Deposits May be Illegal Soon

Yesterday I finished making about 500 .45 cartridges. I say “about” because the actual number is 498. I believe I have finally run out of brass.

I decided to do something about the monumental pile of 9mm brass which is occupying space in my home. I ordered 500 semiwadcutter bullets. I read that semiwadcutters are pretty versatile. They make nice holes in targets, and they are better for self-defense and hunting than round nose bullets.

The semiwadcutter is based on the wadcutter bullet, which should be no surprise. A wadcutter is a cylindrical bullet. The flat face cuts nice round holes in targets, making the holes easier to see. Wadcutters don’t always feed well in semiauto guns because they’re short and flat on the ends. A semiwadcutter has a cone on the front, and the cone has a flat face on it. The longer bullet helps with feeding.

The cost for my ammunition will not be far from what I would pay for factory rounds, but my ammunition should be more accurate. Since it’s for practice, that matters to me.

I started using a Powder Cop on my press. This is a device which sits in a press station. There is a rod in the middle of it, and when a cartridge is raised to the top of the press, the rod hits the powder charge, which lifts it up. If the charge is correct, the rod rises to the right level. If not, it doesn’t. There is a white ring near the top of the rod, and you can set it so it’s level with the top of the Powder Cop when the charge is correct.

The most important thing a Powder Cop does is to alert you when you put a double charge in a shell. A double charge can make a gun blow up. A Powder Cop will also tell you when you have a low charge. That’s not as big a deal, but it’s still important. A weak charge can cause a bullet to stick inside a barrel. If you fire another round without clearing the barrel, your barrel may explode. A bright person will not shoot a weak round without stopping to examine his gun, but not everyone is careful.

Do I like the Powder Cop? No. Not for pistol rounds with short cases. My press is mounted low, so I can’t help seeing into the casings as they go by. It’s very obvious when there is a problem with a charge. I’m used to looking into the casings, so it’s hard to remember to look at the Powder Cop.

Does this mean the Powder Cop is a bad invention? No. Most people mount their presses high, which seems like a mistake. They can’t see into casings. Also, there are types of ammunition that have deep casings, and you can’t expect to see the charges clearly.

Here is what I think. A smart person would rig up a couple of electrical contacts on the Powder Cop. If the rod rose too high, the Powder Cop would close a circuit and sound an alarm or turn a light on. It would not be easy to rig it up for low charges, because the rod goes below the low-charge line every time a round is lowered, but oversized charges are the big problem, and an electrical alarm would tell you about them.

If I put an alarm on the Powder Cop, I won’t have to stare at it consistently.

I suddenly have a good deal of ammunition. I don’t say “a lot.” My notions of how much ammunition a person should have are changing.

I used to feel rich if I had two boxes of ammo for a given caliber. Now I’ve been through two ammunition panics: the Obama panic and the covid panic. I have seen how fast the supply can dry up. Once Democrats take over, it will dry up permanently. When you buy ammunition now, you shouldn’t ask yourself how much you’ll need this weekend. You should ask yourself whether you can accept doing without this or that caliber for the rest of your life. If not, start buying.

It’s not hoarding. True hoarding is something selfish people do, to the detriment of others, during a crisis. If you start stockpiling ammunition now, while the shortage is easing, you won’t hurt anyone else.

You should probably have 10,000 rounds of every caliber you consider important and expect to shoot frequently. That’s for old people. If you’re 25, maybe 40,000. You can’t just think about rounds you’ll carry or use for hunting. You’re going to need to practice, and you will want to be able to give ammunition away sometimes. People you care about are not going to prepare. And you will want to leave something to your family.

You probably can’t afford that much ammunition. You could spend $40,000 on one rifle. You should think about your future and decide what your best choices are.

You can get 10,000 rounds of AK ammunition for about $2,000. That’s not a lot of money at all, for a very important future-proofing purchase. The ammunition is very useful. It’s fantastic for self-defense, and you can even shoot deer with it. The AK-47 is like a .30-30.

A lot of people prefer the AR-15. I don’t know if it will be as useful. I’m not a deer hunter, but I’ve read that the AR-15 is marginal for anything bigger than a coyote. There must be something to it, because some states won’t let you shoot deer with one.

Here’s what I think: with 7.62x39mm, you have no doubt. With .223, not so much.

I am sitting on a nice pile of .22 LR. I think it’s something everyone should have. It’s very cheap, you can hunt anything up to a wild pig with it, it’s great for target practice, and you can even use it for self-defense if you have to. I think I should seal up my .22 LR boxes and leave them alone. I can buy new boxes for shooting and leave the stockpile on the shelf.

Maybe it’s best to think of your ammunition reserves as your ammunition IRA.

The upshot of all this contemplation: I still need to make and buy ammunition. I should also spend a couple of hundred bucks on bullet molds so I can cast bullets.

Preparation may not help once they pass laws against ammunition possession, but you do what you can.

I have no interest in holing up in my house and shooting at law enforcement agents or murderous leftist “zombies,” but I want to continue shooting and hunting, and I would like to have some capacity for defending myself and others.

Yesterday while I was reloading, I listened to the Bible. I heard the account of Jesus’ betrayal. It’s funny how you can hear the Bible over and over and still find new things in it. Here’s what I heard: when the worthless snakes from the temple showed up to arrest Jesus, they asked him who he was, he identified himself, and they all fell to the ground. How about that? He knocked them off their feet with supernatural authority. He showed them they were at his mercy.

He proved he was God, and they got up and arrested him anyway. He humiliated them and made it clear that they were on the wrong side, but they refused to take the opportunity to repent. They condemned themselves.

Peole like to say Jesus was captured, but that’s a damnable lie. He surrendered willingly, and he could have freed himself whenever he wanted.

It seems very clear to me that God wants American Christians to own guns, but I think it’s very unlikely that he endorses the idea of having last-ditch shootouts with our enemies. I suspect he wants us to show that when we are taken and imprisoned and killed, it’s by our consent.

Some conservatives and Christians actually seem to look forward to killing their enemies. That can’t be a holy mindset.

I suppose people are getting tired of reading about the death of my friend Travis. They can always start their own blogs. Today I learned he will have a funeral on May 30. There is no information about the location. It was announced on Facebook. I don’t have an account, and I am not starting a new one.

I hope they’re not doing it at Miami’s Trinity Church or The COOL Church, which is a depressing Trinity branch headed by Travis’s friend Terrance. Seeing Trinity’s leaders posturing at his funeral would be like watching vultures and maggots defile a dead soldier. Terrance cared about Travis, but don’t ask me to vouch for the rest.

I’m not planning to attend. I was very involved with Travis when he was alive. I don’t need to show up now and only pretend I cared. Let the dead bury the dead, as someone once said. Whatever I was supposed to do for Travis is done or not done. There is no changing it now.

Travis won’t look down and count the people at the funeral. He will not even know it took place. He has already moved on to something much, much better. He is not sitting beside Jesus feeling bad because I don’t want to go to his funeral.

Certain people may say nasty things about me if I’m not there, but they do that already, and anyway, they are permanently out of my life. I’ve gotten along fine without their love for 8 years.

I did without it while I was a member of the church.

Trinity’s leaders are a mess, but many of the people are even worse. The best people left. Here’s an example of the kind of thing I might have to deal with. I put up a Youtube video and talked about Travis’s life and death, and someone put this comment up: “WE DON’T EXPECT YOU TO UNDERSTAND IF YOU’RE NOT BLACK SO WHAT’S YOUR POINT!”

There is no possibility that person watched the video.

It’s not someone who was close to Travis. I know all their names.

I really lost a lot when I lost my prayer partner. I am asking God for a replacement. They don’t grow on trees. It’s as if Teller died and Penn had to find someone who could do what he did.

Now that I have the reloading process working well, I may stop posting about firearms so much. I may move to electronics for a while. I have not decided.