By John Farnam
Ft Collins, CO –-(Ammoland.com)- Additional comments on Ammunition, from friends and colleagues around the Country:
“In our Long-Range Rifle Courses, we are now seeing many rifles chambered for 30-06. There seems to be plenty of that caliber available, relatively cheap!
Many 1903 Springfield bolt-guns, as well as Garands. Deadly, and amazingly destructive well past 500m. Screw with someone equipped with one of these at your peril! Adaptation at its finest!”
“Paradoxically, two years ago many of our students migrated from 5.56×45 (223) rifles to similar rifles chambered for 22LR, since 223 was hard to find, and expensive. Today, that has precisely reversed! 22RF is now hard to find, and expensive, while 223 is plentiful and relatively cheap!
Both consumers and manufactures have found a way around current supply-side economics, and have successively adjusted habits in order to capitalize on what is available.
Americans are endlessly adaptive, and we need to be!”
“Your last Quip tracks with what I’ve been seeing locally. Scads of 5.56/9/40/45 currently available.
30/Soviet (7.62×39) is on the shelves but mainly in high-performance, and expensive, hunting configurations. Cheap, made-by-political-prisoners, military stuff from Eastern Europe and China has all but dried-up.
When visiting sporting-good retailers, you can easily fall over the stacks of black rifles, and handguns. Plenty of AR magazines too.
All of this suggests one thing to me:
Get what you need now, before the next batch of bad news (which is coming). Now that the market is soft, we all need to re-evaluate our current equipment and training. I have repeated seen perfectly good, new M4s available for $800.00. Exact, same guns well selling, briskly, for $1,100.00 two years ago!”
A note about military rifles chambered for 30-06:
Several colleagues have reminded me that M1 Garands run best with white-box, military-equivalent ammunition.
Conversely, much of modern, hunting ammunition in 30-06 caliber generates pressures curves aggressive enough to actually bend the Garand’s op-rod, quickly rendering the rifle inoperable. The Garand was never designed to run ammunition with pressures that high!
Conversely, an ‘03 Springfield bolt-gun will run anything. This represents a real advantage to those of us armed with this WWI “relic”
As the ageing Viking once said: “Fight me if you want, but remember this: I’m old for a reason!”
My comments:
When talking with domestic ammunition manufacturers, I neglected to even ask about 22 rimfire, as we don’t use it in our courses (at least recently). With the ammunition market, in general, being soft right now, I’m not sure why there is still a continuing shortage of rimfire. Could be that preppers/survivalists continue to buy it up in significant quantities.
One final comment on our current “election season:”
Between now and 2016, we going to continue to see significant rioting and other violent crime, much of it racially motivated. It takes literally nothing to spark mob rioting, as we have seen. Politicians and activists, always eager to use such events to their own political advantage, push, for example, anti-gun legislation before bodies are even cold! We’re seeing it now.
The savage quadruple murder in “gun-free” Washington DC, where innocent victims were tied-up, then stabbed, beaten, and ultimately burned to death, brings home this clear message:
Who do not go armed, even within their own homes, are exposing themselves and their families to grave danger. Who think these monsters will be “ satisfied” with cash and other valuables are naive fools!
Murderous monsters are roaming fee right now, as we have seen. Psychopaths who have no regard for human life, habitual criminals who have already spent most of their lives in prison, but who keep getting turned loose by politicians who cynically regard them as a “resource.”
The demonstrated presence of these monsters scares people, and frightened citizens are fodder for leftists who falsely promise “protection,” at the expense of personal freedom.
Between now and 2016, we’ll hear all these phony promises repeatedly, ad nauseam!
“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign,
Blockin’ out the scenery,
Breakin’ my mind,
‘Do this. Don’t do that
Can’t you read the sign?’”From “Signs,” written by Les Emmerson and performed by Five-Man Electrical Band in 1971
/John
About John Farnam & Defense Training International, Inc
As a defensive weapons and tactics instructor John Farnam will urge you, based on your own beliefs, to make up your mind in advance as to what you would do when faced with an imminent and unlawful lethal threat. You should, of course, also decide what preparations you should make in advance, if any. Defense Training International wants to make sure that their students fully understand the physical, legal, psychological, and societal consequences of their actions or inactions.
It is our duty to make you aware of certain unpleasant physical realities intrinsic to the Planet Earth. Mr Farnam is happy to be your counselor and advisor. Visit: www.defense-training.com