29 September 2009

Down Dollar?

You'll remember this post from about a week ago.
This amateur investor still believes we are in for a serious economic correction.


More and more, I'm finding professionals that agree with me. (You'll have to close a couple ads when you click that link.)
Notice however that most of the "insurance" moves they recommend require you to deal through a broker, which means that broker will get a commission on every trade you make. If I have to choose securities, I still prefer no load mutual funds. But in the last week I've taken a considerable (in hand) position in precious metals, and I'm still buying and storing ammunition as I can find and afford it...
Bought a couple boxes of shells... 00 buck and #2 shot for the new Remington 870 shotgun!

I still hope this is just near-paranoia on my part.

4 comments:

jinksto said...

Why the #2?

Greybeard said...

I'm no shotgun expert Jinks, so I'm consulting with and taking advice from a guy who knows more about such things than I do. Coincidentally, he bought an 870 exactly like mine recently. He's a little disappointed by the tightness of the shot grouping coming out of that long barrel. The length of the magazine on the "tactical express" precludes you from sawing the barrel much. He seems to think #2 might have a slightly better spread, so I bought a box to do a little experimenting myself.

ASM826 said...

I'm not sure if it's paranoia, but what ever it is, it's not just on your part. There's got to be millions of people stockpiling, food, ammo, barter goods, etc.

jinksto said...

That makes sense.

A lot of folks use the "light load", "heavy load" method of loading a home defense gun because they've heard that police do it. The idea is that you use the first round to get the bad guys attention and the second to take him down if required.

I'm the opposite (because I'm not a cop). If it comes to the point of me having to shoot someone in self defense I want maximum killing power in every round so load it to the gills with 00.

The pattern is most affected by the choke though. Most shotguns are either Improved Cylinder or Full choke as those are the ones most commonly used for hunting. The choke type will be stamped on the barrel somewhere. Most guns today come with interchangeable chokes but I don't think that the 870 does stock (no pun there). If yours does try replacing it with a more open choke. Personally I use a Skeet choke which is about as wide as you can get. The most common (from largest to smallest) are Cylinder (or no choke), Skeet, Improved Cylinder, Modified and Full. I'm sure you can order a second barrel for the 870 that has an Improved Cylinder or even a Skeet choke so you might want to look into that. I've never been big on sawing guns but if you decide to do that remember that you gain the most in the last three or four inches of the barrel where the choke is. After that you gain marginal improvement by making it shorter.

That said, the larger your pattern the fewer pellets you're likely to get on target but that's not really relevant until you get out to about 20 yards which is a LONG way indoors. At 10 yards (about as far as your likely to shoot indoors) I get about a 9 inch pattern with 00 and Skeet choke. That's plenty.

As a mentor and dear friend used to say, "It's a scattergun boy... make it scatter".