Arming the Neighborhood: What's YOUR plan?

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SharpsDressedMan

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Over the years, I have had friends and relatives jokingly say that when times get tough, REALLY TOUGH, they are going to come to my house, because I have guns and load my own ammo. They seem to think that I am preparing for THEIR defense. I always laugh right back, and say "What are you bringing with you (when you come)?" I have sacrificed a lot of other things to have a well stocked battery of guns and accessories, ammo, etc, for each, to be prepared for "whatever". I do not feel a social obilgation to arm my neighbors, or certain factions of my family in such times. I may barter or trade ammo, and maybe even guns, to get what I need, but during an emergency is not the time to be giving it all away. Anyone else suffer from people who otherwise act oblivious to preparedeness planning, and think you are going to "provide" for them?
 
Family, (for the most part), is an obligation. Neighbors on the other hand are not necessarily so. There are those that we collectively watch over and help/take care of things for. There are others,..well,..it's be suffucuent to say that they would be no more welcomed than any other trespasser/looter if it ever came right down to it.
 
I have a FIL who has a preparedness mindset, but has way more money than sense. His gun collection puts most local gun shops to shame, but he probably hasn't fired 90% of the guns he owns. He has stocked up on ammunition, by the pallet, but only owns 1 or 2 magazines per firearm. This is a guy who has about a dozen AR's in his main gun safe, but didn't know where a single AR magazine was in his house. I had to explain to him why an AR-10 and a FAL magazine wouldn't work in his .223 ARs.

That being said, his teenage children all have their own rifles, and are pretty good shots with a Mini-14.

He otherwise has a good setup, semi-secluded house on a good plot of land, generators, large stocks of food, etc. We have an agreement that if the feces ever hits the rotary oscillator, that he will supply the resources and I will supply the knowledge base and organization.
 
Prepare for yourself and for the ones you love. If the neighbors don't prepare for themselves then that's their problem, it's not my responsability.
 
SHTF and EOTWAWKI aside, I bought a H&R Handi-Rifle to have on hand as a loaner. After hearing that my next door neighbor was a bird hunter, I told him that if he ever wanted to go elk hunting, just let me know. He showed interest, but replied that he didn't own a rifle. Therefore, I bought a $200 rifle, scoped it with a Nikon Buckmasters tube, and it sits waiting for someone to use it (well, not exactly). I also acquired an interchangeable .30-30 barrel with open sights, and decided that my kids will find it useful when they want to come hunting with me. The thing is, it is so light and handy, I've taken it elk hunting myself, and I'll do it again this Saturday. Neat little rifle, and it's already taken an elk!! My nicer rifles will again stay in the safe this rifle season.

I know that's not technically "Arming the Neighborhood", but I couldn't avoid a good, solid reason to buy another rifle.:)
 
2 of my neighbors and i have laid out interlocking fields of fire and safe words. the retired gunny scares even me i shudder to think what he might trot outa his basement with if things get ugly. the third neighbor we call him cannon fodder hes a wait for the gov to save me kinda guy
 
I'm with ArmedBear. I think most of my neighbors are in good shape without my help.

Tuckerdog1
 
Yep. They all laugh and joke when I'm running around preparing for a hurricane. But there have been 3 or 4 times we went without power for more than 3 or 4 days. Guess who they come see when they are hungry and stinky?

My job entails many aspects of disaster preparedness. From what I have seen when dealing with personal preparedness, data integrity for computer systems, government disaster planning or whatever big or small plan you are dealing with; you are a nut job for over-preparing yourself or a fool because you missed something that everyone else will say was a glaring oversight when the situation is inevitably “Monday morning quarterback”ed. I see it in the news and I’ve seen it in these forums. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a disaster situation where someone says “Hey, so-and-so or so-and-so-government-agency did a top notch job with this disaster plan!” You either over prepare or under prepare. That may be the nature of the beast with disaster planning?


In regards to arming my neighbors...in a word, no. Not happening if they are strangers. If it is truly a SHTF deal, I'm looking out for my family first. If I can spare an sks or two and some ammo...maybe, but only if I feel that they won't end up shooting me by mistake. Food, meds and rations would probably be the most valuable commodities IMHO, anyway. Doesn't matter to me, though. My neighbors are (rational) family on one side. My other neighbor is better armed than me.
 
I have similar neighbors and friends. One friend hopes that I'll drop by his house before his daughter goes out on her first date. He's a pacifist and hopes a small dose of me will go a long way with his daughter's dates. :lol:

I also have an anti-gun neighbor who has asked if I woud shoot anyone trying to enter their home or molest their daughter. I told her "no" - especially if the perp is trying to enter their home through their daughter's bedroom window (on the front of the house) as the girl might be in the line of fire. That, of course, had never occured to the mother.

Not sure what I'll do if they come knocking on my door when/if something like rioting/looting/etc. ever breaks out.
 
Sunday morning at 7:00 I was headed down the sidewalk to 7-11 and I found a new holster for a Springfield XD on the sidewalk in front of my house.

After a little asking around - and searching under the cars on the street for the pistol - the guy next door was happy to get it back. He'd sold the gun to his nephew and bought a Colt Government model - blue - on his way home.

The next house over is owned by a duck hunter. :)

The raving liberal college professor across the street can throw all of her published and unpublished textbooks at the bad guys for all I care. She can beat on them with the old Obama yard signs too.
 
I get the same joke from a couple co-workers, who claim that their SHTF plan is to come to my house.... :confused:

Thanks a lot.... am I supposed to feed you to?

But as I ponder what might be the likeliest "civil unrest" scenarios, I can't see an army of one as being much of a force to be reckoned with.

There is definitely strength in numbers, and a "social network" of a dozen reliable chaps could set up a rotation and provide significant coverage with pretty minimal kit.

I don't know about you, but I don't have my extended family living all around me and though I have good friends, they don't live close by. I wish my brother lived next door, but he doesn't, so I try to be on good terms with all of the people on the block.

There is a clique of four households who are all either related or "homies" and if the worst situation came to pass, I would try to hook up with them to set up a neighborhood watch.

Yet setting all such contingencies aside. I'm convinced that the real issues are going to be fuel storage, access to cash (or something of monetary value useful in trade) and the ability to produce at least a subsistence level of food.
 
The raving liberal college professor across the street can throw all of her published and unpublished textbooks at the bad guys for all I care.
Click to expand...

I have a co-worker (liberal, partially anti-gun) who recently got lucky with a home invasion...sort of. Long story short, the perp left when his wife was screaming into the phone from a locked bedroom. All sorts of alarms and red flags with their previous "planning," but the long and short of it was that their plan failed and they (thankfully) got lucky.

This guy started asking questions about classes. He's had previous training in the air force and has a legal background, so he's well aware of how to use the weapon he was trained on and when he could use it. I'd let him borrow my revolver similar to what he is used to in a heartbeat until his 3 day wait is up if he wanted. So maybe I would arm my neighbors?
 
Over the years, I have had friends and relatives jokingly say that when times get tough, REALLY TOUGH, they are going to come to my house, because I have guns and load my own ammo. They seem to think that I am preparing for THEIR defense. I always laugh right back, and say "What are you bringing with you (when you come)?" I have sacrificed a lot of other things to have a well stocked battery of guns and accessories, ammo, etc, for each, to be prepared for "whatever". I do not feel a social obilgation to arm my neighbors, or certain factions of my family in such times. I may barter or trade ammo, and maybe even guns, to get what I need, but during an emergency is not the time to be giving it all away. Anyone else suffer from people who otherwise act oblivious to preparedeness planning, and think you are going to "provide" for them?
Click to expand...

And yet, as a Nation, this is exactly what we (as taxpayers) do. Folks that live in California or New Orleans or other places where natural disasters frequently hit, for instance, live the highlife at the expense of folks that live in less desirable yet more stable places of the country.... Everytime we spend FEMA dollars to fix someplace where it is foreseeable that there are regular natural disasters I cannot help think of the inequity involved... Yet when Tennessee was hit with the worst flood in a 100 years in 2010, costing hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in damages, no federal emergency was declared! :cuss: I think the policy ought to be - take care of yourself! If you chose to live someplace below sealevel on the coast, and you are flooded, well next time you'll learn! Any other system of, once again, handouts, ultimately leads to inequity.

The same is true with guns and ammo... Others spend their money on luxuries while the good folks here spend on guns, ammo, and training. Yet if there were a disaster, you'd naturally be looked upon to surrender yours for the common good.

To answer the OPs question, I think a handful of inexpensive Mosin Nagants and a few boxes of ammo would do well to help arm the neighbors who could pull guard duty on your neighborhood block. I would envision some overwatch positions from hardened 2nd floor windows with Mosin Nagants along with a few 'gatekeepers' with 12 gauge mossbergs. However, these would not be handouts. Folks would either trade significantly or work significantly... and you'd better believe the price of a Mosin would be much greater in an crisis than $90! :D
 
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My mom grows vegetables and cans them, has tons of meat in the freezer, lives on 90 acres in the middle of nowhere and is surrounded by gun-toting hunting neighbors who all love her and would defend her themselves.

And most of my guns are there. SHTF, that's where I'm headed.
 
Fortunately, for me, I live across the river from D.C. so when the mushroom cloud goes up I'll have been vaporized along with my collection of arms and my entire neighborhood for that matter. It'll all be for the best anyways, the neighborhood leans the direction that most of the politicians across the river do.......

In the event the "event" happens to be something a bit more survivable, there is one neighbor I can trust. He's got two gunsafes in his living room and ammo stacked high. The rest of them better bring something to contribute.....
 
I don't know most of my neighbors. I don't particularly like most of the ones that I do know. I'm not arming any of them.

R
 
Would not be arming the neighborhood. Would be glad to help defend them while they work to provide for US! They can provide labor while I provide defense. But I will not be giving them weapons.
 
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