Ever since our Presidential election on November
4, 2008, shooters, hunters, and most all gun owners have been
stocking up on ammo, and buying those guns which they have been
wanting to buy for some time, but never had made it a priority,
until now. Also, many who have never owned a gun have been
buying one or more, as they now realize that Barack Obama
just might be able to do that which he has for many years
promised; to either ban certain firearms or greatly curtail
their use. Even folks that voted for Obama are now buying guns
and ammunition, in fear that he just might achieve his stated
goals of banning certain popular firearms, such as all
semi-automatic weapons. I don’t know why anyone would cast
their vote for a man who has pledged to stomp all over our
Constitution, but many gun owners did so. However, this piece is
not about Obama. That deed has been done, and we have a new
President coming into office shortly that the majority of
Americans apparently want. Regardless of your or my opinions
about the man, he will be President, unless something
intervenes. The point is, Barack Obama is the best gun salesman
since Oliver Winchester. November background checks for
firearms purchases have greatly exceeded anything previously on
record. Firearms wholesalers tell me that sales figures are
through the roof, and that they cannot keep popular
semi-automatics in stock. One of our largest makers of AR-15
rifles now has a two-year backlog of orders. Obama has been
great for firearms and ammunition sales, and he has not yet been
sworn in, neither with his hand on the Bible nor the Koran. How
about you; do you have enough guns? Most of us probably do. I
have just enough to get by.
Besides the run on AR-15s, folks are stockpiling
ammunition like never before. That is a good thing. I have known
gun owners who, for many years, have owned many weapons but had
very little ammunition on hand. It never made sense to me for
someone to buy an AR-15, several thirty-round magazines, and a
box of twenty cartridges. If you have a gun, you should have a
supply of ammunition to feed it. Ammo sales are up, way up. Even
before the election, ammo sales in the US were steadily climbing
for several months. After the election, sales sky-rocketed. At
the huge gun show in Tulsa right after the election, ammo was
selling like beer in Sturgis. On the internet, many companies
who deal in high volume ammo sales are sold out, and not even
taking backorders. Shooters are scared, and rightly so, as
several states already have bills before their legislatures to
ban certain types of ammunition, and to greatly tax ammo sales
to the point that folks cannot afford to shoot. Do you have
enough ammunition? Most of us probably do not.
What about other things? While Gunblast.com is
about firearms and ammunition, there are a few things that are
more essential to human life. I dealt with the firearms needs
that most of us might have in a disaster in my piece on Homeland
Security a couple of years ago. What about water? Last
week, as I was watching the news one morning, the nation was
focused upon a water main break in a large suburb of DC,
concerned over the welfare of a few people trapped in their
cars. As I watched the rescues, I was thinking that all of that
water was headed somewhere when the pipe broke, and that many
families were going to be without water for awhile. That started
me thinking about the aftermath of hurricane Katrina a few years
ago, and the pictures on TV of people fighting to get bottled
water. There was water all around them, but none fit to drink.
People knew that the hurricane was coming, were told to leave,
yet they stayed, without food or water. What would you do if
suddenly your water supply was cut off? Do you have enough? For
how long? Water is essential to human life. Some of us living in
the country have wells for our water, yet no means of getting
the water from the ground without the help of an electric pump.
If that is your situation, do you have a generator, and enough
fuel to run it? For how long? If the electricity is off, the
local gas station can’t pump fuel. If you have a well, a good
reliable mechanical pump that needs no power or a good well
bucket is useful to have on hand. Two weeks ago, I was in New
Hampshire when that ice storm hit. I was staying at a nice
motel, but we had no electricity, and no water. I had flown up
there on an airplane, and was pretty much helpless to get water,
just like everyone else around there, and just like most every
city-dweller in the nation, I was dependent upon government and
public utility services to keep me alive. I was draining water
from the ice bucket to brush my teeth. It wasn’t a good
feeling to be without water. However, that incident got me to
thinking. People who live in cities are even more dependent upon
others to keep them alive than are the rest of us. When services
are shut down, we expect them to be back up and running soon.
What if they are not? Would you bet your life on it? If you live
in a city, and do not have supplies, you certainly are betting
your life, as well as the lives of those whom depend upon you
for their daily needs.
Getting back to the disaster in New Orleans, the
hurricane was not the entire problem. People who live there
depend upon the government to build and maintain the levees, and
the levees failed. They depend upon the government to maintain
the pumps to pump out the floodwaters, and the pumps failed.
They depend upon the police for protection from looters and
other criminals, and the police failed. Many police officers
abandoned their jobs, and some police officers were even caught
looting private property. The police disarmed and stole the guns
from private citizens! The police not only abandoned the
citizens of New Orleans and some outlying parishes, but went so
far as to take away their only means of self-protection! You
might say that you would never give up your guns, but you would.
When police are pointing rifles at your face and demanding that
you comply, you will do so, or be shot. They even have a little
badge on their chest that gives them a license to do so. Here we
are years later, and the courts have now ruled that the police
were wrong, but that does you no good when you have to protect
yourself, and the ones whom are paid and sworn to protect you
turn against you. I have a really good friend who is an officer
in one of the police agencies that participated in disarming the
citizens of the gulf coast. I asked him recently about this. I
was glad when he assured me that he refused to participate in
stealing weapons from the citizens. However, there were many
cops who did participate, and I am disgusted by their actions.
They should not be police officers. It was a similar situation
with the LA riots several years ago. The police abandoned the
citizens, leaving them to fend for themselves. The only people
not burned and looted were the store owners who had weapons, and
stayed to protect their property. At least in LA, the police
left the playing field, and didn’t side with the rioters. The
meaning of all of this is that in a disaster, not only are the
police not going to protect you, they just might be your biggest
enemy. If the power is off and the water is off and rioters are
outside, do you have enough? Nothing at all wrong with stocking
up on ammo, but if you are thirsty enough, you will trade a case
of 5.56mm for a gallon of water.
How about food? Having enough is not only a
problem for city folks, but for those in the suburbs and the
countryside as well. Even many rural people depend upon a
community water supply, and most of us do not have much food
stocked up either. How much do you need? Nobody knows. I often
hear country folks state that they can always shoot a deer or
catch some fish, and that is certainly a plus, but even if you
can venture outside to hunt or fish, there is no guarantee of a
successful hunt, or that the fish will be biting. I think that
it is not excessive at all for a family to have at least two
weeks food stocked up for each member of the family. It
doesn’t have to be some specialty freeze-dried survival pouch
of food which must be re-hydrated with your limited water
supply. Also, having a hundred pounds of rice ain’t enough.
Rice must be cooked, and also needs water. I like to stock up on
canned Spam and other canned meats. The stuff keeps
forever in a suitable place, and needs no preparation. Vacuum
sealed candy bars are good to have also. They pack a lot of
calories into a small space, and keep very well. Canned peaches
packed in heavy syrup have the food and drink in one convenient
can, taste great, and need no preparation. There are lots of
things that keep well, require no refrigeration, and are good to
eat. You get the idea. Having enough to ride out a natural or
man-made disaster is always a good idea, but how much is enough?
I don’t have the answer. I do not know what is coming.
There are other things that should also be on
hand., like a good first-aid kit, and enough of your
prescription medicines to get you through whatever time you will
be on your own. Where you live has a lot to do with what you
need. If you live in a large city, your main concern might be
how to safely get out of there, and how to carry what you need
with you. If you live in the country with a good supply of water
and meat on the hoof, you will need to be concerned with
protecting that stuff, as those who have not prepared will be
coming your way. Cash might be very handy. ATM machines might
not be working. On the other hand, cash might be as worthless as
any other paper. Who knows? Some things are only a concern on a
nation-wide disaster level. Most disasters are local or
regional, and eventually, the food and water trucks will show
up, and you need only be worried about what to do until they get
there, in a few days. However, when help does arrive, if it
does, those who show up might not necessarily be your friends.
The point is, we don’t know what lies ahead. It could be a
natural disaster, or even economic collapse. We have been pretty
close to that lately, on a world-wide scale. It could be a
terrorist attack on your city water supply. It could be war. In
the US, most public services run like a fine machine, and
groceries flow into the back doors of the stores at the same
rate that they flow out the front. However, it is naïve to be
unprepared, and in some cases, foolish. How much is enough? You
can stockpile enough water, food, and other supplies for
yourself and your family, but what about your neighbors? If they
do not prepare, are you prepared to stop them from trying to
share yours? That is a hard thing for most of us to even
consider. What about those little kids living down the hall in
the apartment building or down the road from you? You have
enough water for yourself, but would you let a baby die of
thirst? I certainly hope that I would never turn anyone way, but
then again, how much stuff can a person store? Even thinking
about such things is difficult and unpleasant for most of us,
and thus we do nothing. We don’t prepare. We have no stores of
food, water, or other necessities. We are not prepared for even
a two-day outage when a water main breaks. We don’t have
enough food on hand to last a week, and worst of all, we have no
plan. We walk through our daily lives knowing that when we turn
the handle, water will flow, and that the grocery store will
always have food on the shelves. If we get sick or injured, we
think that that the doctors will always be at the hospital, and
that the police are only minutes away. As we have seen before,
the water can stop, the grocery stores can go up in flames, the
hospitals are overwhelmed, and the police run away. This is not
a condemnation of our system or our public servants. Even now,
in good times, most hospitals are short on room. They are not
prepared for a disaster. The police will have other things to
worry about, like their own families. Even when all is well and
things are running smoothly, most of our police forces are under-staffed
and under-funded. In a large-scale emergency, you are on your
own. No one is coming to help. You are your own police force,
your own doctor, your own grocer, and your own firefighter. You
have to supply for the needs of yourself and your family. Do you
have enough?
Jeff
Quinn
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