Archive for October, 2014

Rock Salt, Snow Blowers, Generators and Wise Emergency Food Storage

Wise Food StorageWe have been getting in more of the Wise Emergency Food Storage products and have recently become a direct distributor for the product line.  This is one of those products, just like rock salt, that most people don’t think about until they need it.   You wake up after the first ice storm or snow storm, grab your shovel, and find a half a bag of solid rock salt that you have to break up and spread around your driveway.   If another storm comes, you better be prepared because products like this have a tendency to disappear from shelves because so many people don’t want to store much of it ahead of time.  Some rock salt distributors sit on their inventory for years without any major snow storms, sometimes close to a decade, but then those bad winters hit and its all gone.   Food storage should be in the same category and since technological advances have been made, quality has improved.    If you couldn’t go to the store to buy food for 2 weeks, how long is your present food situation going to last and what would the quality of your diet be?

I am expecting that if there are many more of these Ebola outbreaks, there is going to be panic buying of products  like this.  Sure some of these buckets look expensive, but if you realize that if you went to a restaurant and could eat there for a month and it cost you $180 or $250 would that not be a great deal?  You can make Wise Food Storage products with hot or cold water  and there is a very diverse food variety, from Milk products, fruits, vegetables and meats.   Another thing to think about when shopping for these products are the manufacturing dates.  There are vendors out there that sometimes get stuck with inventory and it sits in their warehouses for years and may have been manufactured 3-4 years ago but says lasts for 25yrs.

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Lancer Magazines another option

Lancer MagazinesIn any industry there may be multiple products that can work well with very minor differences.   We’ve gotten a lot of feedback in recent years about various products being used in Military, Law Enforcement and competition sports.    There are some really good shows on 3 Gun Nation and even Personal Defense TV,  and one of my favorites, Larry Vicker’s Tac-TV where you get product reviews and see what and how things are being used.   Things like Maglinks and Couplers can make your gun very heavy and for personal defense a bit too bulk but it will speed up your reloading time and for entry personnel cutting a second in half means living, cutting a second in half in competition means winning.   One suggestion I have is to not do too much mixing and matching with firearm magazines and accessories.   Most magazines can be fixed but magazine rotation is very important even if you aren’t shooting a lot.   I first learned of this with a 1911 where I noticed my recoil spring was getting very sluggish and after I replaced it some of the magazines I owned didn’t cycle so well because the timing was off between the older magazines and the brand new recoil spring.

I’ve been on firing ranges enough to know that you gotta test ALL of your magazines out before you rely on them.   Recently I was at a competition event where I used my Magpul Pmags in a friends suppressed M4 and the gun jammed on me, it was also a royal pain to get the magazine out because the magwell was not in the same specs that my AR15 rifles were in.   He was running Lancer Magazines so I ended up using his to complete the training.   There are so many manufacturers of AR15s out there that even if it’s a well made firearm, the magazines you run in it could be made in different factories, different years, different material or design changes and you should expect perfectly accurate manufacturing from year to year.   It’s just a reality about manufacturing and why products have time stamps on them.   When I wear out the magazines I own I wouldn’t hesitate to jump on the Lancer magazines but I’m going to still test run them all on all of My AR15’s before I rely on them.

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Eotech Sights still have an edge

Eotech SightsI personally can’t trash Eotech sights or Trijicon or Aimpoint.  There are a few other optics that I have personally worked with that are moving  up to that category, and that’s just my personl opinion about worthiness.   I haven’t spent time in the Canadian Military, Russian Military or Royal Forces to talk about what they are using, but durability means its going to last.   When I look at all of the internal technological changes that many of these optics have had, even a good design, when fielded, will have its weak points.   Just think about how much of an improvement the M14 was over the M1 Garand, but as soon as the M14 was fielded in Vietnam, the M14 stocks swelled and just didn’t hold up in that climate that changes needed to be made.   There are plenty of arguments about how bad the M16 did in Artic testing so don’t think desert warfare is the same as Artic.  Even snow speeders had trouble adapting to cold.

Remember that trying to have a perfect cheekweld in real world conditions isn’t always possible, cutting corners, climbing stairs and running full speed is something you might want to do, movement is important to survival and the Eotech Sights have a very unique holographic gun sight.   It’s not a dot that you can easily loose track of depending on it’s brightness and this was copied after the F16 fighter gun sight because they knew that with all of the ducking and weaving that a fighter pilot would be engaging in that it’s impossible to have  your head completely still.  Just moving a half inch back and forth with iron sights means not having a sight picture or losing your target.   The batteries don’t run as long as a Trijicon SRS sight or the Aimpoint Patrol Rifle Optic, but it might be the best and fastest sighting system for you.

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A good utility knife is a good knife

It doesn’t matter what you spend on a knife, if it works for you you’re fine.   There are plenty of reasons to not have to spend $180 on a knife, even if it’s really sharp and holds and edge.   If you loose that knife I guarantee you’re going to cry.   Besides being able to have a good edge on it, get a good knife sharpening kit or whatever knife sharpening system you think works for your price range and use it correctly.  I’ve seen many times how people just eat up a knife and don’t sharpen them properly, and it’s basically useless once you get away from cutting through tape on boxes you got shipped in.  A butter knife can usually get the job done just because it’s hard and and blunt.  One thing I have found that people should seriously consider is a good sheath or make sure you loctite any and every screw even if it means taking it out and putting it back in.

I don’t really have a favorite knife because I use so many of them for different things, on second thought, I think my steak knife is my favorite.   We  have a large selection of tactical knivesTactical Knives, rescue knives and even SOG and Leatherman multi-tools.   Sometimes  multi-tool might be a better idea but make sure it’s something you are actually going to carry and not get something that is an over kill.   There are always elaborate ways of carrying these from neck knives, boot knives, clip on pocket or carrying in a sheath.   Different blade metals can make a huge different in durability but a knife that looses it’s edge isn’t going to be of much use for cutting.

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Handguns and Rifles and technology to improve safety, gunvault gun safes might be worth a look

Gunvault SafesThere are plenty of stories in the news right now of Law Enforcement gun accidents and a Child discovering a handgun and shooting themselves.   Handguns are inherently more dangerous than rifles because it’s much easier to be cumbersome with them.   Just look at the number of accidents with holstering and un-holstering of firearms.    The Blackhawk Serpa has  reputation of not being suitable for many people because it is possible to release the firearm with index finger, and depending on how you draw the gun up, your finger, while depressing the release button can curl into the trigger guard and hit the trigger while drawing the gun.   If the proper training is taking, it’s less likely to happen but if people just did more training all of this would dramatically be reduced, but they don’t and you have to expect that many people just won’t.

In firearm instructor training we learned that I am responsible for ever bullet I send, and there is a lawyer attached to everyone of them.   If you read the stats on firearm accidents it’s mostly handguns, then alcohol related hunting accidents or hunters not identify people from animals.   That’s one reason I don’t go out for Deer rifle season unless it’s private land,  Turkey season has a much higher accident rate because people violate hunter rules and instead of calling in Turkey’s they pursue them and find out the other person calling Turkey’s is another hunter, and you better  hope he’s got good eyesight and knows you aren’t a Turkey.  There are rules, but you cant make people follow them.   If you care about your life and other’s around you’ll do some research and improve any safety measures you can where every you can.  To me guns should be locked up or in a holster or a gun safe.   You can lock your CCW gun up in hidden gunvault safes in the kitchen  or living  room instead and keep your bedroom gun locked up in drawer safe or a wall safe.   If you can do anything that can prevent the wrong person from accessing it, put up all the firewalls  you can to slow them down, don’t make it easier for them.   We have this on internet security, password protection, and we put dead bolts on front and back doors.

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