The world is increasingly becoming a less comfortable place. You, as a teenage or young adult man reading this, have hopefully recognized this. You’d have to be oblivious not to. A lot of us are. This guide is meant to help give a high school to college-aged guy some ideas on how to increase his own personal preparedness. I have some small experience with this: I grew up in a moderately prepared family, and due to the intersection of theirs and my interests, I have what I think is a relatively realistic view of what is an attainable level of preparedness for your average guy without a lot of resources and support. I admit that this article will likely strike some as unbalanced in scope.
Let’s talk about personal situations. Yours is going to be critical. A lot of this information is going to be of differing levels of usefulness. Some things you need to consider include:
How old are you? There may not be much difference biologically and mentally between a seventeen, eighteen, and twenty-one-year-old you. But there sure is a great big legal one, and that will affect what is available to you. Having only recently turned twenty-one, a lot more things are open to me in terms of what I can now purchase, but they were mostly things I’d already tried, (handguns, alcohol, and tobacco) so the efficacy of the laws should also be considered.
Disclaimer: Do not do anything illegal, I am a fine upstanding pastor’s son who pays his taxes, volunteers during local elections, helps out the elderly, definitely supports women’s suffrage, and definitely has not made his own guns and alcohol. Did I mention that I pay my taxes?
Where do you live? Are you in the US, Poland, or Brazil? Urban or rural? How much space do you have for gardening or shooting practice? Your neighborhood alone can make a world of difference regarding what you’re able to practice. In one house we lived in, we only kept rabbits and four “pet” chickens because of neighborhood restrictions. In another house in the same county we’re able to have pigs, goats, and a steer. Can you shoot an air gun or practice fire starting in your yard, or will your cat lady neighbor call the cops on you if she sees you with so much as a Swiss Army Knife?
What’s your family situation? Are you on your own in an apartment, or still in your parent’s house, or some other arrangement? Are your parents like mine, fine with letting a fifteen-year-old have guns and ammo in his closet, allowed to buy whatever blade he has money for? Or is your mother a raging hoplophobe? (It’s usually the mother, if your father is a raging hoplophobe then you have two mothers.) Are your parents divorced or together? Moving kits between houses might get complicated, but so would maintaining duplicate kits. Sharing a room with a sibling could also complicate your plans; a friend of mine once returned from a mission trip to find that his young brother, in all of his ADHD-endowed wisdom, had stolen several of his knives from his closet and “lost” them.
What are you preparing for? War? Invasion? Economic collapse (my personal bet)? Nukes? Yellowstone? Aliens? Sasquatch? A NWO-established Weredonkey Cult Satrapy? What you’re expecting is likely going to affect the preparations you make.
Now that you’ve given things like that some thought, let’s talk about the basics. This will mirror a lot of other preparedness lists, and I advise you to give those a read elsewhere, but this is geared primarily towards those victims of ageist restrictions on guys acquiring guy stuff.
Weapons
I am listing this first because that’s probably what most of you all are here for. Due to the inveterately homosexual tendency of the modern state to pander to the emotions of childless middle-aged women, many young men find their natural right to own and practice with arms curtailed. Let me state this quite clearly: It is your ancient, inalienable right and DUTY as a man, to become proficient with some kind of weapon. It is also your equally serious responsibility not to be an irresponsible jack-onager. That said, if you find yourself completely unable to get a weapon, join a martial arts club that does full-contact sparring. I know almost nothing about this, but my martial artist friends tell me that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) is practical, as is boxing. Martial Arts are also easier for other people to swallow. Better your socialist aunt encounter you on the way back from a BJJ match then to find you watching gun videos. Some people would literally rather you watch p*rn than read or view a review of a BB gun.
As far as weapons go, your location and age is going to play a big part here. Here in Texas, I can buy any federally legal long gun at eighteen, and even get a handgun at the same age (PROVIDED it’s through a private sale or gift, since FFLs cannot sell you one until twenty-one because the federal government hates you. The same goes for ammunition.) In some places, you need to be eighteen and get a license to own even an air gun. In the British Commonwealth countries and many other places air guns over a certain joule rating require a firearm license. And in New Jersey (where my girlfriend’s father hails from, may my ancestors forgive me for consorting with Yankees) you have to have air guns shipped to an FFL (because the state government hates you.)
So even within the same country, your exact location is going to impact this a lot. Due to their over-saturation in the preparedness corpus, I’m not really going to cover conventional firearms here, except to say that if you can get them and practice with them, do so. In most areas outside the US, you will probably have to be at least twenty-one. Usually in the US you can get a long gun at eighteen. Some states might have their own age laws, but I’m not well-versed in them. Get a real rifle, if at all possible. Even if it’s just a .22 LR. Ideally, of course, you’d have the .22 LR, a modern rifle in a military or common hunting cartridge, and a handgun, but that’s only possible if you’re in the U.S. and a few other places. It also requires that you have a decent amount of cash income, which not all of us do. I happen to be raking in that sweet, sweet hazard pay to afford an AR and periodic bulk ammo buys, but some of us are students that bus tables after school, or have a lot of our time and money earmarked for other personal priorities. And some of us are just poor.
Regardless, any smokeless metallic cartridge gun is going to be immeasurably better than what I’m going to outline here. I’m also not going into a full rundown on each kind of thing, I’m just trying to open your mind to some options. There are enough gear articles on the internet. That said, if you can’t get a real gun for some reason, here are the most viable alternatives (in order of attainability/socially acceptability):
Archery Equipment
Archery is a valid and popular sport, so a lot of people who would question other projectile weapons will have no problem with this. In fact, it’s best to pass off your weapons as sport-or-work related if at all possible. I know little about archery, so I don’t have any specific recommendations. You’ll have to evaluate the pros of different types yourself. An advantage to these is that making your own ammunition is not unreasonably difficult. They are also silent, and many non-compound bows can be disassembled for transport or storage. These, provided you have one with a reasonable draw weight, are viable hunting weapons. A crossbow will also have a bit of skill transfer to an actual firearm, and is probably a lot better at killing things than a typical (non-“big-bore”) air gun. The downside is that they can be expensive, as with much other archery equipment. Slingshots are in a similar category. Slingshots are extremely inxpensive. A lower-end one is just a few dollars at a sporting goods or farm supply store. A higher-end one still costs less than a newly-released video game. The ammo is dirt cheap, even free. If the cheap ones are too expensive for you, you can make one yourself, as has been covered by this and other blogs quite extensively.
Air guns are another good option. A good air rifle will provide lots of cheap target practice, giving you access to learn and practice marksmanship skills that will transfer over to real firearms. Many are also capable of taking small game at reasonable distances. If you intend to ever hunt with yours, make sure it has enough foot-pounds (joules if you’re outside the US) of power. I would recommend at least 12 ft lbs of power for hunting things like squirrels and rabbits. In most of the US, air guns can be purchased by anyone, at least in theory. State or local laws may make a different situation, but usually getting one isn’t a problem at all. Some stores may have an age policy or something similar, but generally a high-schooler should be able to just buy one. And if you can’t get one in a store, there’s plenty out there secondhand, just make sure it’s in good shape. Pellets are ridiculously cheap, even hunting pellets, so stock up on plenty of those.
There are many different types of air guns. I would recommend one that does not need CO2 or any external pump to use. That leaves pump guns and break-barrels. My first air rifle was a break-barrel .22. I bought it because I liked the idea of their longevity and the lack of need for high levels of maintenance/extra stuff to keep it running. One drawback, however, was the fact that break-barrel air rifles require a special shooting technique to shoot accurately, and it took me a while to get the hang of it. You have to hold it loosely in your hand, a method known as the “artillery hold.” With a pump air gun, the technique is the same as a firearm.
If I had to buy again, I would look at something other than a break-barrel, simply because I wanted to keep my firearm skills sharp, not learn a new technique. But if a firearm is not a realistic future prospect for you, then don’t discount learning to use a break-barrel. It’s not difficult and you can reload much faster without having to pump. A friend of mine in Brazil does quite a lot of hunting with a big bore (I believe he referred to it as a 7mm, which I think means a roughly .30 cal pellet) break-barrel air gun.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)