AR Pistol Build Part 2

I finally had a chance to sit down and write the final part to the AR pistol build. Some things have changed with the law since Part 1 was released.

Turning the Tables on an Active Shooter

I don’t need to list the most recent attacks on unarmed civilians that have taken place in the past year or even past month to get my point across. Violent attacks are clearly on the rise with attackers ranging from pissed off former employees to religious fanatics and everything in-between.

Building an AR pistol part 1

As I grow as a shooter I expect my firearms to grow with me. One of the beautiful things about the AR platform is that you can create anything from a 458 SOCOM moose exploding rifle to a 5.56 AR pistol all using the same exact components aside from some caliber specific upper parts.  Hell, you can even use the same lower receiver group and magazines for the .223, 5.56, 300blk, 25-45 sharps, and the 458 SOCOM!

Combative Pistol 1 with ORS

This is just a brief summary of the pistol course I took with ORS recently. I trained with Olmsted Risk Solutions about 8 months ago at the Defensive Preparedness Summit; you can read the summary of that here. This course was different in that the focus was on pistol employment in a day to day scenario.

I left my AR for an AK

WASR 10/63 in action

For the past 12 years I was a die hard AR fan boy, but was never a hater of the ultimate rival of my go to rifle. I just didn't pay any attention to it, similar to an annoying younger sibling. After some extensive research and peer pressure by Olmsted Risk Solutions I decided to go to the dark side

DIY Gun Painting for under $75.00

I decided to hop on the gun painting bandwagon and have my S&W M&P 15-22 painted a cool and functional pattern, until I saw the price tag. For what some of these companies charge for a paint job, I could buy an entirely new gun. In addition, the durability of some of these coats is highly

Trading Tradition for Function

1911 on bottom was traded for the AK

I recently traded my S&W 1911 for a Yugo M-70 AK-47. Some of you may believe I made a good move and some of you are considering tracking me down and kicking my ass. I debated doing this trade for quite some time and took quite an emotional beating from a good friend of mine when I told him I made the trade. Putting aside bias towards a certain platform and nostalgia for a tried and true piece of Americana, this was a smart move on my part.

Bugout Bag = Get Home Bag

As a self-proclaimed minimalist when it comes to all things prepared I wanted to give my 2 cents on the Bugout Bag and the Get Home Bag.

These two items seems to have quite the debate on what the contents should be and the more pushy types on the forums tend to be of the mind that if you don’t use the same designer bag as them that you are woefully under-prepared.

Are Preppers actually Prepared?

Jungle Run at the Big Run Ranch 

When thinking of a prepper, most often we picture a person who has some sort of room in which they store massive quantities of supplies such as food, water, methods of self-defense and tools for hunting. They may have some limited training on survival or bush-craft and hopefully can properly utilize the firearms they spent all that hard earned money on. Ask a prepper what they are preparing for and they will mostly likely draw up some specific event or collapse of some kind. They may even go into their plans on how to survive it.

That sounds like a great plan right?

My week at the Big Run Ranch

I was fortunate to be invited to the Defensive Preparedness Summit hosted by ORS to share ideas and philosophies on defensive shooting tactics and wilderness survival in a practical application environment. The ranch facility is a sprawling hilly terrain which is perfect for anything ranging from shoot and move drills to shelter building and animal tracking.

People who believe in “Absolutes” have not been in enough danger.



Lance (right) and I



Greetings, I consider myself to be a lifelong student because I firmly believe that once you stop learning you have stopped growing and have ultimately started your decline towards death. I do a fair amount of networking through electronic means and the old fashioned hands on approach as well and what I have come to learn is that there is no such thing as an “Absolute”.

Is the “Warrior Mindset” dangerous?

I recently signed up for the Survival Summit from an email I received from the American Preppers Network. The lineup up blew me away and seemed to have some great learning opportunities for the full spectrum of the prepping and survival community. I found this summit to be an absolutely fantastic idea and I have so far learned a great deal of information that will be of great use for my future prepping endeavors. The one issue I had with this summit had nothing to do with the hosting site but with what their star host had to say.

Christmas Dinner-Apocalypse Style

How would Macgruber make his Christmas dinner? Get me a cardboard box, some tin foil, four empty cans and some wire! A situation may arise where you have no access to conventional methods of cooking your food and you have to be inventive and tactically sound. Eating raw or undercooked meat is a death sentence and during times of harsh realities you do not want to be letting nefarious characters or even wild animals know where you are and what you are having for dinner. Open fires and the smell of food being cooked is

Saiga 12 Afterthoughts

I purchased a Saiga 12 about a year ago and decided I would test it out in a variety of ways that I found suitable for my primary home defense shotgun. The Saiga 12 is one of the sexiest shotguns I have ever seen, unfortunately that is all I have to say about the Saiga in a positive manner. There is not much out there in the market for magazine fed shotguns and you have to wonder if it’s for good reason. Why would I need a 20 round drum weighing 10lbs in any scenario that is realistic? If you need that much shotgun ammo you should have grabbed your rifle. This shotgun on average weighs in at 8.5lbs. Throw a 10 round magazine that is about a foot long and weighing about 3lbs and you have one heavy ass gun.

How to choose your Doomsday arsenal and Range cards

Things to come to terms with when making a list of items for a long term survival; you WILL eventually run out of ammo, if you plan on hedging your survival solely on firearms make sure you stockpile extremely common guns in extremely common calibers. I suggest keeping the same calibers as the military and police such as 9mm, .45, and .223/5.56. If something were to go completely haywire, plenty of ammo and gun parts will be reasonably available. That being said, if you are a long term survival planner then you probably already have some form of back up weapon like a bow or edge weapon that you can use over and over again for years if need be. Remember, as long as trees have branches you have arrows.

Reasonable prepping items for the real world

Let’s be real here. Are you able to dig up your yard to pour a concrete bomb shelter or are you willing to give up your man cave for your heirloom seed repository and armory? Me neither. I try to evaluate what is reasonable for me in my living situation to be prepared for possible situations. I have set aside some space in my basement, pantry and a few other rooms, keeping certain things around in each area. I have about 500 heirloom seeds, keeping in mind the region I live to give me the capability to grow vegetables year round.

Diversity in your skills

When it comes to survival, being a jack of all trades but master of none could prove to be helpful to you. Would you rather know how to hunt but have no clue on how to sanitize water or not know which plants are safe to eat? Or would you end up like Christopher McCandless from the book “Into the wild”? If he trained for his surroundings prior to such a difficult journey he would probably still be living in an abandoned bus in Alaska.

Let’s talk guns

This is strictly from my point of view and obviously you do not have to have a gun or guns in a survival scenario but it would make a few key things quite simpler for you. I think long and hard about what I will have for protection and survival if something happens? I try to peer through a realistic lens when talking about these kinds of things, I know I will never have enough ammo or have every gun for every occasion, so I apply a simple approach to this, how can I be best suited for self-preservation with the smallest amount of crap to carry?

Drunk Ramblings Of An Idiot

It seems there is some sort of hysteria these days about these “Doomsday Scenarios” and the End of the World or Economic Collapse. People don’t want to die so they decide they want to know what sort of items to keep around them to be prepared for anything other than a sunny day, and it got me thinking that maybe I should try to put some on a different sort of spin onto which scenario most everybody assumes will happen, like thinking it's going to be complete chaos and people running around rampant in the streets like something out of a movie like Mad Max, or some weird zombie apocalypse, I feel none of those scenarios are accurate.
 If there were to be some sort of mass hysteria or zombie apocalypse or any sort of just boring old civil unrest it is not going to be crowds of people running through the streets screaming and lighting people on fire or suddenly feeling the need to just be mowing people down in their Prius while marveling how great the gas mileage is.

If I got a Facebook notification saying the world was having a catastrophic event what would I do?

1.      Like the status

2.      Change my undies

3.      Get to working on a plan to thrive

 I would actually assemble my so called “A-Team” established from people I know, who would be useful to me in dealing with an impending catastrophe. Would I need some liberal hipster who hates confrontation and has no actual skill? Hell no, let him and his skinny jeans fend for themselves.