Finding any ammo right now is getting harder and more expensive. I’ve been limiting my range trips to try to keep more ammo on hand. That of course leads to not getting enough practice. It’s a viscous cycle of not finding enough ammo to shoot and to store. I’m starting to see the ammo shortage calm down a bit. My feelings are by the summer, hopefully, it will be over and we can go back to buying as normal. Until then I have a few tricks help you find ammo and to stay good with your weapons.
Category: How To’s
Posts on how to do stuff
Building A Battery Backup Power System
Building A Battery Backup Power System
After the recent power outage I had decided I would not procrastinate building my Battery backup system any longer. I had the money set aside for it for weeks but kept putting it off. While the power outage didn’t last very long it was the kick in the ass I needed. The truth is that it will take longer write this article than it did to put together the system. Like I do with most things I do I tried to find the sweet spot of cheap, easy and most bang for your buck. Lets get down to building a Battery Backup!
Survival Myths You Probably Believe
The first Survival Myths post went over so well I thought it was time for a second in the series with more to follow I’m sure. This series might never end with there being so many survival myths out there and more coming out all the time. Today I’m going to dispel a few more and try to give you some good advice to follow instead of the bad information that’s out there. So lets delve into some popular myths out there about how to survive that are wrong and could get you possible killed following.
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Why You Should Fire Your Guns After Cleaning
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.
Stay Safe
David Nash
DIY activated carbon guest post
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.