Survival and Emergency Preparedness

We all like to discuss skillsets, but none of us practice all our skills as much as we'd like.
Since early 2020, like many shooters, I've leaned heavily into rimfire shooting. It was a cheaper way to continue running and attending matches without breaking the bank when 9mm was hitting $500/case or more. It's also insanely fun. Rimfire can be an absolute blast for many different types of competition. I don't regret it at all.
However, I want to be completely honest about how it effects other shooting skills. For some, like precision or carbine, the difference is minimal. A rimfire can be a fantastic training aid because the little bit of extra recoil doesn't make much difference in a heavy precision gun going up to 6.5creed or similar. In the carbine, the standard AR is a pretty mild rifle anyway so the 22AR works great to keep those skills sharp.
Where the big difference becomes very apparent is in handguns. A TX22 can mimic a centerfire gun in many ways, but it can't simulate that recoil. I know that most of our full-size 9mms aren't known for stout recoil, but compared to rimfire, it is a world apart.
I just started getting my G17 out of mothballs recently. I shot it once a month ago and again last night. This gun has around 75,000rds through it and I am as intimately familiar with it as you can be to a gun. The sense of unfamiliarity I got when using it again was a little disturbing. It's like putting on your favorite jeans and realizing you gained a few lbs. It's still my good old G17, it just feels slightly off. My draw, sight acquisition, and reloads are all a tick off where they should be. I'd say around 10% slower and/or sloppier. It still shoots well, but I'll have to strop my edge a bit to get back to razor sharp.
My point is, get your real guns out on a semi-regular basis to keep your defensive skills sharp. The lower your initial skill level, the more and faster it will degrade.

Isn't that the truth. I went from shooting 2-3 times a month to twice last year and once so far this year.

I can tell a difference from monthly shooting to twice a year shooting. The lack of primers has been what has slowed me down so much.

You know? Going out with my carry gun this weekend! Thanks for the reminder.

Skill degradation comments.

Time flies. Skills and equipment deteriorate, just like youthful energy. The family has a company. The individual who prepares the tax returns did not do them. It required me to make two 500 mile round trips. I also had to buy software and will replicate some company files within the next two weeks. And, when I was younger, I was widowed and worked fulltime and parented for two.

So how do you deal with degradation. Suggestions follow:
1. Carve out the time to execute an estate plan that includes a durable health care power, intervivos trust and a will. If you have Turbotax, you already know that there is no charge until you finalize the tax returns. Legalzoom.com does the same approach with an intervivos trust and a will.

I witnessed 76 years of people not doing an estate plan. They hurt their families very badly.

2. Copy manuals and/or videos for all of your equipment. I can't remember anything about my ham gear purchased 40 years ago or the family radios purchased 20 years ago. Practicing would be useless. I do the same thing for appliances.

3. In the US infantry, you should have learned to keep things in good repair or throw them out. I don't have clothes that do not fit. I do not have shoes that do not fit. If the stained items can't be cleaned, they are history. Same applies to your equipment. Look at the radios, the guns, the knives, the batteries. Fix, give away or throw out the stuff that doesn't work.

A local boy scout leader kept the frames of two sports cars he was going to rebuild some day in his garage. Nothing else. After 20 years of doing nothing with them, he moved.
My dad had not done stained glass windows for the church in 20 years. There were the bits and pieces. The dishwasher was never fully put back into the cutout in the kitchen because he wasn't going to hire a plumber.
The more stuff you get rid of, the more space you have to practice skills and enjoy life.

4. I am physically deteriorating. Hurt myself enough last night that I am missing an Argentine tango lesson tonight. I take the blood pressure, oxygen saturation level, and a ekg reading every day. Those damn things have to be remembered and notes taken every day. That is a chunk of time. I didn't do it in my 20s.

The chances are that I will die from a medical condition long before I experience a home invasion or a mugging. So you have to set priorities.

It is way more fun to go shooting or a watch a football game than to contemplate that you will need a guardian, have to do a power or attorney or deal with your demise.

I did the last revision of my estate plan in 2019. The relative with stage 4 lung cancer will never find the energy to redo his plan.

In my state, when you die, with or without a will, the car, the house, etc go through probate. The court filing fee is not the same for everyone. It based upon the size of your estate. a lawyer must hired. When a house has to be sold, the process is long, drawn out, subject to overbids and expensive. You always do a will even if you do a trust. The house in the trust, the boat in the trust, the car in the trust don't go to probate. You don't pay a court fee, hire a lawyer, and go through a long, arduous court proceeding to sell a house.

The girl friend of my best friend has some serious medical condition. They appeared at my house as they going off for a three day weekend at a resort on the beach. She commented that she had an estate plan. I saw her a few months later. I gave her a week to live. Her kids were not helping her. Her boyfriend was a CPA. He learned she had no will, no trust, owned a house and car. He also learned that if she had read the company material, she got nothing if she died. However, if she retired, she received $100.000. The will, trust and retirement were handled in three days.

This story is repeated every day in probably every country and parish in the US. If you don't act now when you are relatively healthy, you certainly aren't going to be able to do anything on your own on your deathbed.