Some Things, You Just Have to Have

Have I crossed the line into real hoarding?

Before the insanity started, I was stocking up on ammo and reloading supplies, because I was also creating steel target arrays for my pasture. MidwayUSA sent me one of its pester emails, saying they were selling CCI Mini-mags for a little over 5 cents each. I had to jump on that. I bought 3,000.

That sounds like a lot, but it takes about 100 to fuel a good range session. If you only have 500 .22 cartridges, you’re running low. It has been hard for me to absorb that.

Ammo supplies tightened up, and then they seemed to start loosening. While this was going on, I was idly looking at prices. I saw a site advertising Mini-mags for 5 cents, flat. Free shipping. I had to buy. I ordered a 5,000-round case. Now ammo seems to be getting scarce again. Maybe people who are imprisoned by their own governments are killing time by shopping online.

After buying the 5,000-round case, I started to suspect that the site where I found it was not on the level. I started seeing sites saying things like, “New stock expected on June 8.” That bothered me.

I called the site that sold me the big order, and I got voicemail. That made me even more antsy. Even if there is no real shortage, I don’t want to wait until summer for more ammunition. It wouldn’t be hard at all to eat up 2,000 rounds before it arrived. My new targets make practice a breeze and a joy.

I found someone on Gunbroker, of all places, selling the same ammo for a little over 7 cents per round, including shipping and so on. That was more than acceptable. That’s a fair price in the best of times. I pondered and pondered. What if I ordered the ammo and then got a box from the place I didn’t trust? I would have enough .22 LR for what? Two years? More than I originally planned to get.

Then I thought about it some more. I realized no one was going to be unable to get ammo because of me. There are other brands available, and Mini-mags are still being shipped, even if some dealers will take two months to get them. Also, a smart person would go ahead and get maybe 25,000 rounds, because .22 LR is only going to get more expensive in the future (barring a post-pandemic deflationary period), and I know I’ll use it.

It’s like “FOREVER” stamps. I know I should buy a couple of thousand of them, because I’ll use them, and they are only going to get more expensive. But I haven’t been able to make myself do it.

So. If everyone comes through, I will have over 10,000 rounds. If the two less-dodgy vendors are the only ones who come through, I’ll have 6,600, which isn’t excessive. If they come through, and then the dodgy outfit catches up two months from now, back to over 10,000. No matter how you slice it, I won’t really be overstocked.

I should order more!

Of course, I wonder if the Gunbroker ad is legit. What if someone went into a bunker and left their ad up even though the ammo was gone? Am I going to get a “Dear John” email, just when I thought I was all set? What if they and the dubious vendor both let me down?

I might actually have to buy Remington Golden Bullets again. Arrgh. They make such a mess. They seem to work fine, however. Maybe a couple of duds out of a hundred, which is not disastrous.

When this idiocy is officially over, I’m going to make a serious effort to put an ammo bank together for rainy days. I’ll focus mainly on important things like 7.62x39mm, 10mm, 9mm, .45 ACP, shotgun shells, .17 HMR, and .22 LR.

Why would I include .17 HMR? It’s really nice for shooting small edible things.

The pistol calibers are useful for obvious reasons, as is 7.62x39mm. The .22 is a great meat and pest caliber. Shotguns are also good for emergency food.

Life won’t end if I run out of .50 AE, and I don’t think .308 will be a major necessity. As much as I love shooting .38 Super, it’s a luxury.

Ammunition is really important. The natural tendency is to buy a gun and pick up two boxes of ammo and think you’re done, but a gun without a decent supply of ammo is a paperweight. It’s like a car without gas.

I think we should be glad about the sudden surge in gun buying, along with the ammo spike. It means leftists had a leg cut out from under them. When everyone is happy and fat, leftism seems like fun to people who are naturally hypocritical. When things get scary, it’s harder to maintain the pose, and many hypocrites de-closet themselves as conservatives and centrists.

They say a conservative is a liberal who got mugged.

The weird thing is that people are scared about something that has no rational relationship to firearms. People with coronavirus aren’t going to shoot at us.

It’s good that people are arming up. It will make some of them cross the fence. It’s also good that the press is lying so clumsily and persistently. Even liberals have noticed that Trump is being bashed when he does very helpful things. It may be that swing-voters, who are the dumbest people in the universe, will get so disgusted they’ll give Trump a second term.

Democrats gave us a real gift this time around. Of course, I am referring to Uncle Joe. Bernie Sanders was also a gift, because he was so nutty and extreme, but Biden is a shooting gallery for detractors. He has groped women and exposed himself. He routinely says things that are clearly insane and too extreme to be attributed to fatigue. He may drive spiteful Bernouts to stay home on election day. He’s such a poor candidate, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sat him down in 2012 and flat-out told him he wasn’t going to be the nominee.

Maybe the gun panic will convince people who aren’t ordinarily serious that we need a real, i.e. conservative, leader for now. Magical Peace Unicorns are for less-challenging times.

I’m not going to beat myself up about .22 ammo. I’m not a real hoarder. I don’t have a ton of food. I have empty gas cans. I only have about 17 small bottles of water. My entire canned good supply could be placed in a shoebox. But I do want to be able to shoot my .22. Give me that.

It’s starting to look like some of our problems may have been caused by a few incredible jerks. Yesterday, I learned about a Chinese citizen who bought hundreds of thousands of masks in Florida right before things got bad. She made a video in which she smirked and said she felt like a thief. She talked about depriving “the Americans.” I also read about a character in the northeast who got busted with, I believe, over a million masks.

You don’t need a whole lot of people to buy a million masks each to put a dent in the supply. Both of these people, and their accomplices, should do prison time. They deprived Americans of a product they believed would keep them alive. In their minds, they were deciding other people shouldn’t live.

It should be easy to find the hoarders and gougers. They buy using credit cards, so there are trails.

Or you could just look around and see who wears a fresh mask every day for the next three years.

I look forward to seeing the coronavirus graph plummet. Based on John Hopkins’ information, it appears to be starting. Once everyone relaxes a little, I can build my ammunition bank. And just in case, I’ll lay in 36 rolls of toilet paper.