Prepping, Survivalists, and Guns

If you’re new to the concept of prepping, you might be suffering from some sort of vague mental image of a shaggy bearded mountain man, living in a lonely shack somewhere, sort of like the Unabomber, and surrounded by more guns and ammo than any person should ever have.

We hasten to advise that this is not the case at all.  Well, to put it in terms of logic :

Not all preppers are ‘mountain men, government hating, survivalists’

and

Not all mountain men are preppers

In actual fact, preppers come from all walks of life, with plenty of doctors, attorneys, and high-tech multi-millionaires mixed in with ordinary people like us (and possibly like you too).  No matter what your background, social standing, race, or anything at all, you are welcome as a prepper.

But it is true that most preppers probably have one or more guns, and a reasonable amount of ammunition, too.  But is that a bad thing?  It is certainly legal in all 50 states, so from that perspective, there is no harm.

Part of prepping is considering negative future possibilities, and preparing to counter such things if and when they might occur.  Guns can be very helpful in two situations.

The first is relatively benign.  Guns can be helpful for hunting, whether it be small animals such as rabbits, ducks and other birds, or larger animals all the way up to deer, elk, bison and buffaloes.  In a situation where food is scarce, why not have a gun to hunt yourself some extra food?  That’s simply a prudent part of preparing.

Here’s the interesting thing.  You would be best off having at least three guns, just for hunting.  A small caliber (perhaps even a .22) for rabbits and other varmints.  A shotgun for birds.  And a larger caliber rifle for larger sized animals.

Now for the other not quite so pleasant reason for needing some guns.  Yup – self defense.

Sure, we know most people are basically decent people, and probably many people will use any sort of adversity as a reason to create closer social and cooperative ties with friends and neighbors.  You don’t need guns for any of that.

But we also know two other things.  The first is that not everyone is fair and decent; add that to a probable decline in law enforcement capabilities in some sort of disruption of normal society, and you can join those dots together, can’t you.  It seems people riot at the drop of a hat these days, and it also seems they do so more violently than ever before.

The second thing we know is that if a person and their family are starving, and they are faced with the choices of either quietly starving to death on a street corner, or doing whatever it takes to get the food their family so desperately needs – well, what would you do?

Sure, we might share our food as best we can, but we also know that if we have to choose between ourselves going hungry and dying of starvation, because we’ve given away all the food we carefully stored up to people who, prior to the social disruption, would sneer and laugh at us for being a weird prepper; or keeping enough to ensure our survival in these tough times, there will very quickly come a time when the desperate pleas from people who did not prepare will have to be greeted with refusals to assist.

At that point, what will they do?  And what will we do in response?

Yup – an ugly reality, but surely you can see it.  They’ll try to take the food from us by force, and we’ll be in turn left with no choice but to defend ourselves, also by force.  That too will require more than one gun – a pistol, and probably a different type of rifle to the hunting rifle we already have.  Maybe a different type of shotgun too.

So there you have it – a peaceable ordinary person who needs six guns.  More if he has other adults in the household, more if he wants spares.

Ladies – if you think this is excessive, may we quietly ask you a question :  How many pairs of shoes do you own?  How many handbags?  🙂

Don’t worry – real serious preppers aren’t wanting to overthrow the government or anything like that.  They judge people based on their open minded approach to prudently preparing, not by their skin color or anything else.  And, if you’re not a prepper, you might find yourself needing both a fair share of our food and also a fair share of our protection, too.

You have nothing to fear from us, quite the opposite, you should be delighted to know we’re out there.

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