The Ammo Gods Tricked Me...

...into spending too much on ammo this week. What else can I say for having bought another $480 or so worth of ammo over the past two days (yesterday and the day before). Two days ago, I saw that Lucky Gunner had PMC Bronze ammo available in .308 Winchester, 147 grain,  FMJ-BT and I bought 100 rounds of it. Can you blame me? After all, I have the Marlin XS-7 in .308 WIN and only had about 250 rounds on hand for it. So what was another 100 rounds at $25 per box of 20 rounds. It was on $125 but yes I did have to add shipping. That brought it to a mere $140.97. Amazingly, I ordered it 2 days ago and it already arrived today!

Then yesterday, I visited a local store and saw that they had 6 boxes of Remington UMC .45 Automatic on the shelves along with about a dozen boxes of CCI Blazer .45 Auto. The funny thing was that they wanted more for the aluminum cased CCI Blazer ammo. As I was hemming and hawing, trying to decide if I needed anymore .45Auto ammo, a guy comes up to the counter and asks the price of each. He then bought three boxes of the Remington ammunition. After just a bit more of justifying an ammo purchase to myself, I bought the remaining three boxes of it; there was yet another guy also asking the price but I beat him by about 10 seconds. That set me back another $81.45 but the real total was about $114 plus change because I also added a lensatic compass and a small knife sharpener to my purchase.

Then last night, I was browsing some sites and saw that SG Ammo had 762x39 mm ammo at a pre-buying-frenzy price or darned close to it. They had Golden Tiger, 7.62x39 FMJ, steel cased ammo (I am pretty sure this is lacquer coated), in lots of 200 rounds for only $59.99 - limit one per customer per day. Whom were they kidding, a limit of one per customer per day with only about 75 lots available; there would certainly not be another day. Of course, I had to add shipping charges to this too, meaning yes I bought 200 rounds of it. It wound up at a total of $71.99 shipped.

I decided to do a good deed for the day and went to Long island Firearms Forums and posted there about the availability of the 7.62x39mm ammo at SG Ammo. While doing so, I went back to the SG  Ammo site to check and it was down to about 30 lots. That all within less than 5 minutes of my ordering. In almost no time after that, they were sold out of it.

I again took a look at SG Ammo's site, just a bit later, wanting to look at the same ammo again but somehow winding up on their page listing 5.56x45mm ammo and was shocked to see that they had just listed 100 lots of 5.56 mm, M193, 55 grain, FMJ, Prvi Partizan ammo - LIMIT 5 PACKS PER CUSTOMER at $139.99. Now, I do not like the fact that 5.56x45mm ammo is selling for a price that high (this ammo going for .69999 or effectively .70 cents per round)  but that price was lower than anything else that I could find on the Internet over the past two months. So, I bought 200 rounds of it too. Just go to gunbot.net for some examples of current pricing; most .223 and 5.56x45 ammo is selling for at least .90 cents per round plus shipping. The total for this order was $153.39 shipped.

Yikes, what to tell the wife if she sees the credit card bill when it comes due! Lucky for me, I pay the bills. Unlucky for me, I have to come up with just over $480 to pay for it all. That ain't gunna be easy with the price I have been paying for my mill-ups this winter but it is not impossible either. Although, I suppose it means, I cannot buy any more ammo for the next month or two. That is unless I see a great deal on .308 ammo, or maybe even on 5.56x45mm or 7.62x39mm ammo. Heck, as it has turned out here in New York State, soon I will be required to be submitted to a background check to be able to purchase ammo (no problem) and I will also be prevented, by law, from buying it online (big problem). Fuck NY State and its whackadoo leftist politicians. This whole NY SAFE Act situation is, about as un-American as you can get. I had planned on spending no more than what I paid for the .308 ammo this month. Now, after my little spending spree, I am hopeful I do not bankrupt myself trying to put away some ammo, for a rainy day, at the current ammo-buying-frenzy driven prices.

By the way, if the wife does find out about this, I will just blame it on the ammo gods, really - what else could I say.

All the best,
Glenn B

Why Have These Police Officers Not Been Charged Criminally?

I do not mean all eight of them as mentioned in this article but do mean at least the two who shot at the two innocent women. There reportedly were over one hundred bullet holes in the pick-up truck and both of the female occupants of the vehicle were injured, one of them critically. Why?

 

All apparently because of their apparent misidentification of the truck the women were driving, they reportedly thought it was the truck owned by Christopher Dorner and they also, in my estimation, panicked and started spraying and praying.

So a truck drove by lights out that they reportedly believed looked like Dorner's; they seem to think that is all it takes to be able to start shooting and putting peoples lives at risk. Well, they had better be able to convince folks that they had at least that much reason to justifiably fear for their lives but for the life of me I do not see how with what has been presented thus far. Note though that Dorner's truck was a gray Nissan Titan and not very similar to the blue Toyota Tacoma that the women were driving. Well, in my opinion, at least the vehicles were not similar enough that they should have proven to look the same to the eyes of police officers. Mind you, officers who are taught how identify vehicles, are taught how to observe, and are trained and retrained to make assessments before firing their weapons. Furthermore, one would think it would have been standard operating procedure, for a police department 
supposedly as professional as the LAPD, to have supplied those officers with pictures, or at an exacting description, of the alleged cop killer's truck before being sent out to guard another cops home so that such a case of mistaken identity likely would not result in exactly what happened. 

This has been called a case of mistaken identity and indeed it was such so much so as to possibly be a criminal act of reckless endangerment. It also appears to me as it most probably must be an absolute breach of regulations, the law, and protocol on the part of the two officers who fired at the women’s' truck. Police officers, just like non-law enforcement folks, can only legally be justified in using deadly force (such as firing their weapons) if they in essence have probable or reasonable cause (varies by state) to believe that they are facing an imminent threat of death or of serious bodily injury. Even if the vehicle driven by both women had been identical to Dorner's, which it most definitely was not, the vehicle driving by them with lights off should not have been enough cause for the officers to have fired on it. Why - because they had not identified the driver of it. But he truth is that the vehicle was very different in appearance. The truth is that the officers were looking for Dorner but evidently, at least to me with my limited knowledge, fired knowingly at two subjects in the women’s' truck judging by how the bullet holes are positioned.

As far as I am concerned, based upon my 32 years of law enforcement experience, my having fired my handgun twice in the line of duty and once while off duty (fully justifiable all three times) and my having been a firearms and tactics instructor for 14 years while on the job, I think this was quite likely a bad shooting based upon the information that has appeared about it. Of course, as with anyone else I believe may have been involved in a crime, I insist on waiting until all the evidence is made known before condemning anyone. Yet, this looks to have been questionable enough, indeed more than enough, so that charges should have been filed against these officers at the very minimum for reckless endangerment and then the courts could have ironed it out. Something tells me though that charges will never be filed against them regardless of if they were unjustified in shooting at that truck and its occupants. We don't live in the America I grew up in anymore - that is for sure but one thing remains the same - the us against them status of the police, prosecutors and other government officials who all too often stick together regardless of justice and the rights of the citizenry being trod upon by those wearing a badge.

All the best,
Glenn B