[dango]

Whaaaaaaat .? Ka-nights of the round table..?

[kbd512]

Originally Posted by 70cuda383

that's my thought process as well. 1,000 rounds per caliber. if SHTF, I have the ability to carry a couple hundred on my person of primary and about 100 rounds of handgun.

In my opinion, that's more than enough for your average gunfight. I can resupply later, either from my "home station" or by looting bodies of the dead.

if SHTF I do NOT want to make a Waco stand in my home. We all know how that worked out for them. I want to be light, mobile, and have a small logistical footprint. I'm headed to the woods, and plan to live off the land, and avoid as many people as possible, NOT go walking the streets of the cities looking for a fight. (that's assuming some type of economical collapse. if we go martial law and have another revolution...that's a different story)


but this guy was also trying to sell the "green tip" ammo at .80 per round, claiming that it's the only thing that'll punch through the armor that homeland security is going to be wearing when they come to your door.

he gave me a funny look when I said "I have a 3/8" plate of steel out in the garage that I punched holes in like it was paper, using standard lead core, copper jacket ammo, even my hollow point hunting rounds were punching through it like it was nothing"

To my buddy that I'm talking about...if you happen to be on this forum...I love ya man, but I think your position was just a little off the mark! haha.

If DHS shows up at your door, they have .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and lots of manpower (largest civilian federal agency last time I checked). I seriously doubt anyone will have to worry about that. If the government wants you dead they will kill you and no quantity of carbine ammunition or semi-armor piercing ammunition is going to stop them.

If people are stupid enough to believe that crap and want to blow their life savings on ammunition that won't make it through a NIJ IV plate, I say more power to them. The government will just add more ammo to its 1.6 billion round stockpile (or whatever it's up to now) that they plan to use against us.

As far as 556 ball going through soft plate steel, try that same thing with armor steel. If memory serves, the aluminum armor on the M113 was designed to stop .50 caliber ball rounds. The point is, I'm pretty sure that very few civilians have anything approaching the type of ordinance needed to resist any sort of tyrannical government.

I really don't understand the whole "I'm heading for the hills" thing. I seriously doubt many people know how to filter water (have the equipment to do so or understand how to make a filter using natural materials), hunters might know how to kill game, but how long can that last with millions of other people trying to do the same thing? The only reason we can feed 300+ million people is industrial farming operations that use large quantities of refined petroleum products to produce massive quantities of foodstuffs for people and livestock. How many people know enough about wound care to stitch a good cut? If you break your leg running around in the woods and don't have access to quality medical care you're about good as dead in a week or so.

One person with a carbine and lots of ammo is not equivalent to a platoon of men with every modern implement of war available to them.

Here's what you can expect a platoon of men in a "civilian national defense force that's just as strong and just as well-funded as the military":

NVD's - Real NVD's (PVS-14, PVS-15, PVS-18, CNVD), not the crap that hunters use.

Thermal Imaging - Most APC's and even police helicopters have gyro stabilized thermal cameras. If people find AK's and AR's too expensive to own and operate, I'm guessing not many people have 10K-100K thermal imagers in their safes.

Body Armor - NIJ III plates, NIJ III-A vest, and NIJ III-A helmet. A high powered .22, like the AR-15 that everyone is so afraid of, isn't going to be very effective against anyone with all of that equipment.

Automatic Carbines and Machine Guns - Your average civilian has no access to automatic weapons and very few civilians have heavy machine guns or .50 caliber sniping rifles.

Armored Personnel Carriers - Very few civilians have the tools to disable an APC like the M113. All wheeled vehicles, to include the infamous Stryker (should be called a miserable 4 million dollar a pop failure), can be stopped with a single round from a handgun. Anyone here have a tracked vehicle?

Light Observation Helicopter (or Drones) - Again, very few civilians have a helicopter to observe and report to men on the ground and I bet nobody here has a drone or the training to effectively use it.

Encrypted Frequency Hopping Radios - You can actually jam them with the right equipment, but you either have to have the know how to make such a device or tens of thousands of dollars to purchase jamming equipment. Strangely, civilians can actually purchase the equipment, although using it is illegal. Incidentally, a frequency hopper will set you back about 5K-15K.

Gas Masks - Hard to shoot back effectively with watery eyes. They don't need to drop JDAM's or call in A-10 strikes. Simple tear gas and a squad of men with automatic carbines is enough to stifle most resistance.

So yeah, if the government wants you dead they have pretty much every conceivable advantage over you in terms of armament, support equipment, man power, medical care for wounded fighters, communications equipment, and observation equipment.

Can you go head to head against an APC and win? Yes, but nobody in their right mind attempts to stop a tracked combat vehicle with a rifle.

Can you win against an APC, helicopter, and a platoon of men? Let me put it this way, Christopher Dorner thought he knew a lot about fighting from having been in the military for many years and working as a police officer. Just about every man on the force in California was used to hunt him down and kill him. He could have been the smartest man on the force (although clearly he wasn't) and it would not have made a lick of difference with 1000+ men detailed to track and kill him. Rambo didn't last a week in a place as big as California to hide in.

Good luck with the whole "resisting the man" thing. My time in the military taught me that there is no more perfectly equipped, trained, and (after 10+ years of continuous combat) battle hardened force of men to go to war with. Whether some of them will oppose an order to start murdering their own people or not is immaterial. The ones who carry out such an order have just as much combat capability as the ones who oppose.

I generally keep a few cases of ammo on hand because I like shooting a lot. Fighting with the government is suicidal. Not that it matters, but the local police force here has all of those things. No need to call in federal troops or DHS.

My advice is to vote the SOB's out of office that have a problem with high-powered semi-automatic .22's.

This all started because an intelligent, but psychotic man with a high powered .22 decided he would start shooting at school children because he knew they would be defenseless. Our society values money and politicians more than our own children, which is why our money and politicians are protected with the best that money can buy while our children get a fat old man with a radio and pistol, if they are "important" enough to rate that.

Convince your friends and neighbors that if the "scary, high-powered assault weapons" are used for protecting our politicians that surely their own children are important enough to protect using the same weapons.

[kbd512]

What I fear far more than whether or not they ban magazines over 10 rounds, semi-automatic firearms, or other tactical toys is an economic collapse. I think that is all but inevitable at this point. Businesses are more interested in holding on to whatever liquid assets they have rather than making more money by hiring more workers, expanding product lines, and opening new markets. There's more people living off of government assistance of one form or another than there are productive workers making paychecks to support the parasites. The amount of debt we, individually and as a nation, have racked up is more than we can ever repay. All indications are that our so-called leaders are busily spending more and more money that we don't have. Our morality, as a society, has more to do with who's in control (possession) or what makes money than it does with what one person would have another do unto them. There seems to be a general notion, both by the people who are in charge of the government and the general citizenry, that following the law doesn't matter if it's not convenient for you. All in all, our society bears a remarkable resemblance to Rome in its final years.

Naturally, all of this has to stop immediately if there is any hope of restoring a constitutional republic and naturally the odds of that happening are slightly better than a snowball's chance in Death Valley.

The two party political system presents more of a dilemma for the American people than a real choice. Having a real choice starts with three or more options. Our current political system was clearly designed to "divide and conquer" the American people, not to give them a range of governance options to choose from.

If an economic collapse comes to pass, that 30K+ rounds of ammo you have will be quickly traded for food, water, and medical care.

[locutus]

kbd512

There is more common sense in your last post than I've seen on this forum in years.

Johnny Rambo is a story book character and Chicken Little is a cartoon character.

If we are going to save our country it will be with ballots, not bullets. And all of the blustering and posturing and bravado aside, 99 percent of civilians aren't even in good enough physical condition to fight a guerrilla war even if they had the equipment.

[70cuda383]

Originally Posted by kbd512

If DHS shows up at your door, they have...bla bla bla

I see you quoted me, but...where did I say anything about going up against the government?

in fact, I pretty much said "If the 2nd revolution comes, that's a different story"

[orangello]

With respect kbd512, there is nothing wrong with planning on taking some people with you into the light. If enough patriots took enough usurpers with them to the grave, then the usurpers wouldn't have the men to carry on such a campaign; numbers favor the patriots. There are also those of us who would be more than happy to die for the right reasons, like defending our family or beliefs; crazed muslims aren't the only source of martyrs. That's a little different than being willing to herd sheeple for a paycheck like the DHS people.

Should it come down to a real revolution or a civil war-type fight, attrition will have to become a more acceptable tactic.

[HockaLouis]

kbd;
When they were going after that cops-and-others murdering vet in California (forget that so many here defended the freak before he killed yet one more cop and wounded another), it amazed me how little he did to hide or act out but how many resources they threw at him. I thought "geez, what if there were TWO of them!?"

[kbd512]

70cuda383,

You didn't say anything specific about fighting against the government. I thought you were trying to make the case for not doing that with your post. I was further trying to state that while "heading for the hills" may be an option for someone like you because of your training and/or life experiences, it isn't a realistic option for the overwhelming majority of Americans who lack the experience and training needed to survive for just a week in the wilderness. I want Americans to survive an economic collapse, martial law, tyrannical government, etc. I believe their best option is to vote moral people into office and to continue to live their lives under the system of division of labor which has helped to make our country so prosperous (I'm not sure about you, but while I can stitch a wound I'm not a surgeon).

Typically, those people who want America as a whole to prosper and not just whatever group is sending them the most money, don't have "D's" or "R's" next to their names. Yes, there are exceptions (Ron Paul and Rand Paul immediately come to mind) but not nearly enough. We are living through the end result of decades of inexcusably poor financial decision making by people from both political parties and my suggestion to fix the problem is to elect better decision makers who are less concerned with political dogma and ideology than they are with formulating realistic solutions to our increasingly severe economic issues. That process can only start if there are some independent and non-dogmatic thinkers up there making decisions on our behalf.

I was expounding on what type of response you can expect from the US government if you attempt something as foolish as fighting with them. I did this to dissuade people who think they have a lot of ammo from finding out that their semi-automatic AR-15 or AK-47 copies and 30K rounds on hand are not equivalent to a platoon of men with machine guns. 30K rounds wouldn't be enough for a few hours of target practice for most small to medium sized commands.

orangello,

The only thing I can think of that's worth dying for is my children. I don't care about having my guns or not having my guns. They are only tools and serve no higher purpose in and of themselves. If I cannot legally use my guns to defend my children, then they are worthless to me.

If the overwhelming majority of my countrymen want to be slaves to a dictator, so long as the dictator is "their kind of dictator", then I want no part of that country and won't lift a finger to defend it.

Murdering people you don't agree with doesn't mean your reasoning is justified and no amount of murder can ever make other people agree with you.

I agree that our government needs some drastic changes to their behavior, but shooting at them is not going to produce the desired result. You don't have enough bullets and even if you somehow manage to win, your "victory" comes as a result of being better at violent, lawless behavior than they are. Like many people I am not happy that they are not respecting the rights of the people, murdering and imprisoning people without due process, and generally behaving like they are better than the people they serve. That said, do you think the solution is to emulate them?

HockaLouis,

If there were two Christopher Dorners the end result would have been the same and they would probably have sunk even more resources into finding and killing the men. The government does stuff like that to show that they are "in control" (as I've stated in other posts, it's a mythical concept that is very real to some people), not because it will more swiftly end a confrontation or save lives. The government could give a crap about your life. Generally speaking the people who work for the government, most especially the decision makers, are interested in only one thing- maintaining their "power" or "control" or the appearance of "control".

[70cuda383]

I agree, the best option is to elect officials into office who will undo the policies of bankruptcy and debt, but unfortunately, I see too many people who are short sighted. "whats in it for ME?"

even people as close as my own family. my MIL can't stand our current governor because he IS one of the guys trying to reduce spending, cut the debt, and reduce the size of the government. She works for the government. Because of his policies, her department has threatened layoffs. Her department is also one of the most liberal leaning departments within the government, so naturally, most of the people IN that department are democrats. My wife is very conservative. her father is very conservative, I always thought her mom was too, but now that some people in her department have received notification of possible lay-off, she's scared to death that she's going to lose HER job, and rather than accept it as a fact of reality and recognizing that the state government just does not have the money to employ thousands and thousands of people, her response is "I hate Kasich, and I can't wait to vote him out of office. he is a horrible governor"

I fear that this attitude is prevalent across America now. "I'm going to vote for the politician who puts the most money in my pocket" and that we're already past the point of being able to recover... I fear that the ball has been pushed over the top of the hill, and is now rolling downhill, it's going to be hard to stop it and reverse it as it gains momentum.

I'm afraid that we will soon follow in the footsteps of every other great society in history. The Roman's thought they had created the perfect society as well and look what happened to them.

I hope I'm wrong and we can get more conservatives into office who can stop the spending, stop racking up debt by making the hard choices and eliminating entitlements despite the public outcry by those who are receiving said entitlements that will follow