4. Keep and bear arms.
This survival tip is the one with the most far-reaching cultural implications. An armed citizenry is safer from criminals, despotic government, and invading armies. The most frightening consequence of the ongoing disarmament of American citizens is their decreasing self-reliance, like what happened to Native American culture when the government emasculated them by taking away their guns… and the means to provide for themselves. The average citizen is increasingly dependent on the government for his income, his housing, his retirement fund, his healthcare costs, and even his own safety. Instead of a human being created in God’s image, he’s becoming a helpless mass of organic matter.
It takes a gun to stop a gunman. When Nidal Hasan went on a mad shooting rampage, killing 13 Fort Hood soldiers and injuring 38, it took a civilian police officer to stop him. Why? Because American soldiers are forbidden to carry their weapons on military bases. Bet you wouldn’t have thought of that. No, it takes a brain-dead bureaucrat to come up with a rule like that.
Mad, murderous gunmen love “Gun Free Zones,” so make sure your house is not one of them. When the crunch comes, the bad guys will come for your food stash with a gun, and you’ll need a gun to keep your food.
You’ll also need a gun for hunting. If you can only buy one rifle, keep in mind that a tactical rifle doubles just fine as a hunting rifle. This recommendation applies whether you prefer 5.56mm, 7.62mm, or other caliber — and the debate as to which caliber is best will rage until they confiscate all our guns. Do your research, find your preference, and make sure you practice and keep your your gun in good shape.
If you can afford only one gun of any kind, you’ll find many recommendations, but my preference would be a 12 gauge shotgun, semi-auto if possible, otherwise a pump. You can buy shot suitable for small game, large game, birds, and varmints. It also makes a terrific personal defense weapon.
If you can afford many guns, I don’t think you can go wrong buying them. It’s not like money you spend on a vacation. The money you spend on a hotel, travel, and food is all gone when you spend it, but when you buy a gun you still have the asset. As long as you don’t overpay (or better yet, if you find a really good deal), you have all the value of the money you spent. Given the fact that our paper money is essentially worthless, guns and ammo make a fairly good medium of exchange in hard times. In short, if the big crunch comes and the dollar becomes worthless, guns will make pretty good money.
Keeping your gun in good shape isn’t complicated — just keep it dry. If it gets wet, dry it before you store it, and don’t store it in a humid location.
As of this writing, it is still legal to buy a gun in a private sale without doing a background check, as long as you don’t transport it across state lines. But any gun you buy from a licensed dealer will be registered with the NICS, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Supposedly, the purpose of the “background check” is to make sure the purchaser is not a criminal, and supposedly the government destroys any record of the sale within 24 hours. However, when the dealer sends in the form for the instant check, he also identifies the gun you’re buying. That has nothing to do with whether you’re a criminal, does it?
The only possible reason for identifying the gun you’re buying is to create a record of the fact that you purchased that specific gun. And that, by definition, is gun registration. You can believe they destroy the record within 24 hours if you like, but I don’t. Not after going to all the trouble of creating that record in the first place.
All this to say, I recommend you buy your guns in private transactions while they’re still legal. That way there will never be a record of the guns you own. And don’t dally; it might be illegal soon.
Remember what I said about practice? Guns are deadly. Keeping arms in your house is an awesome responsibility. Get training.
Contingencies: Store guns and ammo in several locations. Make sure you have at least one gun that you purchased in a private sale so it’s not registered with the NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System).
I would like to point out that when you fill out BATFE form 4473 for your background check, the only information transferred to the NICS system is your name, address, height & weight, ethnicity, date of birth, SS number, questions 11a though l, state of residence, country of citizenship and whether the firearm is a handgun longgun or both .Of all of the questions in section B, Dealer info is all that is sent. The make model and caliber are recorder on the form but not transferred to NICS or anyone else. The NICS record is purged 24 hours later but the dealer is required to keep the 4473 form for 20 years for the purpose of back tracing lost or stolen firearms or firearms recovered from a crime. The form 4473 itself is not sent to NICS.
I say this with confidence because I did ATF compliance work and was a liaison to ATF for Sportsman’s Warehouse for many years.
I hope this clears some things up.