1000 rounds in the basement ain't squat

To a non-shooter or even a semi-casual shooter 1000 rounds sounds like an awful lot of ammunition the have kicking around the house but it really isn't.

You would be surprised how fast an active shooter goes through the stuff. During one season alone I shot over 4500 rounds for score and a lot more than that for practice, it probably totaled well over 12,000 if you added it all up. If I recall I used up well over 80 pounds of powder that year.

While that sounds like a lot of ammunition,it really isn't. Pistol shooters go through a lot more than that to stay in top form. I heard one active shooter what said he had gone through 20,000 rounds last year that the top contenders run through 20 to 50,000+ rounds a year.

Rifle and pistol shooting are legitimate sports and there are a number of people that engage in them regularly. 
Most serious shooters handload their own to both get tailor made rounds and to save money, although components have gone up in price a shooter can still save a bundle if they load their own.

I bring this up because recently a visitor asked what was in a couple of ammo cans I had in my garage. He marveled that a person would have so much ammunition until I showed him my reloading bench and told him that what he was looking at were leftovers from when I was shooting service rifle competition.

Generally there were cases of the stuff stacked up and I think I had well over 5000 rounds stacked up at one time.

Often when I would get home from a match I'd simply store my rifle as I generally cleaned it at the range and reload what I had shot at the day's match. A match can run anywhere between 43 and well over hundred rounds and I'd have my reloading bench set up so as to go right to work.

Back when I was shooting .30 cal I'd just have to fill the powder drop and primer stick and have at it and it didn't take a whole lot of time to get caught up even though I was working with a single stage press.

I guess the reason I'm making this post is because there was a lawmaker that wanted to limit the personal ammunition a person had in his house to a small amount like under 500 rounds which is only a brick of .22 rimfire. A brick itself really isn't big at all. I can easily drop one into a pocket with room to spare.

Like a lot of lawmakers he has no clue as to what he is talking about and likely has never shot a rifle in his life and know nothing about the shooting sports.

A lot of lawmakers look at something they know nothing whatsoever about and instead of asking about things like my neighbor did, they panic and jump to conclusions and hurt people that have done no harm to anyone.

This doesn't just apply to things like ammunition. Lawmakers go charging into a lot of areas they don't have clue one about. They often try and regulate stuff like farm labor and try enact laws that interfere with something as sacred as a family farm by trying to tell farmers how old their kids have to be before they can help out on what is nothing more than a family operation and nobody else's business.

They have no clue as to how a family farm is run and no clue as to the family values they are charging in to legislate. There is really nothing wrong with a farmer getting his kids to pitch in and do a few chores around the farm, yet the idiots in congress will try to legislate things they have no knowledge of.

While I suppose there are legislators in office that should simply be kicked to the curb, there are others that ought to be shipped off to a farm somewhere and spend a couple of months busting their asses in the fields and seeing how things work before the make decisions that interfere with family values and family run businesses. 

I suppose that isn't too likely to happen anytime soon but it would gladden my heart to see a senator with his head in a bandage stammering and stuttering about how he was only trying to get a drink of milk and the cow kicked him.

Maybe the cow would kick some sense into him.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html