Gear
Gun Safes
So I have been looking into some solutions for quality gun safes. The good ones are not cheap, but I am sitting here trying to figure out what I want to do. Many of us keep things other than guns in our safe- things like PMs, documents, etc. Let’s say that you have 25 ounces of silver, 2 ounces of gold, 10 rifles, 2 shotguns, and 5 handguns. That means you easily have $15-40 thousand dollars worth of stuff locked in that safe- and that isn’t even a large collection. The PMs in such a case are worth almost $5,000, before you even begin talking about guns. A good safe is expensive, but can be a lifesaver.
I personally know someone who has far more in his safe than that. He owns a couple of machine guns, and we all know how much those are worth.
In my case, I have a shotgun that was owned by my great grandfather, and it has been in my family for over a century: A Parker Brothers Trojan 20 gauge shotgun, and that gun is worth quite a bit by itself, not to mention the sentimental value.
Since we are about to move, this is a good time to think about getting a new safe. With all of the news about data breaches, I just don’t trust companies to keep data safe. Imagine what a target a safe company’s data is: the get the company’s sales records, which include the safe model number, your name, email address, physical address, and the code/combo needed to open your safe. So any thief now knows that you have a safe, your address, and the combination. Sound like a problem to you? OR does it sound paranoid and far fetched? If a company like LastPass, Norton’s Life Lock, or a major bank can be compromised, so can a safe company. The fewer people who know what my combination is, the better off I am.
I will avoid Liberty for one basic reason- they have shown that they care more for making the government happy than they do about safeguarding their consumers’ confidential information. They sold out one owner, they will sell out others. That goes for any other company that is in possession of the combination for my safe.
I looked at lots of different websites for safes over the past few days. I had a few criteria:
- Any safe that doesn’t come with a mechanical lock was eliminated. There is just no way to ensure that no one else had a backdoor code that could be compromised.
- The mechanical lock had to be consumer changeable without voiding the warranty, to eliminate the possibility of a locksmith having the combination. Now I can be sure that my wife and I are the only ones with the combination.
- There had to be a diamond steel drill plate, to make the safe resistant to drilling out the lock.
- There had to be some sort of quality relocker, so tampering with the lock mechanism would lock the safe.
- The locking bolts had to all be live bolts, meaning that they all move in and out to secure the door.
- It had to have at least a 90 minute fire rating.
- The manufacturer has to have a dealer within 100 miles of my house.
Those criteria eliminated all of the most common gun safes: Winchester, Liberty, Fort Knox, and all of the other ones that you commonly see in stores. There was one manufacturer that met all of my criteria, and that was the Champion Safe Company. Two of their product lines look good: Champion, and Superior. I’m really intrigued by the Champion Triumph line.
The 50 cubic foot model has dimensions of 42″ x 72.25″ x 30.5″ and the walls are made of 10 gauge steel on the outside and 12 gauge steel inside. It will hold up to 58 long guns, and will be difficult to steal once the 1200 pound safe is bolted to the floor with some hefty hardware. The downside is that this safe costs $6800. However, as I said before, it is cheaper than getting your valuables stolen.
No safe is impenetrable, but I want mine to be difficult enough to get into that it will prevent all but the most well equipped thieves to get into that safe. I am going to take a good, hard look at this safe for my next purchase.
Now, the disclaimer: I don’t advertise, and receive nothing for my reviews or articles. I have no relationship with any products, companies, or vendors that I review here, other than being a customer. If I ever *DO* have a financial interest, I will disclose it. Otherwise, I pay what you would pay. No discounts or other incentives here. I only post these things because I think that my readers would be interested.
Humor
In Australia, they don’t shoot burglars
Now that Australia has all of that gun control.
Burglar: (breaks in)
Homeowner: (putting on condom) You just broke into the wrong house.
Police State
Liberty Safes & Backdoors
From the Liberty Safe FAQ page.
what happens if you forget your Liberty safe’s lock combination code or misplace its key? Depending on the type of lock that came with your Liberty Safe, you have a few options.
Contact the FBI. They have the codes to your safe. If they won’t give it to you, just trespass in the Capitol while registered as a Republican. They will come over and open it for you. Maybe you will get lucky and the jail cell they lock you in for 22 years will have a digital lock made by Liberty.
Liberty Safe’s policy isn’t to give out combinations or keys to safes that have not been registered.
We all know that isn’t true. There are those who are claiming that the FBI had a warrant, so Liberty gave them the code. There are two problems with that:
- The FBI had a warrant to search the guy’s house. That warrant is in no way binding upon Liberty safe, who is an unrelated party in this. In fact, if the FBI wanted the access codes, they would have to serve Liberty safe with a subpoena. Subpoenas are for records, warrants are not.
- The fact that a backdoor exists at all is problematic. With all of the data breaches in the news, the mere existence of a backdoor is a significant liability. This calls all sorts of electronic devices into question. Nothing you have is secure from government access. Remember that we are now living in a one-party police state with the full cooperation of big business. Conduct your business accordingly.
There are some lessons here:
- You should have backup weapons and cache them somewhere away from your property that they will not be found.
- If you were one of the J6 protesters, you are looking at spending the rest of your life in the Gulag. Pay your bail and don’t look back.
EDITED TO ADD: Here are my thoughts on this:
Communism
Illegal Tenants
California tenants get free lawyers when they are evicted from a rental property, and now the left is demanding that this handout be expanded to illegal immigrants.
“The court system is very nebulous and discouraging for residents, who do not know how the court system works,” said Sandra Plascencia, a policy advocate with Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, a local advocacy group.
So the landlords have to fight against the government’s unlimited coffers. What effect does this have? The reputable businessmen will leave the rental business, and all you have left will be the shysters. This woman only makes $500 a week. In California. There aren’t many reputable landlords who will rent to someone making $25k a year in an expensive real estate market like California. After all, what kind of place can you realistically think you are going to rent for a woman, her child, and her elderly mother in a city whose average rent is $1.64 a month? A shitty one, that’s what. Still, forcing landlords to provide all of these benefits and forcing them to provide nicer rentals is merely going to ensure that women like the one in the article won’t be able to get a rental at any price.
Of course the commies in California have to lie and misdirect, because that is what the left does:
“If you steal a watermelon or a steak from a store and get arrested, you get a public defender to walk you through the whole entire process,” said Shara Thompson, the Central Valley regional coordinator with Tenants Together, a local advocacy group. “But when you’re being evicted for subletting — which is very minuscule — you don’t get any assistance.”
The big lie here is that stealing is a criminal offense where the legal adversary is the government and losing means perhaps going to jail. In an eviction your legal adversary is another citizen, and losing means having to move out of the rental property that you don’t own and aren’t paying for.
According to the California Apartment Association, rent increases above 10% annually are allowed on older buildings if landlords provide proper notice. Landlords can also evict people on the claim of major renovations to the home, which advocates say is another common tactic they believe is used to evict tenants.
Then the article goes on to claim that landlords are being unfair because they won’t renovate properties, but then also takes landlords to task for asking tenants to move out so they can renovate properties.
I have said before that one of the things that communists ALWAYS do is portray property owners into some sort of evil monsters who prey on the poor. You will notice that the article is nearly ignoring the fact that wage earner for this illegal immigrant family of three is earning less than California’s minimum wage.
Commies gonna commie.
Account and INFO Security
Securing Your Money
Francis Porretto over there at Liberty’s Torch (I read them every day, don’t you?) asks a great question about the security of checks versus the security of credit cards. Since I do stories on information security, I thought it would make a good topic for a post here. Let me start by saying that I ran this by my wife, who actually teaches banking and finance, which was the topic of her Masters degree. She’s way smarter than I am on this topic. Here is our take:
Check Security
Those numbers that are on the bottom of your check are the routing and account numbers that tell the check processing companies (called the automated clearing house, or ACH) where to go in order to get paid. When a scammer has your bank account and routing numbers, they could set up bill payments for services you’re not using or transfer money out of your bank account. Getting those numbers is easy, because they are printed right there on your check, and most companies store that information on their computers, you know- the same computers that keep having data breaches. Scammers can create fake checks using your numbers and then use those fake checks to pay for purchases — or simply cash them. Know, too, that with technology scammers could digitally scan the check (called a “demand draft”) and deposit the amount into their bank account. Many banks now allow you to deposit a picture of a check. How and why does this happen?
It used to be that physical, paper checks had to be exchanged in order for banks to get paid. Shipping paper checks all over the country was costing them quite a bit of money, so they lobbied the government for a solution. Enter the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21 Act), which became effective on October 28, 2004. The Check 21 Act authorizes a new negotiable instrument called a “substitute check,” which is a reproduction of an original check, is the legal equivalent of an original check. In other words, all someone must do is have those numbers on the bottom of your check, and they now have access to your money. There is no way to password protect your account from this sort of scam, because Check 21 doesn’t mandate that the banks secure you from this sort of scam. Some banks will for PR reasons, but they mostly do not. It’s expensive to monitor fraud, and there is no real financial incentive for banks to do so with this sort of scam.
So a thief gets ahold of your checking and routing numbers, what next? The only defense is closing your bank account and getting another one. That’s a inconvenience, for sure. The bank may or may not be able to reverse the fraudulent transactions, but don’t count on it. Check 21 doesn’t say that they have to. While it doesn’t happen often, when scammers get those numbers, you frequently lose everything, and there is nothing that the bank can do. One charity I found fell victim to this and lost over $10,000.
Credit Card Security
Credit cards have a bit more legal protection. The law here is called the Fair Credit Billing Act, which requires creditors to give consumers 60 days to challenge certain disputed charges over $50 such as wrong amounts, inaccurate statements, undelivered or unacceptable goods, and transactions by unauthorized users. Also, the Act limits liability of consumers for transactions by unauthorized users to $50. Since this law forces banks to absorb losses for fraudulent charges over $50, banks have a financial incentive to monitor for fraud, and they do. In fact, if you report fraud, most banks don’t even worry about the $50.
Note that this law only applies to credit cards, not debit cards. Debit cards are treated the same as checks from the perspective of the law. I don’t EVER use my debit cards to pay for anything. I use them at bank owned ATMs only, and I keep my debit cards locked in the safe most of the time.
I myself have had my credit card numbers compromised on a few occasions. The last time was over two years ago, when someone was using my Barclay’s card to make unauthorized charges. The bank was telling me that the charges were legit because IMO, they didn’t want to eat the cost. The $845 that was stolen from me wasn’t worth the cost to hire a lawyer, but luckily the bank finally saw it my way and reversed the charges. I no longer use that card because Barclays was too difficult to deal with in the matter. I shouldn’t have to fight that hard to get a bank to follow the law.
Still, it was easier to switch credit cards than it would be to get a new checking account.
Conclusion
All forms of payment are vulnerable to electronic fraud, even though it’s relatively rare. You have more legal protections, and banks have a more robust fraud detection plan, when you use credit cards than when you use checks. Whenever possible, use credit cards to do business online. In fact, I have a couple of cashback cards that give me great benefits. One that I have gives me 5% cashback on all Amazon purchases, and another gives me 2% cashback on all purchases. I pay for everything with them, and pay them off at the end of each month. Stay disciplined and don’t spend more in a month than you can pay, and it’s a great way to give yourself a 2% raise and keep your money secure.
Uncategorized
Trombones & Trumpets
How about a couple of great musicians- Leroy Jones on trumpet and Lucien Barbarin on trombone both from New Orleans?
Or how about a look at a jazz singer before big music got ahold of her and changed her sound? In this one, Sia shows us what a woman with a set of pipes can do with her voice. Pay attention at the 2:50 mark:
Or if you would rather something a little more lively:
economics
Shorting
Another data point that a government engineered economic downturn is coming. Congressional finance committee members are shorting the stock market. They are buying PSQ, HDGE, and SH. All are funds that short major indices in the market. This indicates that Congressional Financial Committee members are anticipating an economic downturn.
Why? What do they know?
Communications
Channel 3 Project
Since the average citizen is NOT an Amateur Radio operator, there is a need to have a standardized method of being able to communicate with one another. Nearly everyone has at least one form of communication requiring no license to operate: CB, FRS/GMRS, or MURS radios. There is a movement in the prepping community to setup an emergency communications protocol that will allow people to communicate during a situation when communications are down. Because this link-up protocol is being distributed among various circles, if someone needed assistance they have the highest probability of linking up with someone of like-mind, even if the two parties did not personally know each other prior that moment.
Enter the Channel 3 project. The channel three project is where people will monitor the radio on the threes-
- FRS/GMRS Channel 3 – 462.6125 Mhz
- MURS Channel 3 – 151.940 Mhz
- Ham Radio (simplex) – 146.520 Mhz
- CB channel 3 – 26.985 MHz
Do NOT use sub-channels, TCS, or “privacy” codes
Make Contact In 3 – 2 – 1
– 3 (Turn your radio on and set it to Channel 3)
– 2 (Attempt to broadcast for approximately 2 minutes)
– 1 (Attempt again every 1 HOUR, on the hour, to save batteries)
If there is a real emergency, you could also monitor the channel threes to give assistance to others in need. To save batteries, monitor for 5 minutes on each side of the hour to increase the chances of hearing another prepper who may be communicating using the “Make Contact In 3-2-1” method. Some operators are monitoring every three hours, some every hour, others will do so continuously. It depends on each radio operators resources and battery capacity.
Remember, when making contact with someone you don’t know, always proceed with caution. Especially during an emergency or SHTF situation. Don’t allow someone inside of your perimeter that you do not know.
Etiquette dictates that if we simply use these frequencies for monitoring and calling others, we can keep the chatter to a minimum and people will be able to monitor these frequencies 24/7 in case of emergencies for important information.
Because this emergency protocol is being distributed among the prepping community, users have a high probability of linking up with someone. The purpose can be either for relaying important or emergency communications or simply conversing with community members as a block watch program.
This project does not take the place of calling 911 in the event of an emergency if you are able to do so. This is an information service when cell or landline communications are out of service during an emergency or any sort of SHTF situation.
In a local, regional or national emergency, traditional communication networks may be overloaded or even nonexistent. As has been proven time and again Amateur Radio has proven to be the only dependable means of communication.
While a test and license are required to operate a “ham” radio under the current rule of law, there are other means of communication. I have already posted a comprehensive guide to the different radio frequencies.
Hams typically have local “practice nets”; predetermined times and frequencies where they reach out to one another. Some nets are associated with the Channel 3 Project, where participants will take a break and switch over to channel 3 of CB, FRS, etc. in an attempt to contact local citizens. This is the opportunity for hams to relay any news to the citizenry, and, in exchange, find out about local conditions such as road closures, civil unrest, etc.
Pass this along. Keep it in mind.