Just NY?

[lew1]

Well, for the past 58 years I have always made it a point, if I purchased one box of ammo - actually to buy a second and put it aside. (I rotate stock.) So when times are tough (ie: 7 kids) I had ammo to shoot. There were certain times when because of political conditions, ammo and guns became hard or expensive to find. Some of these instances cold be predicted. I thought the Colorado theater thing would take off, but fortunately it did not. But it was evident that is was a matter of time before something hit a raw nerve. When it was evident that obama was going to win in 2012, I purchased some ammo. Foresight does help a lot. But I have no problem with the current dry spell.

Over the years I have seen the progression of gun control. Suffice it to say that when I was 15 years old, I rode my bike to the gun store and purchased a pistol, put is in the bike's basket and rode home. No parents, no police, nobody except the gun store owner and me. Two months later , I again rode the bike to the gun store and purchased a K98k, and since it had a sling, I put it across my bike and road home. Compare that to today.

As to the SHTF situations, face it - if you are in a populated area, your goose is cooked. I have a home in the country where I would be accepted since my wife is from there. But unless I am already there, I would not make it. As to get there I would have to get out of the present metro area, pass another on on the fringes and then there would be all those small towns.

Originally Posted by ithacaartist

I think the operative concept is stated a little further down: "...where the perceived importance of the hoarded items far exceeds their true value..." Animals do it by instinct. The hamster I had when I was in 6th grade would stash as much food as you cared to give her; however, the excess beyond that which was actually consumed, rotted in the stash beneath the litter in the cage and would be thrown out at each routine housekeeping I performed. A specific number for US and our ammo would be hard to pick. How much ammo would be necessary to serve our purposes, if ammo production were to stop entirely? I guess one could leave the excess to friends and family in his/her will...

On this front, 5 rounds of 20 gauge rifled slugs would keep me in venison for a year. A few shotshells for rabbits and squirrels, maybe, but then again a Hav-a-hart trap might suffice. Would I choose to stand off post-apocalyptic invaders/scavengers/looters--whether they are civilian or originate in whatever "legal" authorities remain, or are created? That would depend on a lot of things.

Perhaps a good gauge of "too much" in practical terms would be related to how much suffering or deprivation must be endured under the status quo in order to prepare for a scenario which may--or may not--happen. Maybe our family members are starved to support the behavior?

I've noticed that the doomsday preppers prepare for many different scenarios--EMPs that take out the power grid and all electronic/electrical devices; Tsunamis; economic collapse and the presumed chaos and civil unrest to follow; there was even one guy who thought the earth would flip around on its axis (a TOTAL fallacy! Polar shifts have occurred many times before, but it involves the magnetic fields of the earth, NOT the planet itself.). As with different religions, they can't all be right; but they could all be wrong. It, in fact, may turn out to be like packing up two tons of sand--just in case it were needed--and then finding out we had to travel across a desert.

If you've seen the Hoarders show on TV, and you have the fortitude necessary to do a reality check on yourself, then you know who you are!