The world, as most SurvivalBlog readers understand, is a place full of unpleasant truths and harsh realities. It is not, nor has it ever been, nor (until our Lord returns) will it ever be a place where the lion lies down with the lamb. We are charged to pray for our nation and its leaders and to hope for the best, but we are to prepare for the worst. We would all like to believe, as Abraham Lincoln put it, in the angels of our better nature. I would like to believe in this as well, though the stark facts stare me blankly in the face, and the truth must not be sacrificed on the altar of expediency or heretofore unwarranted faith in the American voting public. To remain willfully blind to the coming storm is dangerous to your freedom and that of your progenies. So, excuse me if I state bluntly what I see as inevitable as the sun rising in the east tomorrow morning. Your next President of the United States is Hillary Rodham Clinton, and she is coming, unashamedly and unabashedly, for your Second Amendment rights. As I write this, you have just under six months prior to Inauguration Day 2017 to insulate yourself, your family, and your future generations against this.
The normal caveats and disclaimers follow. I am neither a prophet nor a prognosticator. These are my own opinions and predictions, based upon my own reasoning. You are responsible for your own decisions. I have zero connection to any brand or company mentioned in this article, and I name them only because they are the ones with which I have experience. Make your own buying decisions. You cannot eat bullets, and you cannot drink Hoppe’s No. 9 [1]. This article assumes that you have the basics of your beans [2], bullets, and band aids [3] squared away before you consider this. I am not a paid investor, and so far as I know neither is anyone employed by SurvivalBlog. Do your own research prior to making any investment decisions. Finally, I am not a lawyer. Research your own local laws and jurisdictions to ensure you remain compliant with the law. Neither I, nor SurvivalBlog, advocates in engaging in illegal activity. That said, if any of the following suggestions are illegal in the area in which you live, then I would encourage you to “vote with your feet” and attempt to relocate to an area more amenable to your freedom. If that is not an option, adapt the outlined strategies to work within the confines of your current environment. Sometimes, you just have to do the best that you can. However, do something.
What Will Change?
I believe in my heart that, sometime soon after the installation of the new Clinton Administration, some madman will commit a mass shooting that will take place in such a manner that will turn the stomachs of every sane, decent American. The most recent ones where inconvenient for the statists. The Orlando shooter targeted a known homosexual nightclub while claiming allegiance to ISIS. Bringing excess attention to this would have run contrary to their messaging. It’s hard to talk about Islam being the religion of peace and tolerance and the need to accept Syrian refugees when you have to acknowledge that these refugees come from areas where it is common place for homosexuals to be executed by the state. That’s not good for the leftist coalition. The murder of five Dallas Police officers was problematic as well. You can’t vigorously demonize a shooter enough to demand more gun restrictions when the shooter represents and espouses the inherent violence and racism in the Black Lives Matter movement. That makes for poor fodder as well. It’s difficult to capitalize on the San Bernardino shooting when it takes place in the Peoples Republic of California, where the shooting only outlined and proved that their wacko laws and restrictions don’t work. But mark my words, sometime soon some madman will walk into a sacred, holy, or otherwise considered safe place and commit some unspeakable act of violence, and the Left will pounce. (If if I may put on my tinfoil hat for a moment, it may not surprise me to discover that Federal Law Enforcement is aware of and ignores the warning signs of this act.) However, this time will be different than the last times. This time, a statist movement with momentum from the landslide election, claiming a mandate by the election of Clinton, who is joined by a cowed right, will enact legislation akin to the poorly reasoned 1994-2004 ban, with the following items making up the meat of the legislation:
- A ban on the production of rifles commonly referred to as “black rifles”.
- Closing the fictional “gun show loophole”, requiring all private transfers to go through a FFL dealer, complete with a background check.
- Banning the production of magazines with a capacity greater than ten rounds.
- Requiring a background check for the purchase of more than some arbitrary number (let’s just say 100) of “military” calibers, such as 9 mm, (40 S&W, 45 ACP, 5.56 NATO/.223 REM, 7.62 NATO/.308 WIN, etc)
- Combining the Federal “No Fly List” and the “Terror Watch List” into a “No Buy List”.
- Notably, there will be NO sunset clause as in the prior ban.
There may very well be additional riders thrown in for good measure, but these are the main aspects I believe will be presented and passed. I believe the Left will offer a fake “compromise” of a grandfathered clause for property owned prior to the bans enactment, and I do not believe they will attempt to register these firearms (right away), given how that scheme met with massive non-compliance when they attempted that in Connecticut. Its failure would be a national embarrassment to the Administration, and would essentially felonize overnight a massive percentage of the population, leading to significant push back. Their methods will be what they always have been– incremental encroachment of liberty. Over generations, these firearms, as they pass into new hands, will create records of who has what and where it is. Attempting to disarm the United States citizenry, as JWR has said numerous times, is a fool’s errand, and they know that. Yet, over time, if they know where they are and who has them, they don’t really need to disarm you. One can debate the effectiveness of this point, but that is not the point of this article, so I will not do so. What I will do is offer my suggestions on how to (primarily) insulate yourself, your family, and your future generations from the effects of this change and (secondarily) potentially place yourself in a position of strength, should the need ever arise to dabble in this market. Note please that you will see no mention of reloading in this article. I am not a reloader, and I am not comfortable with the idea of being one. To each their own. There are numerous articles on this art and how to engage in it. Consult them, if that interests you. Note also please that I am not a rich man; I’m just an average Joe with an average income. Many of the things that I have done to prepare for this eventuality have been done over years in the normal course of recreational shooting and prepping. Now, I have topped off some supplies recently in anticipation of the coming troubles, but it’s not as if I went all in at a gun show on Saturday to get all of this done. I did not use consumer credit for any of this, and I paid cash and made private purchases whenever possible. I always recommend against going into any sort of debt. However, the time is short, so you must make your own decisions on how to accumulate that which you believe you need. So, what DO you need?
What Do You Need?
Black Rifles
Have a black rifle for each and every member of your family, plus two more for redundancy, barter, and cannibalization as a last resort. Now, when I say every member of your family, I do not necessarily mean your second cousin that you see twice a year. What I mean is everyone living in your household, and everyone you foresee living in your household for an extended period of time in the event of some long-term calamity that would necessitate armed defense of self or the family/group. This is a large purchase, so my advice is to do what I did in this case. I purchased baseline AR-15’s. The Palmetto State Armory AR-15, DPMS Panther Arms AR-15, and Smith and Wesson M&P 15’s can all be had now as this is written for $500 or less, so long as you are willing to look around and wheel and deal a bit. I went with a mixed combination of DPMS’s and PSA’s, based on the difference in prices when I was prepared to purchase. If you can afford to buy a Daniels Defense for every member of your family, by all means do so. I could not, and most folks probably cannot either, especially when you are looking at, for the average family, a minimum of five rifles purchased, if the spares are being bought. This begs the question of “Why the spares?”. The purpose of the spares is primarily economic. If such a ban, as I foresee, is enacted, the price of these rifles will double, or perhaps triple, virtually overnight. Post Sandy Hook, I personally witnessed people lining up to pay $1,100 for a S&W M&P 15 baseline model that had sold for $550 not even a month prior. Now, these prices obviously normalized once supply caught up with demand, but in the event of a ban supply will never catch up with demand. With a ban, prices have only one way to go– up. One could go much further here and invest in 80% lower receivers, but I am not a gunsmith, and I do have other priorities. I also believe that completed, fully functional and ready rifles will resell at a premium over parted out models. So, should you ever find yourself needing an influx of cash, one could easily and quickly move these spare rifles for a handsome profit without endangering your own family’s supplies.