Survival Weapons Training

Harold wrote me via e-mail and asked: "I am now totally focused on prepping. I think that within the next six years we will be without cars and electricity and that means without cell phones and computers. There will not be anyone to protect us except ourselves. My old friend is a local Deputy Sheriff and believes the same thing. We have stocked up an old hunting cabin that we use here in Kentucky. Both of us are in our late 50's. I have hunted all my life and can easily live in the woods, real comfortable there. I have a Browning BAR in .30-06 and am no stranger to taking deer but I am knowing that my rifle skills for defending my home or my cabin can be much improved. What are your recommendations for using a rifle for defending? God Bless. "

UrbanMan's comments: Harold, you are on track preparing a Bug Out location and having perhaps the beginnings of a survival team with your Deputy Sheriff friend. I find it interesting that you have a six year time frame for what is commonly called the collapse, the economic collapse, The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) or simply SHTF. ...take your pick of monikers,...end result the same - our survival at risk.  The larger the collapse, the higher the threat to our culture surviving.

The BAR is a great rifle. I like the detachable magazine capability of it and hope you have several extra magazines. However ammunition is expensive for routine battle rifle training. Even a semi-auto .22 rifle like the Ruger 10-22 would allow you to train consistantly and not going broke.

Some of the skills you need to have to employ a firearm sufficiently for any purpose including defensive purposes include:

Accuracy. Being able to hit what you aim at.

Train on multiple targets. Most people go out and shoot one target. Taking a page from the practical pistol, rifle and shotgun community, some of they drills they incorporate includes multiple targets.

Speed. Shooting multiple targets,....... accurately!

Magazines changes or re-loading. This is a muscle memory drill that the more you do it the better and faster you will become. If you do not have a magazine fed gun, then you will rapidly appreciate one.

Clearing Malfunctions is another task. You may rarely get them so you will have to intentional make up the scenarios and it helps to have a training partner so you can do to for each other.

Positional shooting - shooting from all different positions.

Weak hand and strong hand only shooting, in case you are wounded or injured you can still operate the gun.

Stress situations. When you are being shot at your stress level goes up (duh!). What this causes is increased heart rate; rapid, shallow breathing; sometimes tunnel vision; increase in gross motor skills; decrease in complex motor skills. It's hard to replicate in training, but physical exertion followed by conducting your shooting drills will give you a small idea of what stress does to your skills sets.

Tactics. Learn how to use cover and concealment. If you have a survival buddy or team learn how to fire and manuever as a team.

Prepare for the Defense.  Look over your properties where you think you may have to defend yourself.  Consider what the natural and concealed routes are that attackers would use.  Consider clearing areas you need to clear to give our fields of observation and fire.  Consider early warning devices to alert you, and emplacement of  obstacles to force attackers into areas to your advantage.

Bug Out route.  What if you are in danger of losing your position?  Consider a Bug Out route or method of safely as can be withdrawing from your home or cabin.  Establish a rally point if you have a team so in case separated, you can link up.  

A cache of supplies would be a good idea in case you are forced to Bug Out without much gear, equipment or supplies.

Consider going to a shooting school. Kyle Lamb of Viking Tactics hosts many such course mostly for military and law enforcement types. People and agencies I have worked with have contracted Kyle Lamb to run training for their personnel and tactical teams. You may not be able to attend any training but as luck would have it Kyle Lamb hosts training videos on You Tube, just enter "Kyle Lamb Viking Tactics" and see a slew of videos on shooting drills he recommends. Here is the video on a drill he calls the "396". Good luck to you Harold. .....Oh yeah, consider getting a magazine fed rifle.

The Coming Collapse, Late November 2012 Edition

The Economic Collapse blog consolidated many different sites as they composed the massive list of lay offs and firings after Obama won re-election.

From the Blaze,.... major corporations have all announced layoffs in just the past two days...

Energizer; Exide Technologies; Westinghouse; Research in Motion Limited; Lightyear Network Solutions; Providence Journal; Hawker Beechcraft; Boeing (30% of their management staff); CVPH Medical Center; US Cellular; Momentive Performance Materials; Rocketdyne; Brake Parts; and Vestas Wind Systems; Husqvarna; Center for Hospice New York; Bristol-Meyers; OCE North America; Darden Restaurants; West Ridge Mine; United Blood Services Gulf;

From the American Thinker, we get a list of other companies downsizing,......

Teco Coal officials announce layoffs; Momentive Inc plans temporary layoffs for 150; Wilkes-Barre officials to announce mandatory layoffs; 600 layoffs at Groupon; More layoffs announced at Aniston Weapons Incinerator; Murray Energy confirms 150 layoffs at 3 subsidiaries; 130 laid off in Minnesota dairy plant closure; Stanford brake plant to lay off 75; Turbocare, Oce to lay off more than 220 workers; ATI plans to lay off 172 workers in North Richland Hills; SpaceX claims its first victims as Rocketdyne lays off 100; Providence Journal lays off 23 full-time employees; CVPH lays off 17; New Energy lays off 40 employees; 102 Utah miners laid off because of 'war on coal', company says; US Cellular drops Chicago, cuts 640 jobs; Career Education to cut 900 jobs, close 23 campuses; Vestas to cut 3,000 more jobs; First Energy to cut 400 jobs by 2016; Mine owner blames Obama for layoffs (54 fired last night); Canceled program costs 115 jobs at Ohio air base; AMD trims Austin workforce - 400 jobs slashed; 100 workers lose jobs as Caterpillar closes plant in Minnesota; Exide to lay off 150 workers; TE Connectivity to close Guilford plant, lay off 620; More Layoffs for Major Wind Company (3,000 jobs cut); Cigna to lay off 1,300 workers worldwide; Ameridose to lay off hundreds of workers;

From a Sy Harding on Forbes we get the analysis that people are generally ignorant of the coming collapse,...

The global economic recovery from the 2007-2009 financial collapse stalled last year and continues to worsen this year, with the International Monetary Fund cutting its forecasts for global economic recovery yet again, including for the U.S., and warning last week that risks of the world dropping back into a global recession “are alarmingly high”, and that “no significant improvements appear in the offing.”

That certainly sounds like the IMF doesn’t have much confidence that the ‘Troika’ (the IMF, EU, and ECB) will be successful with the euro-zone rescue plans and stimulus measures announced a month ago.

Meanwhile China and Japan, the world’s second and third largest economies, are in a serious economic slowdown. China’s stock market is down 40% from its peak in 2009. Japan’s market is down 22% from its 2010 peak and still 51% beneath its peak in 2007.

U.S. corporations seem to be preparing for the difficult times ahead. They are hoarding capital and refusing to invest it in their futures, apparently being to make sure they can pay their bills and survive anything that might lie ahead.

The fear of corporate managements could also be seen in the way that corporate insiders sold off holdings and continued even after the Fed announced its QE3 stimulus measures. Hedge-fund managers likewise did not participate in the June rally, instead selling off as well.

Private-equity funds are having a similar under-performing year, up on average of only 4%. As the Journal says, that is not what their investors planned on. The funds were also suspicious of the rally, and are sitting on close to $1trillion in cash.

However, U.S. consumer confidence has jumped to 83.1 in October from 78.3 in September!!

And at 83.1, consumer confidence is getting close to the 87 level it averaged in the year prior to the 2008-2009 recession. That’s a lot more recovery than global economies have achieved, including that of the U.S. Is it just due to the pixie dust being puffed out by Wall Street and the Fed, about to be blown away by the gathering storm others see coming? We are likely to soon know the answer.

All this before we face the Govermental Fiscal Cliff that is finally in the mainstream news after heading this way for the past five years. Wait until the Department of Defense lays off a butt load of civil service and downsizes the military. Further military cuts will impact negatively not only major defense contractors (see Boeing in the list of lay offs) but local businesses around military installations.

Taxes are going up; more government spending and debt; inflated prices from everything from fuel to food.

Then there is the National Drought,...
And finally, the ability of the United States to produce food to feed the people has greatly diminished simply because of the great drought that has occured.  The worst U.S. drought in decades has deepened again after more than a month of encouraging reports of slowly improving conditions.

60.1 percent of the lower 48 states were in some form of drought as of Tuesday, up from 58.8 percent the previous week. The amount of land in extreme or exceptional drought — the two worst classifications — increased from 18.3 percent to 19.04 percent.   Read the entire article on the national drought conditions here.

Stock up people,..prepare well. 

Federal Government Planning on Warrantless Surveillance of Your E-mails

UrbanMan's comments: I have always thought that the Federal Government's Law Enforcement Agencies needed the ability to quickly gain approvals for electronic surveillance so they could timely react to threats. I thought that the separations of authority for the various federal agencies would provide some safe guards. I thought the warrant requirements of the Patriot Act would serve to provide Americans with another safeguard on Government intrusions into our freedoms and constitutional rights. Then a report on Yahoo titled "Senate bill rewrite lets feds read your e-mail without warrants" concerning a Senate bill being proposed by Senator Leahy (D-CT) and reported as being quietly re-written to give not only more surveillance capability but warrantless capability.

I have been middle of the road between people who think the Government is going further and further into a Geroge Orwell envisioned government and the people who think the Government is there to help us. It is the obvious over reach of this bill that not only concerns me about our rights and privacy, but also pushes me to plan to survive in a decayed infrastructure and also in a total collapse, because this is just crazy and a possible sign of things to come.

A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.

CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans' e-mail, is scheduled for next week.

Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies -- including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission -- to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge. (CNET obtained the revised draft from a source involved in the negotiations with Leahy.)

Revised bill highlights

> Grants warrantless access to Americans' electronic correspondence to over 22 federal agencies. Only a subpoena is required, not a search warrant signed by a judge based on probable cause.

> Permits state and local law enforcement to warrantlessly access Americans' correspondence stored on systems not offered "to the public," including university networks.

> Authorizes any law enforcement agency to access accounts without a warrant -- or subsequent court review -- if they claim "emergency" situations exist.

> Says providers "shall notify" law enforcement in advance of any plans to tell their customers that they've been the target of a warrant, order, or subpoena.

> Delays notification of customers whose accounts have been accessed from 3 days to "10 business days." This notification can be postponed by up to 360 days.

It's an abrupt departure from Leahy's earlier approach, which required police to obtain a search warrant backed by probable cause before they could read the contents of e-mail or other communications. The Vermont Democrat boasted last year that his bill "provides enhanced privacy protections for American consumers by... requiring that the government obtain a search warrant."

Leahy had planned a vote on an earlier version of his bill, designed to update a pair of 1980s-vintage surveillance laws, in late September. But after law enforcement groups including the National District Attorneys' Association and the National Sheriffs' Association organizations objected to the legislation and asked him to "reconsider acting" on it, Leahy pushed back the vote and reworked the bill as a package of amendments to be offered next Thursday. The package (PDF) is a substitute for H.R. 2471, which the House of Representatives already has approved.

One person participating in Capitol Hill meetings on this topic told CNET that Justice Department officials have expressed their displeasure about Leahy's original bill. The department is on record as opposing any such requirement: James Baker, the associate deputy attorney general, has publicly warned that requiring a warrant to obtain stored e-mail could have an "adverse impact" on criminal investigations.

Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said requiring warrantless access to Americans' data "undercuts" the purpose of Leahy's original proposal. "We believe a warrant is the appropriate standard for any contents," he said.

An aide to the Senate Judiciary committee told CNET that because discussions with interested parties are ongoing, it would be premature to comment on the legislation.

Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that in light of the revelations about how former CIA director David Petraeus' e-mail was perused by the FBI, "even the Department of Justice should concede that there's a need for more judicial oversight," not less.

Markham Erickson, a lawyer in Washington, D.C. who has followed the topic closely and said he was speaking for himself and not his corporate clients, expressed concerns about the alphabet soup of federal agencies that would be granted more power:

There is no good legal reason why federal regulatory agencies such as the NLRB, OSHA, SEC or FTC need to access customer information service providers with a mere subpoena. If those agencies feel they do not have the tools to do their jobs adequately, they should work with the appropriate authorizing committees to explore solutions. The Senate Judiciary committee is really not in a position to adequately make those determinations.

The list of agencies that would receive civil subpoena authority for the contents of electronic communications also includes the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Maritime Commission, the Postal Regulatory Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Mine Enforcement Safety and Health Review Commission.

Leahy's modified bill retains some pro-privacy components, such as requiring police to secure a warrant in many cases. But the dramatic shift, especially the regulatory agency loophole and exemption for emergency account access, likely means it will be near-impossible for tech companies to support in its new form.

A bitter setback

This is a bitter setback for Internet companies and a liberal-conservative-libertarian coalition, which had hoped to convince Congress to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act to protect documents stored in the cloud. Leahy glued those changes onto an unrelated privacy-related bill supported by Netflix.

At the moment, Internet users enjoy more privacy rights if they store data on their hard drives or under their mattresses, a legal hiccup that the companies fear could slow the shift to cloud-based services unless the law is changed to be more privacy-protective.

Members of the so-called Digital Due Process coalition include Apple, Amazon.com, Americans for Tax Reform, AT&T, the Center for Democracy and Technology, eBay, Google, Facebook, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, TechFreedom, and Twitter. (CNET was the first to report on the coalition's creation.)

Leahy, a former prosecutor, has a mixed record on privacy. He criticized the FBI's efforts to require Internet providers to build in backdoors for law enforcement access, and introduced a bill in the 1990s protecting Americans' right to use whatever encryption products they wanted.

But he also authored the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which is now looming over Web companies, as well as the reviled Protect IP Act. An article in The New Republic concluded Leahy's work on the Patriot Act "appears to have made the bill less protective of civil liberties." Leahy had introduced significant portions of the Patriot Act under the name Enhancement of Privacy and Public Safety in Cyberspace Act (PDF) a year earlier.

One obvious option for the Digital Due Process coalition is the simplest: if Leahy's committee proves to be an insurmountable roadblock in the Senate, try the courts instead.

Judges already have been wrestling with how to apply the Fourth Amendment to an always-on, always-connected society. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police needed a search warrant for GPS tracking of vehicles. Some courts have ruled that warrantless tracking of Americans' cell phones, another coalition concern, is unconstitutional.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies already must obtain warrants for e-mail in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, thanks to a ruling by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2010.

Two Threats to Survival Preppers

I have talked to over a dozen people since Obama was re-elected about what that means to Survival Preppers. It seems many are now concerned that without the need or chance to be re-elected second Obama administration can implement not only economic regulations that will hurt preppers but the Government is in position to implement changes to our second amendment freedoms as well as our very liberty.

Some of these people I have talked to cannot articulate what they are concerned about other than gun control. They have some vision of impending economic doom,.... and as middle of the road as I am, I can't say that they are completly mistaken.

I think besides the chance of an economic collapse being greater with a continuation of the the fiscal policies of the last four years, the real two possible threats to preppers are the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the United Nations Small Arms Treaty.

National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)

The NDAA authorizes the military to: 1) detainment of persons captured within the United States of America without charge or trial, 2) prosecute said persons through military tribunals for persons captured within the United States 3) the transfer of persons captured within the United States of America to foreign nations (foreign jurisdictions).

Of course this is in violation of the Constitution of the United States of America. But the Government's point is to trust them, they will be very select in using the provisions of the NDAA on American citizens. In fact Senator Carl Levin stated on the floor of the Senate that the NDAA did not pertain to citizens of the U.S. But not we now know that the Office of the President of the United States, requested that such restriction be removed from the 2012 NDAA.

What is more troubling is that the NDAA passed the Senate. An amendment from Senator Udall to forbid the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, was was rejected by a vote of 38–60, along party lines.

What this means is that most of the 4th, 5th and 6th amendment rights that U.S. citizens have enjoyed for a couple hundred years now can be taken away by the U.S Government, presumably the Justice Department, using military assets which are free of restrictions of statutory authority that Federal Law Enforcement agencies have. Potential loses of these rights:

The right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures (4th Amendment);
The right to be free from charge for an infamous or capitol crime until presentment or indictment by a Grand Jury (5th Amendment;
The right to be free from deprivation of life, liberty, or property, without Due Process of law (5th Amendment);
The right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of our peers in the State or District where the alleged crime shall have been committed (6th Amendment);
The right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation and to confront witnesses (6th Amendment);
The right to Legal Counsel (6th Amendment; and even the right to be free from excessive bail and fines, and cruel and unusual punishment with comes from the 8th Amendment;

The threat here is possible and becomes real if the Government continues to lump survival preppers into anti-government threats groups like the right wing militas and anarchists, like they have with various "intelligence reports" from Department of Homeland Security.

UN Arms Treaty,..and It Will Happen

I previously wrote about this back in August - that post is here.

If you think that a conservative House of Representatives would not allow this happen, you are both right and wroing. If it was in the power of the House it would not happen, but the House is not a player in approval/disapproval of this treaty.  Let me write that again"  It does not matter what Congress wants or does not want - this power is in the President's hands.

If two thirds of the U.N. main body (general membership - not the security council) votes for this treaty, then this treaty becomes defacto law for at least four years unless rejected by the President or the Senate. If this treaty goes into effect it will have the effect of a Constitutional Amendment. Let me say that again,....If this treaty goes into effect it will have the effect of a Constitutional Amendment superceding the 2nd Amendment. The Supreme Court precedence is that International Treaties, that the U.S. is a signature to, trumps U.S. Law. And again, the U.S. will be de facto signatures unless either the President or the Senate reject it.

And speaking of the Senate,....figure the odds on a newly re-elected Barack Obama rejecting this Treaty. Figure the odds on Senator Harry Reid even allowing a vote on this in the Senate. And what is scary is that only a reported 51 Senators, prior to the last election, were against the original treaty. The new Senate will have even more Senators supporting this treaty. The treaty would require nations to register guns and their owners.

Certain types of guns will be outlawed. And the subsequent U.S. Government performance in the treaty provisions will most assuredly require no notice inspections of those people considered to own "arsenals".

The threat here is probably that the UN Arms Treaty will effect gun onwers and since Survival preppers are indivudually responsible for their own security, the ability to own guns and buy ammuniton will certainly be adversely effected by the UN Arms Treaty.

This threat is probable and becomes real if the Government decides to enact compliance with the teay by going after the Survival community because we are open, easy and law abdiing targets,...read "easy targets" to score some initial victories in removing the "excessive guns threats". And since Preppers are preparing to survive a sceanrio where there is not government, we could be seen as "anarchists planning for no government".

Very scary times my friends.

For more information, I suggest going to the excellent Town Hall article on the UN Arms Treaty