pricing bayonets

PRICING BAYONETS

I love the whole concept of rifle bayonets. Those who claim they are obsolete have no concept of resource depletion. At present they serve little purpose but in the very near future they will once again help replace some ammunition use. And, I might add, new to the issue since I first wrote about survival bayonets, there was one instance in the Iraq War ( or, as we call it, War For Democracy or War Against WMD’s, or War For Anything Other Than Oil We Promise ) where bayonets were used by regular line troops against insurgents involving a Limey chap who might have read a few too many romantic poetry lines relating to the First World War and his boyo’s Going Over The Top. Ammo was running short, a strange instance whence semi-auto use depleted an infantryman’s supply during combat wherein he was unable to be resupplied-surely never something our intrepid survival AR toting readers shall ever encounter, and bayonets were fixed for close in fighting and at least one enemy was dispatched with this obsolete choice of arms. I am amazed as you are, assuming modern combat was like a game of Doom where a cheat code allowed you to fire an unending supply of ammunition.

*

One of the reasons I always had for recommending either a Mauser or Lee-Enfield war surplus bolt action rifle ( I still don’t recommend the Mossin-Nagant Russian bolt for lack of a gas bleed safety ) was not simply because they were cheap. That was a good part of it-you could buy three or four rifles for almost no money. And of course, they were far sturdier than modern hunting rifles. But a big draw was the bayonets they came with. Bayonets both save on ammunition use, AND act as a close in secondary weapon back-up. If you are in the middle of a rabid dog attack, most likely you will die. But with a fixed bayonet and a heavy wood buttstock you have a fighting chance. With a pretty-much-one-shot hunting rifle, not so much. Now, I know all you semi advocates will use that as an excuse to sell me on your carbines. But despite how much you love your talismans, I still believe it is far better to buy a lot more ammunition than a lot more gun. We are all on a very slim prepper budget. There is a LOT of food you can’t buy if you procure a plastic carbine. Why do you still think we have twenty years to prep? Fracking oil peaks in two to three years. The Petro-Dollar could end any day. You DO NOT have decades to prep! Start triaging. But, I do not mean to dwell on your poor choice with semi’s. I bring it up every article, but then I must move on. Before, I recommended war surplus. When they went from $150 to $350, I started recommending modern hunting rifles. Now, I’m not so sure I want to stick with that recommendation.

*

Yes, a war surplus rifle at $350 is a rip-off. It is over-priced. You are buying a heavily used rifle. It is beat up. The spacing might be off, the barrel abused. You need extra money to mount a scope. These are all reasons to just buy a modern rifle ( the other, main, far more important one is that being far more accurate, they waste less ammo ). But then we move back in circular reasoning to why you SHOULDN’T buy a modern rifle. Far more likely to break in the field, far less robust. And, most important of all, they have no bayonet. Deciding which rifle to buy, modern hunting or war surplus, is no longer about price. They are about the same ( again, excluding the Russian bolt from consideration ) cost. Rather, you are deciding which attributes are more important for the same cost. Bayonet and robustness, or accuracy at the cost of those two. That is now your choice. No longer low cost. And forget caliber. Most ammo is about the same high cost, per box. Perhaps if you buy by the case there is a difference. But not as much of one as there used to be. And forget rimfire. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle eating out of my own ass if rimfire ever drops down in price AND is as bountiful as it once was.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.

*

All My Contact Info, Books For Sale, Links:

http://bisonprepper.blogspot.com/2014/05/my-information.html