The oth­er night at din­ner we got talk­ing about ammu­ni­tion caches… We dis­cussed at a high leve what we thought every­one should have (per­son­al­ly speak­ing, of course).  One of the guys brought up JWR’s guide to ammo stor­age.  As you may or may not know, I think JWR, is a gear nut and that he is a lit­tle over the top about many things.  Don’t get me wrong, JWR is the defac­to resource for many sur­vival­ists and prep­pers, how­ev­er, I think, and it is his choice to be a gear heavy guy.  Not a bad thing, it is also a busi­ness for him… I have a ton of respect for him, his blog, and his busi­ness.  Hell, he was one of the first resources online I found when I start­ed prep­ping… 

How­ev­er, with his ammo sug­ges­tions I actu­al­ly think he is light on the bat­tle rifle and oth­er options.  I think that 2000 rounds is not enough.  I think it should be in the 3000 — 5000 rounds, per­son­al­ly.… Here are my per­son­al mods to that list:

By Cat­e­go­ry:
  • Bat­tle Rifle: 2500 — 5000 rds per
  • See above, but between hav­ing the ammo stor­age, tar­get prac­tice, tac­ti­cal sce­nario drills, etc. 2000 rounds just is not
  • enough.  It is easy to blow through 500 — 1000 rounds in a day depend­ing on the type of train­ing you are under­tak­ing…
  • Hunt­ing Rifle: 500 rds per
  • You real­ly do not need this much unless you are hunt­ing almost once a week for game, and if that is the case you will need to trav­el for your hunt­ing as there WILL be oth­ers in your region doing the same.  You are bet­ter off hunt­ing small­er game than going for deer, bear, etc. and your .22 is a bet­ter gun for this and more eco­nom­i­cal)  500 rounds should last you years since most hunters that hunt dur­ing deer sea­son alone, will only go through 10 — 50 rounds sight­ing in their rifle and tak­ing a deer or two for the whole sea­son).
  • Pri­ma­ry Hand­gun: 800 rds per
  • Min­i­mum… I say at least 1000 — 1500 rounds.  Ever go to the range and blow through 3 or 4 box­es of ammo for your pri­ma­ry, come home and weeks lat­er ask your­self where the ammo went and curse your­self because you did­n’t buy more?  I used to do it all the time…
  • .22 Rim­fire: 2000 rds per 
  • 2500 — 5000 rounds min­i­mum.  First, it is inex­pen­sive  enough, sec­ond, you can shoot it all day for prac­tice instead of your bat­tle rifle and save a bun­dle if you are doing a run & gun, at the range or plink­ing alu­minum cans in the woods with your bud­dy… Sec­ond, 1000 rounds of .22 can go in your back­pack with some weight gain; but guess what, you are now hold­ing 1000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion with you for var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions… With a bat­tle rifle most peo­ple will car­ry what they can car­ry in their mag­a­zines, and a few mor box­es, before it gets too heavy… 
  • Riot Gun: 500 rds per
  • This one I think is sub­jec­tive, because there are only spe­cif­ic times most peo­ple are going to use a shot­gun.  I hap­pen to think a shot­gun is a good weapon to own, how­ev­er, even though it is scat­ter shot, you should still prac­tice with it when you can… Maybe 750 — 1000 rounds here.
I bulk up the ammo require­ments pri­mar­i­ly because in a SHTF or TEOTWAWKI sit­u­a­tion may not have gun shops open and you may lit­er­al­ly need to raid your own ammo store and hav­ing a lit­tle more to put you at a “JWR nor­mal stor­age lev­el” after use/practice is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing.  Not nec­es­sar­i­ly for “bat­tle” but pri­mar­i­ly for tar­get shoot­ing, etc.  Ever teach some­one how to shoot?  Did you bring your own ammo?  If you have, you know that you go through a lot of ammo, just teach­ing them how to prop­er­ly aim.  When they start to get bet­ter, they will use as much as much ammo as you do when tar­get prac­tic­ing.  Think of ammu­ni­tion as food preps.  Add anoth­er per­son and your preps are cut expo­nen­tial­ly.  Ammo is a con­sum­able like food, and I feel should be treat­ed as such.  
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