Stacking Ammo

If anyone cares to share, I'm curious as to how much ammo you think is reasonable to keep on hand at any one time.

You can never have too much. 25,000 rounds of .22, 10,000 rounds of .223/5.56, 5,000 rounds of 7.62 X 39, 5,000 rounds of various flavors of 9mm parabellum and Makarov, 1,000 rounds for the 30-30, plenty of shotgun shells.


I think that would be a very good start.

On top of that, enough cleaning supplies and oil to clean each weapon 2 or 3 hundred times.

Stored properly, ammo will keep for years. Assuming you aren't buying some obscure caliber/round, it can be looked at as a poor man's barter item/store of wealth.

Personally, I always think I don't have enough.

A nice base amount is how much you would typically use in one year, which can vary from person to person.

I found this website to be very nice to find who is selling ammo the lowest:
http://ammoseek.com/

If you live in a <redacted - see forum guidelines on epithets> country like me, a high-power BB gun is good for survival (but not defense).

You can hunt rabbits all day with a 1,000 rounds in your pocket.

I'm on board w/ PMBug... you just can't have enough.

I just keep buying when I have the spare cash. And, it could be a great barter item if either the SHTF or tax goes up on it too much.

We might need an ammo cost by weight chart at the top of the page... j/k

ADK

When I think about SHTF and ammo, I always get just a little bit nervous, since I believe all production of civilian weapons and sale of same to regular folks will cease. In addition, I further believe there will be some sort of emergency moratorium on the sale and/or posession of ammunition. We regularly read stories of people who are arrested with a "cache" of weapons and "thousands and thousands" of rounds of ammunition.

To the uninitiated, this can be made to sound very scary and conspiritorial, yet the truth of it is that many of us have quite a few guns and many thousands of rounds of ammo. When you say "Joe Smith was found with five weapons and ten thousand rounds of ammunition", that could mean he was a champion Biathlete and had five match rifles chambered in .22 and twenty boxes of ammo, not quite the conspiracy "they" would have you think it is.

I regularly shoot five hundred rounds of .223 and 7.62 X 39 in a weekend and easily shoot five hundred rounds of .22 at the same time. For me too have thirty thousand rounds of .22 is a common occurrence, since I troll the wholesale sites and buy large lots when it is on sale. Same for .223/5.56, 9mm, etc. I could have seventy thousand rounds on any given Sunday, along with a "cache" of assorted weapons and magazines, yet I am not a terrorist or a criminal. In fact, I hold multiple clearances and have a spotless record. In a SHTF, will any of this matter?

Probably not.

Obummer is already rattling his saber about gun control and the UN small arms treaty, which if adopted will usurp our constitution, setting the administration up for a long and expensive constitutional challenge.

To segue back to the subject at hand, how much ammo you may need to stack depends on how you intend to use it. If you intend to hunt food with it, I suggest you use security and food acquisition as a primary metric. If you are one of the folks who have a mountain of food and merely need to augment with a little bit of protein, then security becomes the primary metric. In my case, it is security, then food, then practice and training.

Remember how they "got" Al Capone? Where I live, anything over 10k means you are supposed to register and pay an armory tax.

I usually only keep a couple k loaded, but with enough supplies to make more almost indefinitely - I buy brass and primers in 1k lots, and powder in 8 lb lots.

All I have to hide is some of the primers (easy) to avoid the armory tax issue.

An "armory tax" Just what in the fuck is that? Hell, ten thousand rounds of .22 is only twenty boxes for 'cryin out loud. That's absurd, where the hell do they have that ridiculous, intrusive and possibly illegal tax may I ask!?!?!?

ancona said:

You can never have too much. 25,000 rounds of .22, 10,000 rounds of .223/5.56, 5,000 rounds of 7.62 X 39, 5,000 rounds of various flavors of 9mm parabellum and Makarov, 1,000 rounds for the 30-30, plenty of shotgun shells.


I think that would be a very good start.

On top of that, enough cleaning supplies and oil to clean each weapon 2 or 3 hundred times.

Click to expand...

McKenzie -11yo Girl Sets New Record for Field Stripping AR15

ancona said:

When I think about SHTF and ammo, I always get just a little bit nervous, since I believe all production of civilian weapons and sale of same to regular folks will cease. In addition, I further believe there will be some sort of emergency moratorium on the sale and/or posession of ammunition. We regularly read stories of people who are arrested with a "cache" of weapons and "thousands and thousands" of rounds of ammunition.

To the uninitiated, this can be made to sound very scary and conspiritorial, yet the truth of it is that many of us have quite a few guns and many thousands of rounds of ammo. When you say "Joe Smith was found with five weapons and ten thousand rounds of ammunition", that could mean he was a champion Biathlete and had five match rifles chambered in .22 and twenty boxes of ammo, not quite the conspiracy "they" would have you think it is.

I regularly shoot five hundred rounds of .223 and 7.62 X 39 in a weekend and easily shoot five hundred rounds of .22 at the same time. For me too have thirty thousand rounds of .22 is a common occurrence, since I troll the wholesale sites and buy large lots when it is on sale. Same for .223/5.56, 9mm, etc. I could have seventy thousand rounds on any given Sunday, along with a "cache" of assorted weapons and magazines, yet I am not a terrorist or a criminal. In fact, I hold multiple clearances and have a spotless record. In a SHTF, will any of this matter?

Probably not.

Obummer is already rattling his saber about gun control and the UN small arms treaty, which if adopted will usurp our constitution, setting the administration up for a long and expensive constitutional challenge.

To segue back to the subject at hand, how much ammo you may need to stack depends on how you intend to use it. If you intend to hunt food with it, I suggest you use security and food acquisition as a primary metric. If you are one of the folks who have a mountain of food and merely need to augment with a little bit of protein, then security becomes the primary metric. In my case, it is security, then food, then practice and training.

Click to expand...

had this same conversation with my Blackwater neighbor who just got back from Iraq (a few years ago) and he just snorted and he said 10,000 rounds is just a good firefight.

mike said:

If you live in a <redacted - see forum guidelines on epithets> country like me, a high-power BB gun is good for survival (but not defense).

You can hunt rabbits all day with a 1,000 rounds in your pocket.

Click to expand...

Mike, you can do more with an air rifle than you might think.

Jay,
My little girl [17 going on 18 actually] learned how to strip an AR-15 when I built my first rig some years ago. At 13, she could strip and re-assemble an AR-15 in juuuust under 60 seconds, and she was motivated by that video. Thanks for digging that one up!

She could have done it in under 20s with an AK.ffftt:

dontdeBasemebro said:

She could have done it in under 20s with an AK.ffftt:

Click to expand...

Yeah, but it would be an AK. Bring yours to my range to shoot against my '15's anytime - bring some money to bet on scores with.

Of course, there's absolutely no comparison to my semi AR 10 in .308...but it's a bit heavy to tramp around with.

Hey Fusor,

..but I suspect, that competition you mention is with regards to targeting only? nothing like good olde AK, when it comes to sheer penetrability, though (I mean, speaking about assault rifles)

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

Ahhh, ye ole AK versus AR comparison.

Generally, an AK is more reliable and less likely to jam.

Generally, an AR is more accurate at longer distance shots.

Depending on your terrain, you usually will not be taking longer than 2-300 meter shots. If I was going to be taking extremely long range shots, I would personally switch to a bolt action rifle like the K31.

My number one request from my firearm is it fires when I squeeze the trigger.

Combine everything together, I want whatever rifle that is most reliable while still being able to hit a target at 250 meters without a scope. I know both ARs and AKs that fit that bill.

theres a pretty neat video of a guy on U-tube who buries his AR in the dirt, with the dust cover open, and drives over it with his jeep, then stops on top of the gun and turns the wheel. Only one jam in three magazines. But I can't find the video. did find some MolonLabe dust covers though!
http://www.molonlabeshop.com/AR-15-Dust-CoversEjection-Port-Doors_c_9.html

My experience with AKs/SKS here at the range is that nope, they are NOT more reliable than almost any AR. Period. The only thing that has seen more jams here is a Tec-9 (more than one per mag every time). Now, this could be and probably is due to the fact that everyone and their mother makes AKs - and only everyone makes ARs, so the quality control is better on most ARs.

But really - penetrability? My AR, with a 40 gr plastic tip bullet (3700fps) easily perfs 3/8" thick steel. An AK just dents it. Speed kills, in this case.

I'm at 1/4 MOA in the AR's, and I've never seen an AK that was inside one moa.
This could just be my own experience - perhaps 20 guns worth have shot here where I could observe in detail.

My .223 and .308 bolts are well down into the 0.1 MOA range, if I have bags and time. Both are better than their semi cousins by far - no rough treatment of that handmade, low runout ammo on the way to the chamber really makes a difference.

No one ever takes an AK to a match. Lots of people take AR's. Must be a reason.

The big deal in design difference (other than the AK is much simpler so anyone can make one - advantage AK), is that the AR was designed to wound, the AK to kill.
The theory was that if you wound a guy, you take about 3 guys out of the fight, as his buddies will tend to him. This theory turned out to be wrong in many places ('Nam, for one), where they just left the guy there screaming and continued the attack.

This changed some with the change in twist and ammo for the AR to the heavier bullets that are now the current issue. But not that much. The much higher velocity of the AR is a fairly big deal when it comes to trajectory too. Given the accuracy and range issues - AK is for "they are at the end of the driveway", where the AR is for "you can just barely see them at the next ridgeline". At distance, the AK trajectory is more like a rainbow/artillery - they are just not a long range thing.

Of course, the 400 meter or so effective range of the AR is considered short by some. That's when the scoped bolt action heavies come out. You can't hit what you can't see -and if you put a big scope on an AR/CAR - you can't see anything close (pick up targets fast in real battle which is usually short range) and kinda defeat the point.

Different strokes of course, but the offer still stands. I don't own an AK, if I did, I'd probably find a way to make it shoot well, but that AK hasn't shown up here.

last time we were at Academy Surplus (to get arrows for my kid) in Cedar Park, Texas (the closest one) I wandered over to the ammo section. What, no ammo? The bottom four shelves, forty feet long, was .223 in boxes and cases. Almost all the rest was shotgun shells. I asked my friend, WTF? happened to all the ammo? He said, .223 is all anyone buys anymore. They didn't have any .40, .32 and I couldn't find any .22, but they had to have it somewhere. (Didn't matter to me, I don't buy ammo there anyway).

Right - reloaders, gun shows, gun stores - it's hard for a "normal" retailer to compete. I tend to avoid mailorder myself, due to that hazmat charge.

I only rarely buy factory made ammo - to use in the self defence guns, because of the legal issues potentially around reloads. Everything else, I pretty much just buy the parts and make my own to fit my own guns - you get some pretty significiant accuracy improvements here, along with saving money (if you do it enough to amortize the reloading gear).