So far this month, I have added an ACOG for 5.56mm, 250 rounds of 9mm, 100 rounds of .357 magnum, 250 rounds of .380ACP, and 2,000 rounds of 5.56 ammo to the stockpile.
If time is short I will be glad I did it. If it isn’t, I will have some extra range ammo, if there is such a thing.
We left Houston and arrived home last night. There were some here who asked what I brought, so here it is:
One level 3A ballistic vest, and one level 4 vest
Active hearing protection (two sets)
Night vision goggles
2 Gas masks
Various holsters (OWB, IWB, Fanny pack)
Weapons:
Pepper Spray
M&P9C with three 18 round magazines loaded with 9mm 115gr +P.
M&P380 with three 8 round magazines loaded with 90gr Gold Dot HP
Skorpion EVO with three 32 round and one 20 round magazines with 9mm 135gr +P
AR-15 with four 30 round magazines loaded with Lake City 62gr Green tip, and one 30 round magazine loaded with 50gr Jacketed Hollowpoints.
Credit cards, $1,000 in cash
Cell phone
Portable HAM radio in 2m band, programmed for Houston area repeaters
First aid kit
My first aid kit is made using this kit as a base. Then I added:
2 Hyfin chest seals
1 Quik Clot Kit
2 CATs
1 Israeli battle dressing
A couple of single dose packs of Benadryl (Benadryl is useful for all sorts of stuff)
and all of it (except the CATs) fits into the pouch that the kit came in, and is attached to my body armor with MOLLE. There are all sorts of people that will tell you to carry IV equipment, BVMs, and all of that, but frankly, you don’t need that stuff. There are plenty of studies that bear that out.
Try to control bleeding for 30 seconds. If you can’t, but a TQ on it. Seal chest wounds with Hyfin. Insert a nasal cannula. That’s it. You don’t need to carry the entire hospital with you.
EDITED: In all, 68 pounds of gear. That wasn’t counting clothes, food, etc. My brother thought I was nuts. I don’t care. I was not going to travel 1100 miles from home during civil unrest while defenseless.
The police have no one to blame but themselves for the situation that they find themselves in right now. For years, instead of calling out the bad cops in their midst, they actively shielded and protected them. This created a real PR problem for the cops.
I generally support the police, but there are times when that support gets tested. I have had a few interactions with police officers in my life, not counting ones directly related to my job as a paramedic. I am a law abiding citizen, and the majority of those interactions were not positive ones.
At the same time, we hear of cops having traffic citation quotas that they need to meet in order to get raises. Cops are the collections department of a $10 billion industry whose job it is to extort money from the public.
We hear of cops getting out of DUI arrests, even while driving department issued vehicles.
On duty cops murdering handcuffed prisoners by putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger and getting away with it.
There are the bad cops who are caught on video threatening to plant evidence on, kill people, or simply like to harass people.
Gaming the constitution and using DUI checkpoints as an excuse to springboard into other searches.
The public watched as cops took cover behind housewives and their children during a shootout just six months ago. When called out on this, the reply is: “You’re demanding perfection in an imperfect world. Where should the cops have stood in that situation, right out in the open where they would have been shot? You’re confusing prudent behavior with suicide.” Then they demand that we call them “heroes.”
The cops have lied, planted evidence, killed people’s dogs, police snipers have sniped people’s wives and taunted them about it, shot victims who were seeking help, framed people, shot innocents, and have been caught framing and arresting black people, drop grenades into baby cribs and happily say that they would do it again, all the while they expect no one to be angry about that.
The police have had a real image problem for years. It is no surprise that when the crap hits the fan, many people are willing to watch them fry. What is happening right now is a direct result of the mindset that police have had- the US-versus-THEM, “thin blue line” horseshit that they have been following. Now they are paying for it, and the law abiding citizens will, too. You have lost the support of much of the public, and you have no one to blame but yourselves.
I have been saying for years that police need to police their own. They didn’t. So now we are all going to pay for that. The first thing the police need to do is what they should have been doing all along- getting rid of the douchebags within your own ranks. Prove to us that police deserve the powers they have been given. If you don’t, then there will continue to be a massacre of police department budgets nationwide.
There is a company offering 1,000 round cans of XM855 Lake City green tip,on stripper clips for $440. This ammo is particularly hard to find right now.
Other than being a purchaser, I have absolutely no relationship with this company.
One of the things that an attempted insurgency must do is drown out any message that is contrary to their own. The signs that this is happening are becoming more and more evident. People’s jobs are being destroyed over perceived racism. We have been seeing that for at least a year with the stints in FB jail. The insurgents have been doxxing people and destroying their businesses and careers for any possible statements they may have made, even if the statement was made years ago and wasn’t out of the mainstream at the time it was made.
For that reason, I have deleted my social media presence. This blog is all that remains, and if things get much worse, that will be deleted as well. I know this may seem like an overreaction, but let me quote the Guide to Analysis of Insurgency, and you can tell me where you think we are right now. First, there is the:
Preinsurgency Stage
A conflict in the preinsurgency stage is difficult to detect because most
activities are underground and the insurgency has yet to make its presence
felt through the use of violence. Moreover, actions conducted in the open
can easily be dismissed as nonviolent political activity. During this stage,
an insurgent movement is beginning to organize: leadership is emerging,
and the insurgents are establishing a grievance and a group identity,
beginning to recruit and train members, and stockpiling arms and supplies.
Then the insurgency advances to:
Incipient Conflict Stage
A struggle enters the incipient conflict stage when the insurgents begin to
use violence. Often these initial attacks provide analysts the first alert to
the potential for an insurgency. The target government, however, frequently
dismisses insurgent actions as the work of bandits, criminals, or terrorists,
which increases the risk that the government will employ counterproductive
measures.
As the violence increases, the insurgency enters:
Open Insurgency Stage
At this stage, no doubt exists that the government is facing an insurgency.
Politically, the insurgents are overtly challenging state authority and
attempting to exert control over territory. Militarily, the insurgents are
staging more frequent attacks, which have probably become more
aggressive, violent, and sophisticated and involve larger numbers of
fighters. As the insurgency becomes more active, external support for the
belligerents probably becomes more apparent, if it exists..
An insurgency at this stage often progresses from undermining state authority to displacing and replacing it. Insurgents may develop a “shadow government” that mirrors state administrative structures and may establish “no-go” areas where government representatives have been driven out and where only large formations of security forces can operate.
It is my feeling that the insurgency entered the Incipient conflict stage during the 2016 elections, when Antifa began using violence as a means to influence the political arena. I also believe that now we are beginning to enter the open insurgency stage, with the insurgency beginning to declare “police free” zones.
At any rate, the doxxing and economic/personal destruction of anyone deemed to be an outspoken opponent to the insurgency will, in my opinion accelerate as the election approaches. This will eventually increase to the point of physical attacks. The economic, reputation, and legal attacks upon people will continue. Anyone deemed to be an enemy of the BLM movement will be destroyed financially, legally, and in the community. They will have their careers, reputation, and finances destroyed for any perceived weakness or wrongthink.
Of course, there is always the possibility that I am wrong and the violence will disappear after the election, but I believe it is enough of a possibility that I am beginning to take steps to secure my position.
I believe that, since hostilities have already been initiated in the large cities, that further hostilities are probable, and they will occur with little to no warning.
We keep seeing things in the news about something called “restorative justice.” The theory of restorative justice is that, instead of focusing on the behavior of the offender, it focuses on the effect of the offender’s behavior. I like to call it, “no harm, no foul.” This is a brand of discipline that has become quite popular in schools.
Let me explain: Suppose we have a person that is caught stealing $500. Under traditional systems, the offender would be punished with some sort of punitive measure like probation or prison. Critics of this system point to recidivism rates and rightly point out that the punishment is obviously not enough to deter repeat offenses. In these cases, the victim is out $500, the offender is not rehabilitated, and the public is out the cost of investigating the crime, conducting a trial, and administering the punishment.
Proponents of restorative justice propose to make the offender and victim sit down to discuss the issue, the offense, and why that offense is hurtful. Then the victim is reimbursed for any loss, and since there is now restitution, that’s essentially the end of it.
Since many people have insurance, the proponents of restorative justice claim that the victim has been made whole, so all they have to do is explain to the offender why his behavior was wrong, and all is well.
This is codswallop. The victim hasn’t been made whole. The fact that he, and the rest of society, must maintain insurance against the poor behavior of offenders makes all of society into the victim. This entire theory of justice was born out of the “broken window” fallacy.
The broken window fallacy was first expressed by the 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat.
In Bastiat’s tale, a boy breaks a window. The townspeople looking on decide that the boy has actually done the community a service because his father will have to pay the town’s glazier to replace the broken pane. The glazier will then spend the extra money on something else, jump-starting the local economy. The onlookers come to believe that breaking windows stimulates the economy. Of course that is incorrect, because even though the owner of the broken window is now whole, the entire community is now poorer by the value of the window.
This particular type of discipline, if one were to call it that, has been popular in education for some time now. Schools are out of control as a result. Student tells a teacher to Fu@k off? He gets a stern talking to, and a time out. Two students get in a fistfight in the classroom? Again, time out and a lecture on why fighting is wrong.
As a result, there is no real deterrent effect on bad behavior. The offenders are operating in a nearly risk free environment: If they don’t get caught, they keep their ill gotten profits. If they DO get caught, they endure a brief lecture on why their behavior harmed others, then are free to try again. The schools are out of control with fights, drugs, weapons, and theft. We teachers are by state law asked if we feel safe on campus. The answer is, no I do not.
This is insanity, and can have only one result: the collapse of society.
THAT is what the people advocating restorative justice are missing: They do not recognize that some people simply don’t care about hurting others. They are projecting their own feelings of loving humanity onto criminals who simply view other humans as things to be exploited.
Antifa captures a city and declares it to be outside of the US. The first thing they did was build a wall.
I have been sitting here watching the crowds rioting and thinking how, if you are in the path of such an attack, how useful it would be to have a belt fed AR (essentially a SAW).
Then I watch the recent activities in Seattle and think how useful a bolt action rifle in .50 BMG would be if directed at the leader of a bunch of revolutionaries that have decided to liberate your neighborhood.
The problem is that the cost for them is the same, and I can only afford one in the short term, and even that means having to forego some other purchases I was planning.
Let’s be honest, I am likely to not buy either.
We left Friday afternoon and made it as far as Mobile. We camped for the night in a relative’s driveway. We left the next day around noon, and were able to set up camp before dark on Saturday.
My brother went in for his COVID test on Sunday and was admitted to the hospital once the test came back negative on Monday. Since no one but patients are allowed in, my wife and I will remain here in camp until he is discharged, hopefully by Monday the 15th.
It is a 15 hour drive back, and I plan on doing it in two days. Until then, not much to do beyond housekeeping and surfing the web. Every day, we cook, clean, and I dump wastewater. My wife is still attending virtual meetings for school, but mine ended yesterday. I don’t have anything scheduled for the next two weeks.
We are here for my brother and his cancer treatments. My brother is the first friend that I had in my life, and I did not hesitate to agree to help him on this trip, once he asked.
The press is busy trying to explain to us that “defunding” the police doesn’t mean eliminating them, it means budget cuts. This is pure media spin. If you look up the group “8 to abolition” you will see exactly what they mean (highlights are mine):
Reject any proposed expansion to police budgets.
Reduce the power of police unions.
Until the police are fully defunded, make police union contract negotiations public.
Pressure the AFL-CIO to denounce police unions.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Demand the highest budget cuts per year, until they slash police budget to zero.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
No hiring of new officers or replacement of fired or resigned officers.
Fully cut funding for public relations.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Require police, not cities, to be liable for misconduct and violence settlements.
Deplatform white supremacist public officials.
Abolish asset forfeiture programs and laws.
Many of these requirements are unconstitutional, but I am not sure they even know or care.