Buy Now and Be Prepared

Due to the Covid-19 national emergency, much of what we consider normal has been shut down. To different degrees, we are being asked to make sacrifices, some of which are constitutionally infringing. Freedom of social interaction with those outside of our family, freedom of travel and abstaining from daily activities. For many of us, the freedom to work at a particular job has been compromised. If it isn’t deemed essential, it’s gets shut down. And the anti-gun community has tried to lump gun stores among “non-essential” businesses.

Consider the Aesop’s Fable, “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” where a hungry grasshopper begs for food from an ant when winter comes and is refused. The grasshopper frolicked while enjoyed a seemingly endless utopia, while the ant prepared for possible hard times ahead.

As a trainer, competitive shooter and firearms industry professional, I can go through a lot of ammunition. My season is short in Ohio, but during the months we can comfortably shoot, I shoot often. To me, firearms ownership is more than a job; it’s the ability to defend myself, family and friends. It’s the ability to hunt and create food. It’s a potentially life-saving skill, a force multiplier; an equalizer.

Prices on guns and ammunition have been low since the election of President Donald Trump. There have been so many deals, that it’s been hard not to buy in bulk. I shared these observations with all the grasshoppers I knew. Repeatedly, most acknowledged the great deals, but many let the opportunities to prepare slip by as if low prices would still exist when they time came that they needed to buy them.

The ant in me knows what guns I should have in my toolbox as opposed to the ones I want to collect. I do not really believe that we will ever need to take up arms due to civil unrest or to oppose a tyrannical government in the United States, but I know either can happen. The Boy Scout in me remembers the motto, “Be Prepared.”

I can honestly say that I have lived the ant life since President’s Trump election. It wasn’t about what I needed, but rather what I might need. It wasn’t putting myself in debt for a premonition to buy all that I could afford, but I made purchases knowing that someday, whether by inflation or election, prices would inevitably go up again. Today, America’s rifle, AR-15-pattern variants have never cost less inside the last 30 years. The time to buy is now if you haven’t already.

As some local municipalities shut down their gun stores, the story of “The Ant and the Grasshopper” comes to mind. Some people I know realize that their failure to prepare has constituted an emergency on their part. It’s no longer the utopia the grasshopper believed it was, and for us purchasing guns and ammunition is not just for sport.

A failure to prepare on your part, does not constitute an emergency on my part. On Saturday, March 28, 2020, the Department of Homeland Security issued an advisory declaring gun shops among the list of essential businesses. It’s still not too late to avoid becoming the grasshopper.