I’m not the most organized person in the world. I’m scattered brained and like to play things by ear. This can be both a blessing and a hindrance. It makes dealing with situations that pop up easy but bad for when I overlook something important. The later occurred while I was on vacation. I was all excited to do some guerrilla camping in my trek light hammock. In fact I had been highly anticipating getting to sleep in it and get a review done. When about half way into an eight hour road trip to New Orleans I realized that I did not bring either of my two hammocks. I packed quickly without using a checklist and ended up spending three cramped nights sleeping in a car with two others. I am still cramped and sore.
A few weeks ago I was contacted by the guys that run ParaVival and asked me if I would be interested in reviewing one of their bracelets. I love reviewing things and badly needed a new paracord bracelet. My old one was a crappy one from REI and was too thin. Also this gave me an opportunity to get one in the Survivalpunk colors of black and red. Basically wins all around.
I’m back from vacation and have one guest post left to run from the great folks at Dan’s Depot via Craig Caudill. I’m happy to be running a hunting article since this is an area I have no expirience in and am in the process of trying to learn. Enjoy the last guest post I’ll return on Monday.
Up today I have a guest post from one of my friends, Dave from TNgun. Dave in addition to being a blogger, Youtuber, Firearms Instructor is also an author of Understanding the Use of Handguns and the upcoming 52 Projects for a Self Reliant Life. Like myself Dave was also a guest on The Survivalpodcast. Today he has for us both an article and a video on why you should test fire your weapons after cleaning them. Enjoy the great article and video!
I want to share a tip with you that I have heard several times over the years, especially in law enforcement trainer circles, but have never actually seen a time when it happened to someone I know (until last week).
If you go out to a firing range and engage in a little target practice, hopefully you will then clean your gun afterwards. I know that this is something that is falling out of favor with the fans of the plastic fantastic, but believe me – even modern polymer guns need to be taken care of and cleaned once in a while.
Part of cleaning a gun involves function checking the gun after cleaning to ensure you put everything back in the right way. Typically you will check the slide lock and release, the safeties, magazine release, and will pull the trigger on the unloaded (and checked) gun to see if you hear a click.
Now 99 times out of a hundred if you do this and here the click of the firing pin your gun will work when called upon. However 999 out of a 1000 you can leave your home and not need your gun. Those with a self-protection mindset don’t like to gamble, and demand their defense guns work 100% of the time. As David Sensing said “ Guns are like parachutes. You may never need one, but if you do, you will need it real bad. And if you need one and don’t have one, you will probably never need one again. Or anything else.”
With target guns, cool barbeque guns, hunting guns or whatever else you keep a gun for, this tip may not be appropriate – but I have adopted this with all of my self-defense firearms.
When I break down and clean any guns that I stake my life on, once I have function checked them, I fire a single shot through it.
This gives me 100% confidence that the gun was put together correctly.
I have been told horror stories of officers cleaning their guns after the annual pistol qualification, cleaning it and dropping it back in their holster and then working all year without ever thinking about it – then finding out at the next year’s qualification that their gun broke or was put together wrong and they went all year with a non-functioning gun.
Personally I always took this as an urban legend, until last week when a former NRA pistol instructor student (and a licensed firearm manufacturer with a SOT license)
Told me that he witnessed it.
What happened was the shooter cleaned their gun with a cotton swab, and little wisps of cotton found their way into the firing pin channel and caused the firing pin to bind up just enough to cause a misfire.
This is like my article on checking your duty ammunition, statistics are such that you may never have a problem, but I find that luck is caused by preparation – and the more I do to keep Murphy away the less he comes around.
I want you to be safe, and never have to use your gun in a life threatening situation, BUT if you do get attacked I goal is to ensure that the innocent win the encounter and the bad guy is thwarted.
Update: I ran this yesterday while on my way back in the car. When I copied and pasted the article the formatting went right out the window and this beautiful article became impossible to read. It is all fixed now and readable. Once again I would like to thank the guys at Zombease for letting me run this post while I’m on vacation. If you have not I suggest you check out what they are doing and give them a like on Facebook.
From use in medical treatments, to simple gardening, water treatment, crafting and more, activated charcoal has proven to be an indispensable resource for thousands of years the world over. It is both readily available and easy to make at home, making it one of the easiest preparations you can make towards outliving the undead.
Only use natural charcoal that is additive and extender free, fuel soaked briquettes and charcoal with extenders can be dangerous to use for the majority of the things listed below.
