As COVID-19 continues to spread, millions of new firearm owners have made a key step in protecting their families. Owning a firearm is a vital step in securing your family’s safety in troubled times like this. While many would like to pretend this act alone makes you and your family less safe, that’s not true by any stretch of the imagination.
However, owning a gun isn’t the only step one should take to protect their families.
I know, I know. I’m saying this on a site titled Bearing Arms and all that, but hear me out.
Guns are an important part of a security strategy. In the absolutely worst times possible, guns are the tools that help you keep what is yours and protect what matters the most. They’re absolutely vital.
But what about food security?
Look, if you’ve stepped foot in a grocery store in the past few weeks, you’ve no doubt seen empty shelves aplenty. I documented some in one of my local stores a couple of weeks back. I can’t speak about stores in your area, but in mine, they’re still not back up to fully stocked.
That’s because of the way our food supply is handled. Stores use “just in time” delivery to top off their quantities. This method doesn’t do particularly well with spikes in demand such as when a hurricane is about to make landfall, but as soon as the panic-buying subsides, they eventually replenish their supplies. It works well enough under normal conditions.
COVID-19 is not a normal condition.
Instead, we had an initial surge of panic-buying–particularly toilet paper for some reason, but not relegated to just paper products–in the midst of an emergency, which we were used to. The problem was that the emergency in question isn’t over. As a result, people, people are still panic-buying. This is made worse because the shelves are empty of so many things. People snag more than they probably need out of fear it won’t be there next week. “There are only 10 cans of green beans and no Lima beans. I better grab all 10 because they might not be here later.”
Most of us are kind of spoiled. We’re used to buying what we want when we want.
I mean, sure, the grocery store will run out of your favorite cake mix or something, but it’ll be back in a few days later. We don’t worry about it.
That’s not what we’re facing now, though, and there’s no reason to believe that’s going to change anytime soon either.
Because our food supply is so vulnerable, though, it’s time to start taking steps to secure your food supply. Assuming, of course, you haven’t already. Yes, the preppers are looking at us, as the smile (or laugh) because they’ve been saying this for years. They were right all that time, too. The problem is, at least for me, was that it was easy when cash got tight to skip buying some bits of food we already had on hand. We should have cut elsewhere.
But now’s not the time for woulda shoulda coulda.
Now’s the time to find solutions.
Luckily, you can still buy food in the stores. It may not be the brand you want or you might have to wait a bit for a particular item, but it is possible to get food. The easiest method is to just buy a bit more than you need for a week, if at all possible. If your family goes through four cans of beans, buy six or eight. Not enough to add to the problem, but a chance to put another week or so worth of food away.
Do that with a few items each week and you’ll have multiplied your food supply surprisingly quickly. That can come in handy if the shelves become even barer than they are now.
Another option, one I’m working on now, is to plant a vegetable garden. Depending on where you live, your growing season my vary, but here in South Georgia, we have a very long growing season. We can have things growing from February all the way to November, so a 10-month season. If we’re careful, we can keep fresh food coming for most of the year.
Plus, in a lot of places, your Lowe’s or Home Depot (or similar store) may be deemed essential businesses, so you can still swing by there and get some supplies you may be lacking. That includes seeds, though I’m not going that route. No, I’m looking at heirloom seeds so I can, hopefully, save some from that for the next year. That way I’m not dependent on yet another food supply.
At least, that’s the theory.
Look, food storage is a topic that goes beyond what I can write in a single blog post. Besides, that, there are those who know far, far better than me what to do on this. Luckily, Google and Duck, Duck, Go still work just fine during this emergency, so read up. Learn. Act.
Protecting your family matters, but a gun alone won’t protect them from some of the potential nastiness ahead. Secure your food supply as well, if at all possible. Your family may not thank you, but you’ll thank yourself if it’s ever needed.
