Episode 226: Ammo, how much is enough when it's hard to find?

Ammunition. I'm caught short, so what do I need to do? That's why I'm doing this podcast, to talk a little bit about ammunition, firearms and needs, wants desires; Specifically, needs in a time of difficulty sourcing ammunition? So how much is enough?

Let's find out!

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Transcript

Salty: 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to the show the big show the most important and critically acclaimed podcasts that are recorded in our car and today we are I say we Bay we just mean me I am playing under Nisa gold. Nope, that's an American Eagle, the juvenile American Eagle Baldy. Oh, beautiful. I'm driving along number one on my way to the my local gun shop, which for me, I mean, it's 45 miles away, because that's about as local as anything is from where we live out in the middle of God and his country, out amongst the creatures of nature. So welcome to the show. I I'm doing a solo today, because for some strange reason, spice would rather sit home and do her work that go to the gun shop with me, I just don't understand, I'm going to get a shop not because I'm going to be buying a gun Hello. With me, you never know, I have other things to take care of. I've sold a bunch of stuff on consignment. And I need to do a little bit of paperwork and blah, blah, blah. And so I sold a couple of cases of ammunition, surplus ammunition, and several other items have to go shop via consignment. And if you're listening to this right now, you might be a little surprised when you hear I'm talking about selling guns and ammunition at this point in time, because they're kind of hard to come up with right now. Sure, you can buy guns, but the ammunition is really hard to come up with. This is right now when I'm recording this, this is December of 2020. Right after the election. And throughout the last six months getting ammunition of any kind has been like really hard. So the subject my podcast today, and the subject of the story I'm going to write off of it is a retouching of how much ammunition do i think is enough to have because I can tell you I have more ammunition than I need. I have more ammunition than I can shoot off in a lifetime. So it's time for me to get rid of some. And this aviation that I keep that I have. I bought when it was readily available under cheap, which is when you buy ammunition, you don't buy ammunition. Unless you're desperate. When it's very hard to come up with like right now. So a guy like me who's been prepping for decades, who has stuff put away has plenty of firearms ammunition. So it's not, it's not something that I would even consider buying right now. That's not helpful to newer people in prepping. Oh, yeah, that's good for you salt even What about me? What do I need to do? Well, I came me. That's why I'm doing this podcast for is to talk a little bit about ammunition, firearms and needs, wants desires, but knee, okay, need in a time of difficulty sourcing ammunition, and to a certain extent guns but not so much. Okay. So how much is enough? There's always a thing, how much as well, to me, it all kind of depends on what's your, What's your goal is for prepping? If you if your goal is to survive 25 years of Mad Max situation, then? Well, I have nothing for you. I really, because there's no reasonable answer for that. Because I don't really think that's a reasonable premise. To actually prep for. I just don't see that as as a viable option that you could prep for 25 years of Mad Max, you could prep for a year of Mad Max. And that's at least doable, but 25 years of it. No. And even we're talking about Mad Max, how many gunfights are we talking about here that you plan to get into me, I plan to get into none, I very much hope to never actually point my gun at a human being an anchor. That's my goal. But I realistically realized that it could happen to me. So I do need to be prepared to be able to take care of myself in at least a limited situation. And so I think that's a very, very, very reasonable and important prep, to be able to take care of you and your family in a limited situation with enough self defense ammunition to take care of yourself. Also, another scenario, which I think is very, very, very important to prep for is to be able to continue to practice your shooting by going to the gun range and doing what you do right now and have ammo to spend at the range to keep your skills up and learn new skills. That's very good. Important. And you need to be able to do this, in my opinion, whether ammunition is available to replace what you're shooting or no. So that's another bunch of ammunition that you need to kind of stack upon the first self defense ammunition. Okay. And these are actually two different kinds of ammunition. In a lot of cases. Self Defense is one kind of ammunition range ammunition is a second kind of ammunition, it's generally cheaper, it's generally Full Metal Jacket. You do enable need to be able to shoot yourself defense rounds, but you don't need to be able to shoot yourself defense rounds every single time you go to the range, because it's so much more competitive. And thirdly, you need to have enough ammunition on the store. So it's going to last you for a while. If ammunition becomes very scarce, very expensive. Now, at this point in time, I know a bunch of out there are saying reload, reload, reload, reload. Yes, reload is good. I have the reloading supplies, I have reloaded many a shell in my life. Having said that, that's a different topic. We're not going to talk about reloading right now. Just assume when I'm talking about purchasing ammunition, if you're talking reloading, I'm talking about replacing reloading supplies. I'm talking about primers. I'm talking about powder. I mean, you know how long a couple years ago, after Sandy Hook, you know how hard it was to get just some simple unique, which is what I use for a lot of things. I mean, unique is a great powder, very versatile, and I use it for a lot of things I could not get for two years, I couldn't get any unique. So reloading supplies is kind of a different animal, but it goes along to the same vein. Okay, so we've got some defense, we've got range ammo, and then we've got enough ammo to stretch us through now. How much do you shoot? Do you shoot a lot? You shoot a little? And when I'm talking about how much do you shoot? I mean, really literally? How many rounds did you spend last year? Not? How many wells did you want to spend last year? How many rounds Do you think you should have spent last year? How many rounds? Did you shoot last year? Okay, how many rounds? Did you shoot the year before? Okay, how many rounds did you shoot before you go back three or four years and figure out how much you've shot over the last four years? And think okay, well, that's a reasonable guess about what I'll probably shoot this year unless my habits change. And you could that's a number you can actually work with, you can take that number. And you can start to do a multiplier. Well, I want to have three years worth of ammunition of what I've shot. So well if you shot 500 rounds, well that's 1500 rounds, pretty simple I to me. Again, there's two kinds of ammunition. There's range ammunition, and there's self defense ammunition, self defense ammunition, you absolutely need to have as much as you think you are going to realistically use in a stuff hits the fan scenario. And that I can't I can't talk to you about that. That's you, that's your, your comfort level. We each live in different areas. We each have different needs different ones different levels of family, you protect different properties to protect, you know, you may live in a suburb that, you know, you think the chances are very good that the the lids gonna come off of things pretty quickly. Or you may live in a place where you think well you know why really probably gonna be pretty safe here. So it's entirely situational. I know a lot of people on the interwebs come out and say well, you need x many rounds per gun. Boom. That's what you need. Boom, cookie cutter x many rounds round off. I often hear 1000 rounds per gun. 1000 rounds per gun. Okay, well, yeah, that is a number but is it a realistic number is is a number that makes any sense. To me that number does not make any sense that does not fit my shooting patterns. Because I have lots of guns. If I had 1000 rounds per gun and I'm a collector, I enjoy collecting guns a lot of my guns are not really what most people would call prepping guns. I mean, I collect motions. During and while motions are great collecting gun, they're fun gun to shoot, and amosun with plenty of actual PowerPoint or hunting type ammo is very handy. prepping gun having if I had for example, six motions just dealing differentiation because while this one's a to LA, so it's pre wars finish. You know, this one, the very thing that collectors look for. Now this has really strong markings on it. This one here was never Arsenal old, the collector stuff. I don't need to count Those in my calculation I have several Mohsen Nevada revolvers. I'm sorry, again, I'll get the three. I get several mcgahn revolver and these guns. Wow. A blast to shoot and fun to collect are perhaps the single worst choice of a multi shot gun that I could think of for a prepper because they are impossible to load quickly. You just can't do it. You've got your seven shots and yes sir seven shot revolver, and then you're done. You're done. That's it, you got your seven shots and you're because you literally have to pound the shells out of them. So I don't count any ammunition that I have towards mine again revolvers. I've got a couple of little fun little 32 ACP revolver. Well, actually is a revolver. It's an again promover with a 32 ACP cylinder in it, How fun is that? But I don't stock 32 APC as part of my prepping. What I do is I use a very specific ammo and collection philosophy. What I mean by that is I I'm very picky about any gun that I consider a prepping gun must be one of several particular sizes or calibers period, End of discussion. If it's not this, I don't consider it a prepping gun. I do not stock ammunition for it. Other than what I feel like playing with it the range. Here's how my breakdown work in hand guns I have two calibers well 22 we'll come back to you later. I have two calibers that I go and nine millimeter every semi automatic prepping gun that we hill or handgun we own as a nine millimeter period under discussion. I don't have 45. I do have a couple 45 but I don't consider them prepping doesn't I don't stock prepping ammunition for I don't do 10 millimeters. Although I do have a 10 millimeter. I don't stock the prepping ammunition for nine millimeter. And that's it. That way I could have say five or six or seven, nine millimeter guns but I don't need 1500 rounds for each of those seven or practice rounds. I mean that's that's going to be ridiculous. My second caliber is 357 slash 38. Special. Okay, this is for my real guns, just because I love real guns. And the 357 38 aren't interchangeable round as long as you buy the 357 gun, the 38 specials and interchangeable round for it. So I buy 357 All right, all my most of my guns are 357 now, I don't have a lot of free 57 range ammo, I usually use 38 this is some of the stuff that that I do. reloads on 3d is cheap. It's a good round of shoot. It's a fun round, and it's cheap, and it has the big advantage of being cheap. You might have noticed the repetition there. So that's that's that's it pretty much yeah. 44 Magnum. Yeah, that's great round. I don't have any, you know, I just don't all the other calibers. 45 cowboy. No, no, no one. It's 357 or 38. Boom, that's it. And also, my third type of rounds that I use exclusively for practice is 22 long rifle. And I have rifles, pistols. Basically, we have ar 1520 twos, good ones. And we have 22 caliber trainer versions of our main hand guns, so that a lot of the shooting that we do is 22 long rifle, we do this because you can still keep good technique together for the most part, as shoot a much cheaper ammunition and you can just get this stuff anywhere. And if you want to really shoot a lot of a lot of boards, that's the way to do it. 22. So that's pretty much it, you know. So we don't have to have small amounts of umpteen zillion calibers around, what we end up having is a reasonable amount of two or three calibers. And then on the other side of things, on the shoddy side of things, we have two sizes of shotguns, period, End of discussion 12 gauge and for 10. And I'll come back to 14 and why we have 14 in our mix here in just a bit but I have reached the gun store. I am actually there. And I am going to pull in and do my thing here and then I'm going to put you on pause you're getting paused and then I'll come out and we'll continue on with this. We won't say too much more because we're about there. Okay, you're going on pause, happy pausing. Hey, I'm back again, about 45 minutes later it's for you and virtually instantaneous. So yeah, it was that was an interesting experience. I went into my favorite local gun shop. Ah, popping a cold one. In this case, it's a cold can of orange juice. Okay, I went to my local gun shop and shelves were bare, or you can buy guns, but even still, the guns themselves, the selection was not nearly as much as I would expect. Of course, it's the week before Christmas. So you know, there's that. It's probably kind of picked over for that reason. But ammunition. Wow. I mean, I looked around to see what you could see. Very, very little, some 28 gauge. We had a drink of libation there. So 12 gauge, quite a bit of 12 gauge, but that's usual. We're gonna come back to that in a minute. No 410 nothing in any of the usual calibers you would see for a handgun? Nothing. They I mean, nothing. couldn't even get stuff like nine by 18. You mean nothing? No. 45? No. 45 cowboy? No, certainly no 38? No. nine millimeter, obviously no 10 millimeter. So it's the reloading supplies. And they were out of percussion caps of all kinds. They're all unique. Again, they're out of bounds. The only stuff they had was the stuff that you use for Magnum rounds. As far as the powders go. I mean, it was pretty picked over. So I asked the guy when the last time he saw nine millimeter was, he said, Oh, yeah, I got 200 boxes of it. yesterday. 10 cases, I guess, in yesterday, that's how long did you have it is like, Oh, it was sold before we you know, ever hit the shelves, we have standing orders for a couple 100,000 rounds I've still got standing orders for so when they come in, you know, it's first come first serve have a regular customer. One of the reasons this is one of my favorite gun shops, is that their pricing is on a cost plus basis. And so when they get it in, it's selling and they're only buying from their normal sources. They're not buying from the gougers, unlike some other gun shops, too. So the only stuff they're getting in is from the regular distributors, which means it's going out at standard pricing, which is I love that about this is one of the reasons I shop at this place is because yeah, they may not have it, but they're not going to gouge you if they do. They're not gonna raise the price even a little now the only time they're gonna raise the prices if the price goes up to them from their normal distributors. So, you know, this to me, this is the kind of gun shop you want to develop a relationship with. And anyway, I looked, I looked around guns, see if there's anything that caught my eye. There's a whole lot of people selling AR AK type pistols with the pistol braces right now. I know there's so a lot of talk about them being coming guns non grata, where you'll have to actually buy the stamp for them or get a stamp for it. So certainly an ongoing discussion right now, but the political stuff going on. I'm not going to get into this far beyond the scope of this, but I just see a lot of those. And I've seen I saw a lot of old military collectible, which I love and see anything I needed. I'm looking for one thing in particular right now and this is my digression out right now I'm looking for a really top quality condition. unmodified fallings? 3040 crack in original condition. I doesn't I mean I understand that the bluing is going to be gone off of one of those things for after all this time because the blowing on those are horrible to start with. I get that but I just don't want it above eyes. I get Bob eyes ones for 200 bucks. That's no big deal. It's not the crag is that wonderful? Again, I just want one that is as close to being right as I can get it. And so I'm always looking for them. They know I went my eyes out for that. So anyway, long story short, no ammunition hardly at all, except for 12 gauge. And it's which brings me back to what I wanted to talk about flow gauge. To me, even though a lot every prepper that I know has one and people talk about the value of 12 gauges and yeah, they're great guns blah, blah, blah sort of sense. But they're not they don't talk to them about them the way they talked about like a RS and a Ks and, and the really fun guns because toll gauges are they're a bit brutal shoot, you know, they don't they'll knock you out a little bit and They're fairly short range. And, you know, it's just not as sexy as a as one of these hard hitting, or super fast shooting rifles. It's not having said that there is no better gun for home defense than a 12 gauge, there is no better gun. For a home defense, in my opinion than a 12 gauge, the 12 gauge will take care of business and you got so many rounds that you can get for the thing. And is this to me, it's a no brainer. The second part of the 12 gauge thing, and to a lesser extent, step four, if you are going to want to reload, there's nothing easier in this world to reload the 12 gauge shell, I was reloading 12 gauges shells perfectly with the 1970s actually 1960s equipment, it was in the 70s. But the equipment was 10 years 1960s equipment when I was 12 years old, and the shells were perfect. There's nothing wrong with them, they shot just as good as factory shells. So you know if they're dead easy to load a 12 year old can do it. No problem. dead easy to load. The reloading equipment is dirt cheap, brand new, it's dirt cheap. And it's just so simple to do. So to me, if you're gonna start, decide, hey, you know, I'd like to maybe get into reloading a 12 gauge reloading system is the perfect place to start. Now if you get it a little more flexible, you get a 12 gauge for 10 or whatever else, I mean, maybe a 20 gauge personal I'm not, but you may be a 20 gauge person, it's the same thing very inexpensive to do. Now, the reason I'm not really a 20 gauge person is kind of twofold. I do own one, my very first shotgun I ever had was a 20 gauge that still have it. But I'm just not a 20 gauge person because I don't see any really big advantage over a 12 gauge it doesn't have that much less recoil, it hits less hard. And frankly, I don't, there's the 20 gauge is around I do not want in my shooting vest. But I also have a 12 gauge because the 20 gauge show will just drop right down into the barrel of a 12 gauge. And that would be a bad thing. Like I shoot a lot. When I shoot shotguns I shoot a lot of single shot. You know, most of the time I'm shooting a single shot, I mean shooting an old smoke, just because what I like I do have a where my main home defense guns is a 16 and a half inch pump 12 gauge pump a riot gun and it's a great little home defense gun but nobody shoots those and nobody shoots them for fun. They are brutal little machine to shoot. So you know I like the old smoke poles I got a big eyed man, I got a big rubber pad on the thing. I'm care, I'm gonna I don't have to prove anything to anybody. I don't mind it loving on my shoulder too, to an extent. But there's a difference between having a gun love on your shoulder and have a gun be involved in BDSM on your shoulder. And I have no real need to be beaten to death by by a gun. So I'll use a pad. But the 12 gauges to me are the hero round or the Euro gun of the gun shortage ammunition shortage situations because I don't think I have ever seen as much as I've seen this and that sell out. I don't think I've ever seen 12 gauge shells sell out. I just I just don't recall ever having seen that. Even today. There were cases of the stuff on the shelf. I happen to stop at a big box retailer for a while I wanted my drink for one thing. And I wanted to pick up a couple small grocery items that only the stock because the store brand. And so I wandered by their their hunting area. And what did they have 12 gauge. They did have a few boxes of 28. But they had 12 gauge and that's all well, okay, they had a few rifle rounds and some three or three British. Interestingly, I can't really imagine why they had stock 303 British Full Metal Jacket, but it's not for me to decide. They had some 6.5 Creed more hunting rounds. I was about it. So just an FYI. That's what I saw. So to me, getting back to the main subject of this, the the key to stocking up on the rounds that you need is to buy it when it's not scarce. And yeah, I know, I know, that doesn't help you if you are short of what you need to have. And it's now and you just can't get it and you're having to pay usurious prices to get it. My argument is I would rather not even buy any of those rounds. If I had a couple of magazines full of shells already had coffee. Good. See, I normally don't talk very much. So what I'm doing talking, we have a little bit of congestion right now. Clap a lot. So I'm sorry about that. I would rather I would rather recommend buying 12 gauge guns if you don't have one, and buying 12 gauge rounds when nothing else is available, because a 12 gauge will help protect you. If you're talking about a long gun, you can still find hunting rounds. So and they're not even going to be overpriced, you can still find 270 hunting round, they're still out there, I didn't see any today. But you can still find them that they're not that hard to find. You can still find 6.5 creedmoor, you can still find rounds like that at normal prices. So you don't have to worry about that too much. Go ahead and get your hunting rounds, however much you think you're going to need, and get that stocked away when all the rest of the stuff is hard to come. And then just watch and wait. Because sooner or later, it's going to come back down if you have your hunting rounds. And if you have your 12 gauge rounds, so you can protect your home, you're pretty much where you need to be. And then you could get your other practice rounds over time as they become available. To me, when I buy a gun. Let's say for example, were I buying a brand and I didn't have a gun, where I buying a gun. in normal times, let's just say I'm going to buy a Smith and Wesson shield nine millimeter, just a standard everyday, good firearm, the first thing I'm going to do, I'm not going to leave that store without at least four magazines, assuming they have them. And I'm going to shop at places that carry magazines for the guns they sell. And I'm not going to leave that store without for magazines full of self defense rounds. in normal times. That's just how I start. Because there's no point in having a gun if you don't have the ammunition to shoot it, there is no point of having a gun if you don't have the ammunition to shoot it. So when you're buying and part of the cost of buying that gun needs to be the self defense rounds, and you probably need in normal times, you still want to go ahead and buy, you know 250 rounds, at least minimum of target rounds when you buy a gun. If it's your first kind of that caliber, and you're planning to use it for self defense prepping. And this may seem like a lot, but the whole point of having a gun is shooting the gun. There's no point in having a gun if you can't shoot it or won't shoot it. Because you won't be able to shoot a gun accurately unless you learn how that gun works. That gun may not work accurate or as as intended. If you don't take it out and break it in. guns have a break in period. Just like motors just like any machine, you need, especially semi automatics wheel guns, not so much. But if it's semi automatic, you know, most semi automatics start working well after the first 500 rounds are start working better, even if they're cycling and everything once you just takes a while to get unbroken in it just that's the way it is. So this is all part of buying a new gun is buying the ammunition. And a lot of people when they buy a gun, they just buy the gun and maybe a box of ammunition. And often it's not even self defense rounds. And to me that's that's that is where the mistake is made by a lot of folks, that is something you should not do. But what's done is done. So where are you what, what are you going to do now I'm going to go back to if I'm in a situation where I'm just stuck, I'm going to start buying 12 gauge right now. Because that's what's available. at normal prices. That's where I'm going. If I don't have a 12 gauge, well, I think it's good time to get a 12 gauge, hey, you could find some good, reliable semi auto if that's true. 12 gauges for really inexpensive money, I saw like 10 of the things on the shelves, those those AR style 12 gauges, so 10 of them on the shelf at the at the store, I was just the gun shop, I was just add in it, you know, they were reasonably priced. So you know they're out there. Okay, let's go back and review by what's available, prioritize by what type of rounds you need, whether it's self defense, or practice, and you get the appropriate amount of each. And again, I'm not giving you a number, I don't know what you're going to shoot, I don't know, some people will never shoot 500 rounds through their through a gun they buy in the lifetime of the gun. For me, that's a day at the range. So I don't really know what to tell you on the amount because that's that's it's dependent on how much you will shoot it. What's your budget? What can you afford? I am a big fan of using 22 long rifle to get more shooting it when it's available. And it was available in as much as you would want quantities, or last year and a half up until this recent shortage. So you know, can't can't really can't really fault people or can't really put the blame on unavailability up until the last six months because it was available. Well. That's kind of what I have to say. be interesting to say or see what you think about All of this so we go ahead and log into our go into the three b y beans bullets Vantage AMD you calm and find the story that matches this article or find a story and drop, drop a note on there. Tell me if you think I have making sense or she goes up my head either way, just let me know. And we'll talk to you later. Bye