting.

And, in a man-bites-dog local story, an on-line petition has been created to demand that Winston-Salem authorities remove a marker honoring the Black Panthers, on the basis that the Black Panthers were a violent, racist group.


10:34 – Well, I watched the video, and it doesn’t look to me as straightforward as the police brass and DA said. The cop seemed to behave politely and professionally during the first part of the encounter. I was surprised that he didn’t order the driver to get out of the car and that he allowed him to fish around in the glove box. And the driver did have an open bottle of booze in the car. At the point the cop ordered the driver to remove his seatbelt, presumably intending to order him to get out of the car, things went badly wrong in less than a second. It seemed that the driver was starting to make a run for it when the cop fired. I couldn’t tell for sure if the cop’s hand was inside the window and if he was struck by the window frame as the driver moved the car forward. At any rate, for me the video certainly doesn’t establish that this was a bad shooting.

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Monday, 13 July 2015

09:17 – This guy gets it: On Second Thought, Stick to Your Guns He understands that US supporters of the 2nd Amendment are going to keep our guns. They’re not for hunting. They’re not for recreational shooting. They’re for the reason that the 2nd Amendment was written in the first place: to keep the government in line.

And here’s a story about a Customer service shocker. Having dealt with this company frequently for years, it’s not shocking to me. What’s shocking is that it’s not the norm. It used to be.

The headlines are shouting that the Greek crisis is over. Not even close. All that that Marathon 17-hour session accomplished was Greece agreeing to even more stringent terms ahead of any discussions about a further bailout, in exchange for the EU providing a trickle of additional funding. Chances are there won’t be any future bailout, because that would require unanimous approval by all of the EU nations. The probability of that happening is close to zero. Even if Germany could somehow be persuaded to agree, there’s still Finland, Netherlands, Slovenia, Slovakia, and all three Baltic states, all of which are very strongly opposed to “lending” any more of their money to Greece.


10:33 – Email from Jen. She and her husband have been discussing buying a cabin up at the lake, about an hour’s drive from their home, at least under normal conditions. Interestingly, Jen, who is the strongly pro-prepping member of that couple, is opposed, while her husband is in favor.

Jen argues that it’s too far away, too expensive, might be impossible to get to if things really turn bad, and is a distraction from things they should be doing at home. I told Jen that I agree with her. Their home is already reasonably remote from the underclass. They have infrastructure already in place there, and a supportive group of friends and neighbors. If they were near a large city, that’d be one thing. Barbara and I are relocating in part because we’re currently inside the Winston-Salem city limits, entirely too close to large numbers of underclass scum. Jen and her husband are already located in an excellent location, so it makes sense to me that they should focus their efforts (and money) on improving where they are rather than looking for somewhere else to go. I could be wrong, but events are unpredictable, and as Frederick the Great said, “he who defends everything, defends nothing.”


15:22 – As if we needed more evidence, the Greeks are not the only lying weasels in this mess. The eurocrats are a bunch of lying liars as well. EU demands Britain joins Greek rescue fund

The UK needs to withdraw from the EU immediately. The EFTA (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein), none of whom are EU members, has been encouraging the UK to withdraw from the EU and join them. That would make particular sense for the UK, which was one of the founding members of the EFTA. By doing so, the UK would get what it really wants–free trade with the EU–without any of the political or economic entanglements that are part of EU membership.

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Thursday, 9 July 2015

07:51 – I laughed this morning when I read a page two article with the headline Tom Selleck accused of stealing water for California ranch. Until I read the article, I assumed that he was accused of taking more than his allotted share from a stream or river. No, as it turns out. Apparently, he has an avocado farm and is accused of pulling a tanker truck up to a fire hydrant, filling the truck, and driving off. Not just once, but regularly over the past two years. I’m guessing he may be forced to resign in disgrace as the police commissioner of New York City.

When the alarm went off as usual at 0645 this morning, I realized that that won’t be happening for much longer. Barbara’s last day at work is 30 September, and after that we’ll have no need for an alarm clock. It’ll be nice to sleep until we wake up naturally. Of course, Colin counts as part of “naturally”. Like all of our Border Collies, he decides when we’ve slept enough. I call them Border Roosters.

More kits to ship today, and I need to build a new batch of forensic science kits, which means I need to put together subassemblies today.


12:58 – Email from Jen. She’d mentioned before that she and her brother both wanted to devote additional resources to prepping, but both of their spouses were comfortable with what they’d already done. Jen’s husband said last evening that the more he read news articles, the more concerned he was getting about where things are heading. He asked her if she thought it’d be a good idea to spend some of the cash in their bank account on more tangible items, particularly firearms and ammunition and more particularly on tactical rifles for everyone. I replied that of course I thought that was a good idea, because hard assets are better than electronic assets in a bank account. It’s not like the price of guns and ammo is going down anytime soon. I recommend entry-level tactical rifles like the Ruger AR-556, along with a dozen spare OEM magazines and 1,000+ rounds for each. What do you folks think?

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