path to the righteous arsenal

PATH TO THE RIGHTEOUS ARSENAL
I got the advance copy of Rawles "How To Survive The End Of The World As We Know It" from FedEx today. It was actually delivered on Monday, but as usual it was a major to-do getting it delivered. They send a postcard telling me I need a physical delivery address. That takes two days since they no longer sort mail locally but send it to Salt Lake. I have to call them and give them my work address. They send that info to the locals, then I finally get it. I really need to post my work address on my web site. My point is, I'm going to try to get it read this weekend so I can review it on Monday. So far it looks pretty good, just from flipping through. Today I'm just going to bore you with totally irrelevant personal history. It really is good for little else other than entertainment, but as usually it has a point to it. It might be really hard to decipher that point, but I can't just hand you these things on a silver platter.
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It would be really cool to pretend like I've always known what I was doing, that I had a master plan and had arrived at my perfect destination. Well, we all know better. There are guys that have their lives organized. I'm not one of them. I'm a "cluttered desk where I know what pile to look in for that paper" kind of person. In the end I find the paper but it takes a lot of wasted effort. I've always known the general trend I'm following, but I get sidetracked by a lot of details. My excuse is that I'm a creative type, absent minded professor, that can't devote my energies to organizing when I must have the brain cells involved in the more messy creative process. Hey, it sounds good. How I arrived at my current perfect arsenal is an example.
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In the late eighties I finally decided to stop reading about preparedness and actually do something concrete. Thanks to reading Kurt Saxon, I had the idea of how to do it cheaply. You would think that it was a pretty obvious step of going to the feed store and bake shop to get wheat, but I had previously only been aware of commercial solutions to food stockpiling. Thanks, Kurt. You might have gotten most of your ideas elsewhere, but you made it accessible to everyone. I got my four hundred pounds of wheat kernels, my $50 Corona grain mill, a half dozen gallons of bleach, and I went down to the gun store with a bright shiny new credit card. My only experiences ( other than an occasional trip with friends to the shooting range and borrowing their gun ) with firearms was in the military. So a 45 was a natural choice. I had been given the opportunity to buy an AR-15 a few years previous for $500, but that was a months net income so I was never seriously tempted. Thank goodness. Yes, the 45 was the same, but I was paying like $12 a month on credit. At the same time as the private sale AR, I had run across the SMLE and fell in love with it after it maimed me, but more on that shortly.
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When I was an MP in the army, they were still using the 45. A real gun, not some limp wristed Euro Commie trash piece of crap 9mm, fag Nazi round. At my second duty station ( I got out after my first tour, then went back in later ) I just missed being issued one of the hunks of crap. It seems that the whole lot for the Company was defective and had been shipped back for work and they reissued the 45's temporarily. If you are only using FMJ ammo, the 9 is vastly inferior to the 45. The 45 hits a heck of a lot harder. Then, if your opponent is only stunned, you can beat his head in to a pulp with the solid mass of the heavy frame. The 9mm has the hitting capacity of a mouse fart ( granted, I don't want to get hit with one, but I'm comparing it to the 45 ) and then if you can throw it with that limp wrist it doesn't do much damage. I had that pistol for about seven years. In fact, that was my only gun. I shortly thereafter married the Bride Of Lucifer ( in my own defense, I didn't know she was already hitched ), and all paychecks were dutifully signed over to Herself. So whatever preps I made prior to her was what I needed to stay content with. Four hundred pounds of wheat for two adults and two infants. With one pistol and several boxes of ammo. That would have worked out wonderfully.
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Come the mid nineties I was paroled. I immediately got remarried, being an idiot. But she was much more accommodating with letting me keep my own paycheck. In fact, she was polar opposites from the Evil One. But she was crazier than a craphouse rat ( and getting fatter each month ), so that didn't last long. By the end of that year, I had three SKS's and three SMLE's. I had fallen in love with the Enfields when I borrowed a friends and I limp wristed it like it was a semi-auto carbine, the recoil sent the rear site up to take a chunk out of my eyebrow. I suppose I was impressed with its power. Anyway, on top of the Enfields and carbines, I had two Rugar 10-22's. A Russian made single shot 12 gauge, and a few pawn shop pot metal pimp pistols. After I basically abandoned everything in a moment of pure panicked flight, I had to start over again with basically nothing.
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At this point, I was over the SKS. They had all been Chinese and the shoddy quality was too obvious. Also, I was not going to buy another No.1 Enfield. Their front sites were terrible. Even putting bright nail polish on them did no good. I was still sold on 45's of course. So my new arsenal was No.4 Enfields, 45's ( two of them this time, since two of the South American models was the price of one Springfield Armory, my original purchase ), and more rimfires, but this time generic models and old revolvers ( being much cheaper than Rugars ). Then, when I left Florida I needed more moving funds so I sold the 45's. During that time I had gotten a 357 hammerless, just because I could. I kept that, and discovered that I actually preferred revolvers. No acquiring mags, no swapping out mags to avoid spring compression. No wrestling them apart for cleaning.
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So, after all that, I ended up with today's arsenal that I am quite happy with. Too many Enfields, a few revolvers and some 22's. I didn't really plan it, rather fell in to it after some very expensive lessons. I think most gun owners do the same thing, keep trading up to perfection. My point? If I wasn't one to readily admit my mistakes, I never would have evolved my choices. I don't enjoy mindless Chop Suey movies anymore, even with explosions, boobs and gunfire. I want a story with my movie. And I don't think all the fun boy toys I used to own for weapons are the best choices for defense or survival anymore. It is called wisdom, and you are welcome for sharing.
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