weapons

5 Ways to Up Your Prepping Game

If you’ve been prepping for a little while, you’ve probably got the basics covered. You have a bug-out bag, a decent stash of MRE’s or #10 cans of freeze-dried food and a plan to keep it all secure once you’re hunkered down. What’s next? Besides piling up more supplies, what else can you do to further prepare yourself for a disaster? Here are 5 ideas you may find useful in going from beginner to intermediate prepper.

1. Bug out picnic/range day/camping

This is a great way to include the family. If we’re having a slow weekend day and want to have a little adventure I’ll yell “bug out picnic!” and give a time limit for when we’re driving away. This helps with organization, prioritization and delegation of tasks. These little adventures are also a good way to cycle out older supplies and shake down your gear for deficiencies.

2. Skill-of-the month

Reading through accounts of people who have survived through terrible circumstances, you will rarely (if ever) find someone who says “I didn’t know crap but I sure spent a lot on supplies”. It is a widely held opinion that the most important tool is between your ears. So, try your hand at a new skill once a month. I’m not saying go out and buy a full reloading setup to get familiarized; I’m saying once a month you should take a crack at a new skill that you may find useful to add to your mental arsenal. Don’t just stop at an instructional video or book, get hands-on experience to drive home the lesson. Some ideas are: lock-picking, primitive fire starting, small game trapping, food preservation techniques, first-aid instruction or celestial navigation.

3. Spice up your food preps

Look around for new and tasty additions to your foodstores. Living off a 50 lb bag of rice will get old quick and it doesn’t take much to change up the menu a bit. Search for foods with a long shelf life that are different than what you’ve got a lot of. Smoked wild Alaskan salmon with a shelf life of up to 10 years? Count me in. Honey, bouillon and salt are all essential and have extreme shelf lives. Some Johnny’s seasoning salt and Tang drink powder are cheap and easy products to literally spice up your meals. Not to mention sustainability years after the apocalypse- throw some seed packets in your cache to offer fresh foods if possible to the end times.

4. Challenge a friend

There’s safety in numbers and much to gain with a little friendly competition. Challenge a prepper friend to improve their game in one particular aspect. Start saving up so you both can attend a shooting school or go on a primitive camping trip. Even if your friends aren’t preppers, you should be able to find a way to challenge them in a manner that will prove productive for your mental, physical, or logistical preparedness. A few ideas are: race to increase supply stores by a certain percentage, compete together in a shooting or fitness competition, or go over each others disaster plans to find weak links.

5. Start living it now!

There is no experience like hands-on experience. Live the prepared life now and you won’t be caught short when the SHTF. When you’ve found skills you enjoy using, keep after them! Raise chickens, learn (and use!) local foraging, brew wines and meads, can your own foods and start a garden. Even if the best you can achieve in any of these examples is a tiny version (single tomato plant, brewing beer in a class at your local brew-shop), the level of learning with hands-on experience is tenfold that of lessons memorized from a book or internet article. I feel time spent gardening and camping are essential to this step.

Read by the light of your handmade candles and live the prepared life ready for disaster, not afraid of it.

Top five preferred weapon modifications

Everyone, civilian or military, who enjoys weapons loves to trick out their gun. We all have personal preferences to how we set up our firearms to cater to our own style of shooting. Maybe it’s the technique that dictates the specific placement of certain mods, it could be purpose-driven reasons for particular accessories, or maybe it’s just simple aesthetics and we like the way it makes the weapon look. The following are my top favorite modifications to weapons and why I chose them.

Tritium Iron Sights

I love optics, especially dual systems such as the Trijicon ECOS where a red dot is mounted on top of a magnified optic with BDC (Bullet Drop Compensated) reticle. For close quarters based weapons, I prefer a solid red dot generally consisting of a 2 moa dot and more importantly I want it to co-witness with my Iron Sights. But before I ever go to an optic, I always select a quality pair of Iron sights with tritium inserts. This was something I always liked the idea of but after several night fights, and engagements where all I had was a set of Tritium backed irons, I realized it was a must for any weapon. There are a plethora of makes and models out there, something for the whole family. When you’re in the dark and you have to rapidly and accurately engage threats, tritiums are a force multiplier not to be underestimated.

The Magpul BAD Lever

This device is specific to right-handed shooters. An attachment designed specifically designed for the M4/M16 and AR series of rifles, the Battery Assist Device mounts to the bolt release paddle located on the left side of the receiver. Not only does this piece of kit allow you to shave time off of reloads but it gives the end user the ability to fix a malfunction with speed and ease. By simply lifting your trigger finger and moving the lever up while pulling the charging handle to the rear, the bolt will lock back allowing the shooter to maintain positive control of the weapon while clearing the stoppage. When the problem has been solved or a fresh mag has been inserted, the shooter simply pushes the lever in and the bolt is released. With practice, this is a game changer for manual of arms.

Aftermarket Pistol Grip

There are many different models out there that span over several different weapon systems, but personally, I’d have to say my favorites are Bravo Company USA and Magpul. Both models of grips offer a more extreme vertical angle allowing the shooter to adopt a more squared-up posture when shooting, which is good for me because I favor the isosceles stance. They also fill up the hand better, giving me a more solid grip on the rifle which equals more control.

PMags

Good magazines are the heart of a properly functioning weapon and you can’t beat a Pmag for the price/performance. Made up of a polymer body, (the AK pmags have metal lip inserts to prevent breaking due to the way an AK magazine functions) coupled with a spring and anti-tilt follower the Pmag is simply the finest. They work and have been fielded heavily since their introduction into the shooting scene. Not much else to say about them; simple, effective and affordable.

NVGs and IR Lasers

Now my absolute favorite addition to shooting is night vision and to make that addition even more effective, a solid Infrared laser. Obvious by my Tritium sights bit, I’m a huge fan of night operations. When it comes to shooting at night, the man who can see in the dark is god; especially when the enemy cannot. This is a luxury I am not afforded in the Peshmerga; but if I could have anything it would be this. (Not to mention when you’re rocking all that ninja gear you look cool as fuck.) Being dependant on NVGs is a weakness, but if you can learn to be proficient in the dark without them, the moment you have them you’re that much better off.

Originally published on The NEWSREP

Sig Sauer P225: Accurate, Reliable and Durable

The readers of the site should have already figured out long ago that the writers here on the site like our guns. I’ll be the first one to tell you I wasn’t in a traditional combat arms job during my nearly 10-year military career. I didn’t have a career of kicking doors and bringing hate and discontent to America’s enemies but that didn’t stop me from trying to shoot as often as I could and try to digest every bit of gun knowledge I could get my hands on. Anyone who has met me in person and talked about firearms with me can pick up on that fact easily.

We often times get asked by people who read the site what types of firearms we own or like to use. Common questions I get asked is why I prefer one pistol or rifle to another, or what pistol I use for daily conceal carry. Since these questions are being asked more often we have decided on the site to pull back the Magic Curtain of Oz and give you some in-depth looks at our personal weapons preferences.

To start off my part of this ongoing segment I decided to show you my personal conceal carry option, the Sig Sauer P225, 9mm. Before we hop down the bunny trail I want to say that this P225 is not the same as the recently rereleased Sig Sauer P225-A1. My pistol is a pre-unification German production and features the “Made in W. Germany” roll mark.

Sig P225 — Pre 1989 W. German Pre-Reunification markings

According to Sig Sauer head of pistol development nothing on my P225 is compatible with the current P225A1 including the magazines. When I pressed him for an explanation he refused to comment on it and said it was proprietary information, which to me was a weak response at best especially for the Head of Pistol Development. Anyway let’s get back to this pistol, my choice for conceal carry and why it’s one of my favorite pistols.

I looked for this pistol for a few years and could only find the P6 version of it which was issued to German and Swiss military policemen and border guards primarily. The P6 and the P225 look almost identical except the roll mark and hammer. P6 hammers feature a noticeable loop where as the P225 features a solid hammer. Urban legend is that the P6 has a loop in the hammer so that armorers could tell if the weapon was dropped on its backside. The legend goes on to say that its to ensure proper hammer and sear mating. I have yet to find anyone who could prove that tale, that’s why I refer to it as urban legend.

Why the P225 ?

I get asked that a lot when I tell people what I use for a CCW weapon. To be honest I was a huge fan of Sig Sauer until my dealings with them at SHOT show and have owned more than a dozen different pistols manufactured by them. I also like single stack 9mm pistols, which the P225 is. I previously has used a P239 in .40 S&W until I realized I hated shooting that particular round.

I wanted a pistol that was both thin and compact yet easy to handle during firing drills. I also wanted one slightly bigger than my previous CCW pistol, which seemed to exhibit a little more muzzle rise than I liked. I also wanted something with a proven record and the P225 in my mind fulfilled that requirement with its military service with several countries.

Some people may knock the Sig P225 for only have an 8 round single stack magazine, but that doesn’t bother me. If you look at basic statistics about shootings you will see that the chances of getting into a running gun battle as seen on TV or movies like Heat is pretty slim. In my mind a pistol is used to break contact and extricate yourself from a situation or to be used in close quarters.

Specifications of Sig P225

Length: 7.09″

Height: 6.37″

Weight: 1.81 Lbs Empty

Barrel Length: 3.86″

Width across grips: 1.255 ”

Magazine Capacity: 8 rounds

My shooting experiences with the P225 have been fantastic as a whole. The double action trigger is long around 12 lbs and the single action is 5,25 lbs according to my lyman digital gauge. Longer trigger pulls tend to run a lot of people away from pistols like the P225. I have a slight understanding of the liability concerns that Sig Sauer has to deal with when manufacturing pistols, so long trigger pulls don’t bother me.

In my three years of owning this pistol I can honestly say after several thousand rounds I have yet to experience any sort of failure to fire or failure to extract a spend casing. This pistol has eaten any sort of cheap ammunition I could find as well as premium defensive pistol ammo like the Hornady Critical Defense ® ammo and the Federal Hydra-Shok®.

There are some downsides to the P225 that I briefly touched on. The smaller round capacity and the age of the pistol can create some issues with it comes to magazines. I have yet to find a third party magazine manufacturer like Mec Gar. Although Mec Gar does make magazines for other model of Sig Sauer pistols, just not this one.

P225#4 — Single stack magazines. Notice the spot welds and holes where you can count rounds available

The weight of the pistol is another concern for some users, you have to remember this pistol was designed in the old days when most pistols were steel. Gaston Glock’s company was still trying to prove itself when this was designed and polymers had not been fully embraced by the gun industry yet. Personally, I think a polymer P225 would be great.

The Sig P225 isn’t perfect, and it isn’t for everyone’s conceal carry needs. Right now it is the choice I use but if I can’t find a quality kydex holster to replace the aging leather one I have, it might be time to look at other options and relegate this pistol to the gun cabinet. I don’t see myself ever getting rid of the P225, but it will be a range gun just like my Browning Hi Power and my Heckler & Koch P7M8.

Thanks for checking out our new series Days of Guns. My next installment of this series I will show up my favorite submachine gun, will it be the Dakota Tactical D54 or the Polish PPS43? check back to find out

The Empire Tactical Brass Knuckles

Have you ever opened a beer and thought, “Man I could do this with more style.” If so the Empire Tactical Knuckle Beer Bottle openers are for you. This CNC machined set of knuckledusters is a made in America and perfect for striping the tops off of beers both foreign and domestic. This beautifully crafted set of brass knuckles are made from aluminum. Brass knuckles are a fun term for weapons that have been around since the times of the ancient Romans in one way or the other. They can be made of brass, plastic, steel, and of course aluminum. Doughboys in WW1 carried the famed trench knives equipped with a set of brass knuckles in the grip. Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguards even carried brass knuckles. They are even common enough that I found them everywhere in Afghanistan.

These days a set of brass knuckles may catch you a prison sentence here or there, but Federally they are legal. Technically this is the fanciest bottle opener I’ve ever used. It’s also a very fancy paperweight if you need it to be. It’s easy to find knuckledusters made by questionable means and of questionable materials. The Empire Tactical Knuckles are high quality and well-made knuckles for opening beer bottles and other tasks.

Made in America Brass Knuckles

The Empire Tactical Brass knuckles chew through a beer bottle lid with ease. They’d likely chew through someone’s face when used correctly. They are exceptionally well made, and beautiful. I have hands the size of paws, I wear a 2XL glove, and I find the Empire Tactical Brass Knuckles to fit like a glove mentioned above. The palm swell is where the bottle opener is inserted, and it does make leveraging the lid off the strongest bottle a simple affair.

In use, it’s critical you wear them correctly. The idea that you wear them as high up on your hand as possible is false. You wear them well below your knuckles. The palm swell to provide support, if not your brass knuckles will break your hand. You wear them on your middle phalanx, not your proximal phalanx as most people assume. When you strike something, the force should be translated to your palm, not to your knuckles.

The Effectiveness of Such a Weapon

If you ever choose to wield the Empire Tactical Brass knuckles as anything more than a bottle opener or a paperweight you need to treat them with the same respect as a handgun. Make no doubt about it these are a lethal weapon. You strike someone the right way, and they are dead, very dead. These are incredibly potent weapons when used correctly.

The force of your punch is multiplied and focused into a smaller area. Additionally, the metal knuckles add weight to your punch which translates into brutal kinetic energy. The force translated into the punch is significant, and it’s not something I’d want to be on the other end of. The Empire Tactical Brass knuckles are well made, beautiful to look at, and they function exactly as you’d expect them to. Meaning they open bottles very well. Yep…. They open bottles very well.

The real day to day carry of Jack Carr, Author of The Terminal List

This is an EDC photo from Jack Carr. For those of you that don’t know, Jack Carr authored the book The Terminal List. I recently finished the book and was extremely impressed. Not only was the storyline engaging the entire time, but the gear and weapons used were accurate and realistic. Most of what you see here was carried by the main character in the book at some point. If you’re a guns and gear guy or gal, then you need to pick up a copy of The Terminal List.

Here is a breakdown of what is in the above photo:

Below is another variation of his EDC seen on Jack Carr’s Instagram page:

View this post on Instagram

Sometimes you need to dress it up a bit… Thank you to everyone at @sigsauerinc @sigsauerusa for the new P365. I have a special place in my heart for SIG SAUER after having carried the P226 downrange for so long. I just love seeing SIG knocking it out of the park as a company across the board! Well done! @sigsaueroptics @sigsaueracademy @sigsauersuppressors #sig #sigsauer #wheretheprofessionalstrain #sigsaueracademy #sigacademy #siglife #gotsig #whenitcounts #beprepared #alwaysbeready #alwaysready #train #prepare #freedom

A post shared by Jack Carr (@jackcarrusa) on Sep 25, 2018 at 8:37am PDT

How much weaponry is enough?

Miyamoto Musashi authored ‘The Book of Five Rings‘, which rumor has it that it’s recommended reading for DEVGRU operators. Reading the book about DEVGRU operator Adam Brown (Fearless), he mentions having to read The Book of Five Rings. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it. Miyamoto Musashi has some great wisdom that’s applicable to the modern day warfighter.

“You should not have any special fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else, for that matter. Too much is the same as not enough. Without imitating anyone else, you should have as much weaponry as suits you.” – Miyamoto Musashi

*Photo and quote courtesy of Eds Manifesto Facebook page