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Emergency Supplies
May. 28th, 2009 06:19 pmThe conventional wisdom is that when picking a firearm for emergencies, choose one chambered in a common military or police cartridge. In the US that would primarily be .45 ACP, 9X19, .40 S&W, 5.56X45 and 7.62X51 these days. The idea being that stocking up on ammo ahead of time would be cheap and easy, and that even if all else failed, those cartridges would still be available, since they are in such common use and stocked by police agencies and military bases.
However, due to a combination of having two wars going on and some conservative panic over the election of a Democrat, millions of people in this country have heeded that advice. Now, when you can find ammunition in one of those calibers it is about twice what it was two years ago.
This is rather like the Great Johnny Carson Toilet Paper Shortage, of several years ago. Carson, during one of his monologues, mentioned a minor shortage of one brand, due to some technical glitch. The next day shelves all over the US emptied of all brands of toilet paper. Government pleas that the only shortage was being caused by hoarding and that even the company mentioned was still producing *some* toilet paper and the others were producing at full volume were obviously lies, since there was no toilet paper on the shelves.
I would imagine that some people still have a closet or basement shelf full of old toilet paper from this episode.
Keeping proficient with a handgun requires a lot of practice. The amount of ammunition required surprises people not aware of the difficulty in maintaining this skill. I have a small stash, and I reload, so I'm not currently hurting, but this hoarding has actually cut into even primer and bullet supplies. I figure I'm good for a while, though. In a couple of years I'll be watching for yard sales where the now precious ammunition is selling four a fraction of the current price.
However, due to a combination of having two wars going on and some conservative panic over the election of a Democrat, millions of people in this country have heeded that advice. Now, when you can find ammunition in one of those calibers it is about twice what it was two years ago.
This is rather like the Great Johnny Carson Toilet Paper Shortage, of several years ago. Carson, during one of his monologues, mentioned a minor shortage of one brand, due to some technical glitch. The next day shelves all over the US emptied of all brands of toilet paper. Government pleas that the only shortage was being caused by hoarding and that even the company mentioned was still producing *some* toilet paper and the others were producing at full volume were obviously lies, since there was no toilet paper on the shelves.
I would imagine that some people still have a closet or basement shelf full of old toilet paper from this episode.
Keeping proficient with a handgun requires a lot of practice. The amount of ammunition required surprises people not aware of the difficulty in maintaining this skill. I have a small stash, and I reload, so I'm not currently hurting, but this hoarding has actually cut into even primer and bullet supplies. I figure I'm good for a while, though. In a couple of years I'll be watching for yard sales where the now precious ammunition is selling four a fraction of the current price.
