The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout [all] the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.” – Leviticus 25:10 (KJV)

Preparedness Notes for Friday — July 1, 2022

July 1st is the anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, in 1863.

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We’ve completed our camping trip, so I’ve reactivated the shopping cart system, at Elk Creek Company. Thanks for your patience.

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Today’s feature is some advice that I have for folks without an FFL who might sell or trade guns from time to time, to improve their collections.

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Our nonfiction writing contest is in progress. Round 101 ends on July 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

A Sign For Our Times: “Not Engaged In The Business”

Bottom Line, Up Front (BLUF): It is time to print a “Not Engaged In The Business” notice to post at your gun show table.

Joe Biden has signed a House and Senate-reconciled version of S. 2938, the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act”. This is the 80-page, ultra-fast-tracked, RINO “compromise” anti-gun rights legislation package. It passed with a 65 to 33 majority in the Senate, and the next day it sailed through the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives with a 234 to 193 majority, in just a few hours. The date of effectivity has not yet been announced.

One of the lesser-known provisions of this legislative monstrosity redefines the term “Engaged In The Business”, for sellers of firearms. To explain: In 33 of the 50 states, it is perfectly legal for private parties to make casual secondary private intrastate sales of modern guns without any paperwork or a “Mother May I?” phone call to the FBI. (Of course, consult your state and local laws before making any private party sales.)

At issue in S. 2938 is a redefinition of the term “engaged the business” in Section 921(a) of Title 18, United States Code. This could create many unwitting felons, if a private party intrastate gun sale turns a profit. Instead of more logically defining “engaged the business” as selling X number of guns per year, or making X Dollars of gross sales, or X Dollars of profit per year, this legislation trades one vague definition for another one that could ensnare many casual gun sellers.  Here is the key passage:

SEC. 12002. DEFINING ‘‘ENGAGED IN THE BUSINESS’’
Section 921(a) of title 18, United States Code, is amended—
(1) in paragraph (21)(C), by striking ‘‘with the principal objective of livelihood and profit’’ and inserting ‘‘to predominantly earn a profit’’…

And it includes this clarification:

“‘(22) The term ‘to predominantly earn a profit’ means that the intent underlying the sale or disposition of firearms is predominantly one of obtaining pecuniary gain, as opposed to other intents, such as improving or liquidating a personal firearms collection: Provided, That proof of profit shall not be required as to a person who engages in the regular and repetitive purchase and disposition of firearms for criminal purposes or terrorism…“

It is time to print signs

Therefore, I have a strong recommendation for anyone without an FFL who rents a gun show table in a private party sales-legal state and brings any post-1898 guns to sell or trade: You should print out and prominently post this notice in a bold 24-point or larger font on your table that reads:

Per Section 921(a) of Title 18, United States Code, I am a Private Party Gun Collector and Citizen of  _______ [State].  Any Intrastate Sales or Trades of post-1898 firearms from my Personal Collection to other Collectors who are also Adult Citizens of  _______ [State] are not with the intent of “predominantly earning a profit”, but rather to improve my personal firearms collection. Also, take note that I make no interstate sales or trades.

With that notice, as long as you don’t make repeated sales that could be deemed with the intent of making a profit rather than collection upgrading, or knowingly sell a gun to a minor or to other prohibited person (i.e. a terrorist, a felon, a drug user, or sale across state lines), then you should be fine.

I am confident that this new law will not survive a court test, especially given the higher standard of judicial scrutiny dictated by the Supreme Court’s recent Bruen decision. To wit: scrutinizing whether a law is: “comported with history and tradition. It will fail to pass constitutional muster under any of the standards of scrutiny that the highest court has “applied to enumerated constitutional rights”.  In effect, if there was not any law on the books or any case law that predated 1791 — the year that the 2nd Amendment was enacted — pertaining to what constituted being “engaged in the business” of firearms sales, then this new law will almost surely be voided. Oh, and stand by for lots of other state and federal gun laws to soon be voided, in light of Bruen.

But of course, I’m not an attorney, so please consult one who is licensed in your state. – JWR

June 2022 in Precious Metals, by Steven Cochran

What Did Gold Do in June?

Gold prices don’t usually see much activity during the summer months, but there were lots of things pushing and pulling prices in different directions in June. in June.

The largest moves happened in the middle of the month. June 13th was the Monday after a worse-than-expected CPI report, and it seemed like the world caught fire. The bottom fell out of the stock market, bond yields shot up and briefly inverted, and the dollar index jumped to over 105. Spot gold closed the day $53 lower.

Gold prices inched higher in the following days, but fell at the end of the month to end June $40 lower, just above $1,800 an ounce.Continue reading“June 2022 in Precious Metals, by Steven Cochran”

The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“We are in hot haste to set the world right and to order all affairs; the Lord hath the leisure of conscious power and unerring wisdom, and it will be well for us to learn to wait.” – Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Preparedness Notes for Thursday — June 30, 2022

June 30th is the anniversary of the tragic death of 19 hotshots in the Yarnell Hill Fire, in 2013.

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 101 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. The photovoltaic power specialists at Quantum Harvest LLC  are providing a store-wide 10% off coupon. Depending on the model chosen, this could be worth more than $2000.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any of their one, two, or three-day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three-day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  5. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  6. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.
  7. Two sets of The Civil Defense Manual, (in two volumes) — a $193 value — kindly donated by the author, Jack Lawson.

Second Prize:

  1. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  2. A SIRT STIC AR-15/M4 Laser Training Package, courtesy of Next Level Training, that has a combined retail value of $679
  3. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  5. A transferable $150 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun. There is no paperwork required for delivery of pre-1899 guns into most states, making them the last bastion of firearms purchasing privacy!

Third Prize:

  1. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  2. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  3. A LogOX 3-in-1 Forestry MultiTool (a $189 value) and a WoodOx Sling (a $79.95 value), courtesy of LogOx, both made in USA.
  4. A transferable $100 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun.

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More than $725,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 101 ends on July 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

 

 

Review: GripOX Gloves and WoodOX Sling, by Thomas Christianson

GripOX gloves are sturdy, comfortable gloves that are well designed for use in processing firewood. The WoodOX sling is an ingenious, ergonomically designed sling for carrying firewood.

The Backstory

I am pretty hard on gloves, usually wearing out several pair each year. My wife, “Kari” suggested that if I was going to review anything, I should review some gloves since I would be able to give them a true test of their durability.

With that in mind, I contacted LogOX to see if I could test a pair of their GripOX gloves. I had previously reviewed the LogOX Forester Package in an article that was published on Survivalblog on July 24, 2021. I was so impressed with the Hauler component of the package that I purchased a second Hauler at my own expense so that I could use two at the same time to carry a balanced load. My previous positive experience with LogOX made me eager to try another of their products.

When I contacted LogOX General Manager Austin Roberts to inquire about testing the gloves, he suggested testing their WoodOX Sling at the same time. I gratefully accepted this generous offer.

Mr. Roberts recommended that I preview some videos from a playlist that he provided. There were more than a dozen different videos on the playlist. I found out some interesting things from those videos:

  • I discovered that Mr. Robert’s father, John, designed both the LogOX hauler and the WoodOX sling. I was very impressed with his ingenuity.
  • I learned that the WoodOX sling received positive reviews from users as diverse as Mother Earth News, homesteaders, and a nine-year-old boy.
  • I found out that Mr. Roberts is originally from Vermont. For some reason, I had the impression that he was from the state of Washington.

Continue reading“Review: GripOX Gloves and WoodOX Sling, by Thomas Christianson”

The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR”. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. Today, a special look at the ongoing outmigration from America’s urban centers.

Urban Exodus Shows No Signs of Slowing Down

The Washington Examiner reports: Urban exodus that began during pandemic shows no signs of slowing down. Here is an excerpt:

“Taken together, the metropolitan area of New York, Newark, and Jersey City lost more than 385,000 people in 2021.

New York City’s population loss in 2021 was almost six times the size of its population loss in 2019, according to census data.

The availability of remote work, the persistence of pandemic-related restrictions, and the rise of crime and inflation have all contributed to a stream of people finding homes outside their cities even after the height of the pandemic in 2020.

“In many cases, there was a shift from larger, more populous counties to medium and smaller ones,” the Census Bureau noted about trends observed in 2021.

Washington, D.C., lost more people in 2021 than it had in the previous two decades, according to the D.C. Policy Center.”

The Work From Home Revolution

Pew Research: COVID-19 Pandemic Continues To Reshape Work in America.

Remote Work Is Here To Stay And Will Increase Into 2023

Published by Forbes, back in February: Remote Work Is Here To Stay And Will Increase Into 2023, Experts Say.  This article begins:

“While some companies continue to thumb their noses at The Great Resignation and insist that employees come back into the office, data scientists at Ladders insist that the writing is on the wall. Remote work is here to stay. According to their projections, 25% of all professional jobs in North America will be remote by the end of 2022, and remote opportunities will continue to increase through 2023. Researchers from Ladders have been carefully tracking remote work availability from North America’s largest 50,000 employers since the pandemic began. Remote opportunities leapt from under 4% of all high paying jobs before the pandemic to about 9% at the end of 2020, and to more than 15% today. “This change in working arrangements is impossible to overhype. As big as it is, it’s even bigger than people think,” said Ladders CEO Marc Cenedella…”

Where Are People Moving in 2022?

Recently published by a storage space trade publication: Where Are People Moving in 2022?

Continue reading“The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods”

The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“Communism is a monopolistic system, economically and politically. The system suppresses individual initiative, and the 21st century is all about individualism and freedom. The development of technology supported these directions.” – Lech Walesa

Preparedness Notes for Wednesday — June 29, 2022

On June 29th, 1941, the Germans invaded and occupied Lvov, Ukraine, slaughtering thousands of people. Russia followed a scorched earth policy as Germany invaded just as they had during Napoleon’s invasion. They burned, destroyed, flooded, dismantled and removed anything and everything in territory that they were forced to give up. As the Germans moved in, the Soviets proceeded to murder 3,000 Ukrainian political prisoners. It was so bad that the Germans were actually seen as liberators by the local population. Sadly, within days, they were forced to endure the horrors of the Nazi regime as some 2.5 million Ukrainians were shipped to Germany as slave laborers and the Ukrainian Jews were subjected to the same vicious racial policies as in Poland. Over 600,000 were murdered. Even the Ukrainian nationalists participated in the bloodshed by scapegoating Jews for “Bolshevism” and killing them in the streets.

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Note From JWR: This week my family is camping in a remote rural region in the Redoubt with very limited opportunities to access the Internet. So I’ve written and edited most of the blog posts for the week in advance. Today, I’m posting only one humorous item in the Snippets column. Rest assured that I will post lots of items in that column one week from today.

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present a review article written by Field Gear Editor Thomas Christianson.

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Round 101 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest is ongoing. More than $725,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 101 ends on July 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Gear Review: Klik Belts, by Thomas Christianson

I recently tested two Klik Belts. One of them is single-ply, and the other one is double-ply. They are both excellent belts that are durable, comfortable, attractive, and do a good job of keeping my pants up. If you need a new belt, it may be worth your while to take a look at what Klik Belts has to offer.

Belts as Gear

Ever since ancient times, a belt has been one of the basic items of clothing and of gear. The armor of God listed in Ephesians 6:10-18 included the belt of truth. For the Roman soldier, the belt would hold various items of clothing and equipment in the proper place so that the soldier would not trip over a loose garment during battle, or drop an essential piece of equipment.

As we consider the constellation Orion, the Hunter, we see that the Hunter is properly equipped with a belt, and that the belt holds a sword.

The belt remained an essential piece of military equipment throughout the years. I remember a scene from one of Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey novels describing the handling of French prisoners captured in battle. Their belts were taken away and the waistband of their pants were slit, so that they needed to use one hand to hold up their pants while they were marched away into captivity. Removing the advantages of a belt from prisoners greatly reduced the risk of resistance or escape.Continue reading“Gear Review: Klik Belts, by Thomas Christianson”

SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets

This weekly column is a collection of short snippets: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.

This week my family is camping in a remote rural region in the Redoubt with very limited opportunities to access the Internet.  Today, I’m posting just one humorous item in the Snippets column, to keep you entertained. I’m confident that this video will have a viral spread. When I found it on Saturday (June 25th), it had just 47,000 views.

Rest assured that I will post lots of items in this column on July 6th.

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Oof, Bad Doggy.

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Please Send Us Your Snippets!

Please send your snippet items for potential posting to JWR. or AVL. You can do so either via e-mail or via our Contact form.

 

 

Preparedness Notes for Tuesday — June 28, 2022

June 28th, 1703 was the birthday of John Wesley, who died March 2, 1791.

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Today’s feature article, written by one of our long-time readers, is too short to be considered in the judging for Round 101 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. But it is quite useful and greatly appreciated, nonetheless.

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More than $725,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running our writing contest. Round 101 ends on July 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Food and Treats for Fido, by Mrs. Alaska

In this article, I will describe making your own food and treats for your dogs. Many of these include long-term storage items.

Recently, Zero Hedge posted an article that described animal shelters throughout the country as at full capacity because pet owners have brought in their pets at record rates.  The sad reason repeated is inflationary prices for human and pet products.  Fido and Fluffy had to go. I heard the same thing when we recently adopted a dog from the Anchorage, AK pound.

Fortunately, there are many pet products that one can made from scratch, often with long storage items, and at much lower cost than commercial brands.

An Internet search finds many useful recipes on websites, including www.housethatbarks.com, www.dogtreatkitchen.com and www.everycreaturecounts.org.

Consider the following items that I make for our dog at our remote, Alaskan home:

DOG BISCUITS

(A recipe that I adapted from the All About Dog Treats site.)

Commercial dog biscuits vary in price from 28 cts/oz to over $1/oz. Try this inexpensive and easy recipe. Does your dog like it just as much? The website above has dozens of recipes with other ingredients, too, like bacon, turkey, and dates.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Mix well:
2 cups flour (any kind)
1 cup raw oatmeal (rolled oats)
1/3 cup peanut butter
1 1/4 cup HOT water
Knead a bit.
Cut into the shape and size you want. For me, this yields 28 thumb size bars about the thickness of commercial dog biscuits.
At this thickness, cook for 45 minutes to get a hard biscuit, or less time to bake a brownie textured bar.  The hard ones are shelf stable for the month in which you would likely use these up.  Otherwise, freeze or refrigerate.

We use these as training treats to teach our new dog basic commands and to climb in and out o our little plane.

DOG SHAMPOO

This dog shampoo is similar to what I make for human shampoo.
1/3 cup castile soap
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 cups water
a few drops of essential oil if desired.
Shake well.

If your dog does not like baths, consider dipping a washcloth into the solution to rub him/her and then rinse with another washcloth.  An important area to wash is the insides of the back legs, which may get spattered with urine.

CALCIUM SUPPLEMENT

Do you eat eggs? Save the shells! When you accumulate a number of them, boil them for several minutes (websites vary from 3 to 10 minutes), cool, dry, and pulverize (in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle) the shells into a powder. For our 50 lb one-year-old dog, I add a teaspoon to his food. Puppies need more calcium than older dogs, and the recommended amount depends on dog size, too. This is easy to research.

BLOOD PUDDING

People in the UK eat black pudding, which is blood pudding. I make this for my dog occasionally by boiling the bloody water in a package of meat until it forms a frothy, pudding-like texture. Refrigerate and use within a few days.

DOG FOOD

There are many Internet-accessible recipes for homemade dog food. Most of these use ingredients similar to a human palatable stew, with meat, vegetables, grains, and fish oil. I do not make these because I do not want our dog to beg for human food. Instead, I purchase dry dog food and fish oil in bulk quantities. However, if I run out of dog food during our winter five months without resupply, I know what I can cook for him.