Chase my IP down and you'll find that around here you can't get elected to the school board unless you're Pro-2nd Amendment!

All kidding aside. The thought that some folks in some of the blue states want to call a brick or two of .22 LR an arsenal is absolutely laughable around here. I had a friend some time ago tell me he needed to pick up more ammunition. (He was serious.) I gave him a hard time about it and we started counting what he had on hand. When we got to 110k rounds we quit counting. I would love to know what he had on hand when he was "stocked up".

I've kind of been following this thread with interest for a while. Just out of curiousity, what kind of situation are you stocking up for? And what environment are you in? Generally speaking, large city, small town, country? North east, south? How long are you planning for?

Honestly I have been surprised at some of the paths that this thread has taken on since I first posted it. My personal planning is set up for three time periods, short term (0-2 weeks), intermediate term (3-8 weeks) and long term (8 weeks +). I live in a fairly small town that is on the outskirts of the largest metropolitan area in the state.

The most likely senarios would involve short term and maybe intermediate term situations (Katrina style situations) Currently I am a little farther away from the coast now than I was prior to Katrina but will most likely be heading back closer in time. I'm certainly not building an arsenal by any means but my family had first hand experience with Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi and it does not take very long for those who were not prepared and stocked up with food, water, batteries, etc. to start trying to take it away from those that did prepare.

The longer term and much less likely senarios would involve things such as a bird flu (or similar) epidemic or a terrorist attack on one of the five nuclear power plants that my state has in it.

In a perfect world the ammo will end up being shot at the range by my kids one day but since our world is not perfect I will continue to make plans to protect my family from "any and all threats both foreign and domestic."

Well, I can't help you as far as where to buy inexpensive defense rounds, since I shoot .22 all I really buy is the ten dollar bricks.

You might want to worry about over penetration. If your neighbors are nearby you don't want rounds passing through the walls and hitting your neighbor's kids. Just about any ball ammo will go through walls. Most walls are just a two layers of sheet rock or siding and maybe insulation. I have personal experiance with 9mm ball going through exterior walls, and I've heard stories about even .22 going through interior walls (as much as people poopoo .22). So you might want to consider finding something that your weapons will shoot that won't go through the walls. Expansion may cover this (I'm not familiar enough to say for sure), and they make special rounds that are essentially tungsten powder that fragment on impact and won't penetrate walls. Especially important in the city, but even in the country you don't want bullets to go into your kid's rooms. Thats my little piece of advice. I'll let others debate the subtleties of stockpiling ammo. Most people who own guns do some level of stockpiling if only so they can avoid running to the store on the way to the range.

Try www.ammoman.com he sells good quality at very fair prices. I would keep 100 rounds of good quality HP and 500-1,000 rounds of FMJ depending on how much you practice. When you get down to 200 FMJ reorder. It appears the prices are going to continue to rise so I wouldn't wait too long. Quite honestly I can't forsee a scenerio that would require more than that. If there is more than one person in the house that would be helping you defend your home than I would add an additional 100 rounds of HP for each additional person. If there are going to be multiple guns in use, I would try to be redundant so that you use the same ammo and magazines in the multiple guns. I hope that this helps.

A few points.

Large stores of ammo for a handgun is not all that critical. After all, you use your handgun to get you back to your rifle.


Wolf is not the big ol evil ammo the internet makes it out to be. Funny how the critics of Wolf become less vocal as surplus stocks dry up and brass cased ammo continues to get more expensive.

Ammoman is okay and chances are you will get what you order. BUT, if you don't, you may be out of luck as Eric ie Ammoman is not the friendliest guy when his company makes the mistake.....they are not know for their customer service.

YMMV

I like cheaperthandirt.com Fairly quick, good selection.

As for the kind, I'd buy a box or 2 of several different kinds, and different manufacturers. See what your gun shoots best. I found my 9mm takes Remington with less misfires than Winchester, but that the Winchester groups a little tighter. Still... even the Remington would do the job.

Don't go overboard with ammo, even if I hold more than I really need I don't believe that there is any need for that.

I have participated in a few wars and at first I would carry so much ammo that by the time we went into combat I was to tired to really put up a good fight...... what to do?

I would carry only 30% of what I just to carry and then I would take the ammo from the fallen ones from either side.....and the same for field equipment.

It seems silly to have 5000 rds of any ammo if you can't take it with you ... and thats a lot of money tied up in one thing.
Seems prudent though to have 500 - 1000 rds ... at least in the weapons you are likely to grab-n-go with. More for the .22 since its so small and inexpensive.
Given the funds ...I'd love it to all be something like Cor-Bon DPX since that stuff performs so well ...but in the grand scheme of things ... one should be able to get by with any quality product.
And hey ...if you are gonna take a gun ...it should have ammo, otherwise its really just an expensive rock.

to:martinfocazio

I was watching a Ron Hood video about his home prepardness a while back. Early in the video he discusses the idea of "should he really show everybody his own stashes?" He debates this idea with the educational value of showing the viewers how he preps his home. Then a few minutes later his camera is running around the house showing the locations of all his stuff; 2 cases of MRE's under his bed, bed lockers, living room blanket lockers, closets, kitchen cabinets/pantry, basement stock room, BOBs, weaponry/ammunition, etc.

I was a little perplexed that would deliberately indicate all his hiding places when he could have simply have given examples of places and not give out his secrets. All during his house tour though, I couldn't help but think that he was only showing his small potatoes stuff and that in the back yard he has a huge cache of materials that he wasn't letting on to. This is the same guy who spent min. $200k on a bomb shelter after he got back from Vietnam in the '70s, then sold it, and now wishes he still had it.

The whole idea of stockpiling several months supply of anything is a bit mind boggling to me. Never mind the "logic" or rationale for the stockpiling. I guess it takes a different mindset than what I have. During the Cuban missile crises there were plenty of people who created their own bunkers; during the Y2K craze, stockpiling hit another peak and post 9-11/Katrina you still find this urge for independent self preservation.

I saw a link to a starvation experiment article a while back. One thing that caught my eye was that during the experiment, the subjects took to hoarding whatever foodstuffs they could get their hands on, a few even took to "cheating" on the experiment. This food hoarding sometimes continued after the experiment was over and the subjects returned to good health. So I am curious as to the psychological conditions that set off this impulse.

What I am saying is that stockpiling foodstuffs and arsenals, etc. is more than just a good prepardness reasoning. Being prepared with supplies is always a good thing but realistically what are the chances of requiring a 12 month stash? There is also a irrational, more complex emotion going on in the background of people's minds. Fear. Fear of being attacked. Fear of not being able to defend oneself. Fear that is spawned from previous events like the cold war or 9-11 or a major catastrophe.

A female friend of mine walks around all the time with the fear getting raped. To the point of it being an irrational fear. Being a guy, I don't relate to this intimate thinking. In fact I can honestly say I don't an irrational fear of anything (except ladders). Likewise growing up on the Canadian prairies, knowing that my country has never been attacked or been the object of planned nuclear attack or that we haven't had a local major catastrophe in many many years, it's possible I may be lulled in a feeling of being safe all the time.