revisiting rimfire

REVISITING RIMFIRE

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note: I noticed my reader numbers suddenly jumped again.  I want to try an experiment to answer my theory.  Ready?  PEAK OIL.  PEAK OIL IS REAL.  We Are Running Out!  EROI!!!!  We are all going to die from energy contraction! Danger, danger Will Robinson!!!  If I'm right, the mere mention of Peak Oil will drive away all the Princess Pussy Preppers and my numbers will drop.  Let's see, shall we?
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Second in an informal series.

Ah, the fury minions hath wrought.  I love my minions.  Because, first, they are mine.  And second,  where else can one find less asshatery or douchebagness than right here?  And, most importantly, they force me to think and not remain resting upon my laurels.  Which as we all know are many and varied.  If my minions insist the rimfire was too easily dismissed than who am I to disagree ( even though I have no problem disagreeing with the common love of the AR, MRE’s, freeze dried and other assorted tomfoolery.  Okay, not disagreeing with their possession but their common usage.  I simply urge restraint and common sense application, not complete and utter avoidance )?

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You all thought I was done with rambling sentences and long asides, after I switched over to shorter articles and shorter paragraphs, didn’t you?  HA!  Anyway, I’ve never been opposed to the rimfire as a survival weapon, just the lack of affordable ammunition during the last near decade.  It made absolutely no sense to use a small 22 when for less price you could use the 9mm.  However, for now at least, it seems rimfire is back to being affordable.  It could last a month, it could last the next two years.  No one knows.  If you are going to consider rimfire for either a Forever Gun or even your Primary Post-Apocalypse Gun, you are a Gott Damn Fool if you do not buy all your rimfire Right Friggin Now.

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At this moment, as we speak, rimfire is one nickel.  That is 5 cents compared to 3 cents for a center fire primer.  If you do not buy now, a minimum of five thousand rounds at a time, everything I say about rimfires is null and void.  Rimfire is completely worthless without cheap, affordable and well stocked ammunition.  I can guess why rimfire is now cheap, and it has nothing to do with Trump being elected.  Building and manufacturing in China, as well as most other places, has come to a screaming halt ( well, that would be relative ) and finally there is no more high demand for copper as there was ( high demand mated to Peak Copper some time ago, with a three-some including high oil prices ).  Brass is now cheaper ( lead and primer chemicals as well as powder isn’t/wasn’t as expensive or as subject to shortages as the copper ).

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But the fact that rimfire is now cheap doesn’t mean it will stay cheap.  Every swinging dingus minion out there wants to ignore Peak PetroDollar.  I know you’all do so don’t bother denying it.  Don’t deny being in denial.  The simple fact is, in a globalized trade paradigm, in an instant anything can cease being imported.  Everything is cheap because our colonies accept worthless paper to send us real goods.  Once that agreement stops, all affordable goods end.  If they are even shipped here in the first place.  You either stock deep now or you forever hold your peace ( the same applies to steel case ammunition ).

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Why am I being such a tightwad cheap frugal bastard?  Because without dirt cheap rimfire you can’t practice and if you can’t practice you can’t hit a fly in the ass at long distances.  And shot placement is critical with a low power rimfire.  Now, I’m NOT talking about plinking.  Plinking is just wasting a bunch of ammo sending lead down range for the sheer joy of it.  Something we all used to be able to do.  I’m talking about actual practice hitting your target with every shot.  NOT shooting the crap out of the target.  If you are going to do that, just go back to the shotgun.

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You don’t have to waste a hundred rounds a weekend.  You might be trying to justify the long drive out to the boonies to shoot, but if you take your time and treat each round as the expensive luxury it just was, you can go shoot twenty rounds and keep in shape with your skills.  But that dollar isn’t why you are so concerned with the cost of the ammunition.  It certainly helps that shooting every weekend costs less than a Starbucks coffee, but also as important is the fact you are shooting MORE expensive rounds each weekend.  You just bought ten or fifteen or twenty thousand rounds.  That is your stockpile.  You go buy retail for your weekly range sessions.

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You NEVER shoot your apocalypse stockpile for practice ( you can rotate, just don’t deplete ).  What if the supply suddenly dries up again, or it cost fifteen cents a round again?  But since the cost is so drastically reduced now, you can go a long time practicing at incrementally increasing retail costs without being forced to stop.  That has to be your mental outlook.  Just as you don’t buy an SUV just because the gas price is cheap this year, you don’t assume rimfire will stay cheap.  But since it is, now, you can plan around its eventual return to being problematic.  And, yes, you could do this with another weapon system.  But your initial mastery and follow-up practice will suffer since the cost of practice is so much higher.

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Initial stockpiling is just as important as practice, obviously.  I know few people, not running in those rarified circles, who could easily stock ten thousand rounds of 223.  Plus shoot more every weekend.  Is the round anemic?  Of course.  Granted, steers and Mafia victims fall to the rimfire every day.  At point blank range, sure, you have a very lethal round.  At a hundred yards out, not so much.  But then we return to shot placement.  You hit the right spot, it is a kill shot even if it isn’t an immediately incapacitating one.  And, remember, you chose this over a shotgun to get better range.  A hundred yards out, you can flee and avoid your still reeling target.  Let him bleed out in good time.

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Every scenario others envision where the rimfire sucks is where you are acting defensively rather than offensively.  No one should be firing from a building with a rimfire if the return fire shreds the wall with higher powered rounds and kills you.  It isn’t a gun to bring to a gunfight when you two face down on the street.  It is a guerrilla and ambush weapon.  A mobile weapon, and to be used offensively.  Tomorrow, we’ll continue with how and what to use in a rimfire arsenal.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2yb2Ien )

 

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