Shooter Self Care

"First Aid for Shooters" by Ambulance Driver

This 4 hour class seems to have spawned from an intarweb comment thread:

Do you have a blow out kit in your shooting bag?  You Should!

With the logical follow on questions:

What should I have in my blow out kit?

 and

if you had one, would you know what to do with it?

I could not answer these questions in any favorable response.  So when this opportunity, A Blowout kit + 4 hours training for a very reasonable cost arose,  I jumped on it and signed up the entire SandCastleCrew.

This is BLS (Basic Life Support) with an eye for likely range accidents.  First Aid.  ABC:Airway, Breathing & Circulation.  AD covered these basics and what to do should one of these be compromised.  Good class and hopefully we learned some skills we'll never have to use in anger. But in the meantime, we are a little better prepared than we were at sunrise this AM.

If you can wrangle AD into a class within "convenient distance", whatever that means to you, jump on it!

And thanks to Brownells for covering the refreshments!

NRA AM day 1

1st day on the floor at NRA Annual Meeting.

Met up with old friends & met some new ones.  Spent the day walking the floor.  I'd thought I saw most of it, but reviewing the SCSon's photos, I've missed a couple spots.

The show floor is a mind-numbing array with yet another AR builder/AK shotty glock parts booth.

A couple things caught my eye though.  An AR builder with an eye to the 3-gun market offers ARs with anodized barrels.  Turns out they are just up the road from the SandCastle.  The colorful anodization helps to identify "your" gun in a rack of near-identical rifles.

I need a new forestock for a recently purchased shotgun because the holding screws are stripped.  The manufacturer would fix it under warranty but to do so will require sending it back to the factory and being without the shotty for several months.  In reality, just purchasing the part will be less than the price of one way shipping so I'd rather just buy the part and put on myself.  Talked to the good folks at Brownells and they suggest a reasonable course of action.

Med class Sat AM & more Sunday.

Negative rate of return

Well that's thoroughly depressing.  I just went to ssa.gov to see my estimated retirement benefits as well as contributions to date.   I have been working and paying into Social Security for some 30mumble years.

Lets assume I retire tomorrow so I am no longer contributing into the system even though I'm well short of retirement age. I'm fully 40 quarters vested.  Under the best case scenario and I wait until age 70 to start benefits and lived to 90,  I would get back less than 58 cents of every dollar I have contributed over my producing life.  I will have to live to 104 to break even.

Stand by while I consult the magic 8 ball.  "Not Optimistic"

But that's only half the story.  My employers have matched my contributions plus a little bit I don't understand.  That means given the total contributions by me and on my behalf, I will net ~28 cents for every dollar over the same time period.  I'll have to live to 141YO before I break even (again assuming the most optimistic scenario where I stop contributing today and start collection at age 70)

Re-consult magic 8 ball: NFW!!!

I've said for years, I would walk away from my all my SSA contributions todate if they would let me opt out. My calculations show the contributions I will likely  make more contributions in the next ten years that will exceed any withdrawals.  Another way of looking at this, writing off my past thirty+ years contributions + my employer's contributions.  Put my sole contributions into an account with my name at 0% interest,  I still come out ahead on day one!  Add in the employer contribution and I come out way ahead!

Now FedGov wants to sell me into MyRA?  See the negative rate of return shown above!  You have proven you can't manage my money.  Why would I trust you with my next dollar let alone everything
savedtaken over my working life?

I weep for the SCSon's generation.