They say (whoever it is that ‘they’ are) you should check the batteries in your smoke detectors every time daylight saving switches on or off. That is probably a good idea, but don’t just stop with checking the batteries in the smoke detectors.
We recommend you use these six monthly occurrences as a prompt to check some other things that, the same as smoke detectors, might make all the difference in an emergency between safely surviving and, well – let’s just say ‘not safely surviving’, shall we!
Here’s a check list of home and self-defense items to check over too.
1. Light bulbs
Check all your exterior and key interior lights and make sure the bulbs are all functioning correctly. If you have any lights that are essential to your home defense plan, consider swapping the bulbs for new ones every six months. Take the still working bulbs and use them, as needed, for other lights in less critical locations.
Most lights give no warning or indication of their pending failure, and while bulbs have an average life, they are a bit like people. Some keep working perfectly way beyond their promised lifespan, but others fail tragically early. This is as true of ‘long life’ bulbs as it is of regular bulbs.
Of course, if you have a ‘must work’ light somewhere, you should consider having a twin head to the light, with two lamps, so that you have built-in backup in the event either bulb fails.
Flashlight bulbs
If you have defensive flashlights – well, of course you do, right? For your defensive flashlights, make sure they do not have ‘old fashioned’ incandescent type bulbs, or even newer style Xenon or halogen or whatever. There is only one type of light source that is acceptable these days for defensive flashlights – LED lights. This is for two reasons.
First, they have a very long life indeed (think tens of thousands of hours). Second, they are very efficient – they use very little power to generate a huge amount of light. Third (a bonus reason!) they are small and don’t generate a massive amount of heat, allowing you the flexibility of much tinier flashlights that are easier to carry and operate.
2. Batteries
Don’t just check the batteries in your smoke detector. Check the batteries in any and all other things you might use for self/home defense purposes too. Of course, flashlight batteries are an obvious thing to check, and the rule of thumb is that you’ve always used more battery life than you think.
What other devices do you have with batteries in them? Go through all the gear in your emergency kits and make an inventory of what you have that is battery-powered.
Make sure that batteries are still at least six months away from their expiry date, that they haven’t started to swell or corrode/leak, and that they can fully power the device they are with.
If devices use rechargeable batteries, check that they are being correctly recharged, and also check that once you take the device off its always-on trickle charger, that the battery has reasonably good life. Batteries can sometimes fail over time, even if they are never used.
Perhaps under this category can also be considered your emergency power generator, if you have one. You should run this for 5 – 15 minutes or more every month or two or three, and definitely at least once every six months. And keep it with only a little fuel in it so you can burn through the fuel and replace it rather than end up with five-year old fuel that will not work and/or which will damage the generator when it is finally operated.
Make sure also that you can access and activate your generator in an emergency. If you have no power, and your generator is in your garage, how will you get it out of the garage (if the garage door won’t open electrically)?
3. Inventory of Supplies
You probably have various things as part of your emergency kits – in your cars, in your home, maybe at work, and take-along kits that you always keep with you.
Check each of these different emergency kits and make sure that they are full and everything is operational. Maintain anything with moving parts. Check expiry dates on other items – because you won’t be checking again for six months, make sure you’ve still got at least six months of validity in them.
Replenish anything that has been taken from the kits.
4. Guns
Field strip, clean and oil all your guns, whether you’ve fired them or not in the last six months. Even if they haven’t been touched, they may have gathered dust or in some other way now could benefit from a bit of TLC.
As part of this process, you’ll see if there are any problems with corrosion, or any other unexpected issues. Maybe you’ve had a moth lay eggs inside, or rodent infestations, or anything at all. You need to check your guns on a regular basis, at least six monthly.
This also means you are inventorying your guns, too, and confirming their locations and readiness states.
Part of inventorying your guns should also involve checking your logs for each gun and totaling up the rounds fired. Is it time for some gun-smithing? Do you need to give the gun an overhaul and get some springs replaced?
5. Ammo
You should inventory the ammunition you keep at home, and make sure you are properly rotating ammunition so that you are shooting the oldest stuff first. Don’t end up with a box/case in the back of everything that stays untouched and almost forgotten about, while you buy newer boxes of ammo, shoot them off, and replace them, on a regular basis.
This will also give you a feeling for what your supply levels are like. Is it time to check around for a bulk pricing deal on a large re-order?
Critical Defense Ammo
By this we mean the ammunition you keep loaded into your magazines and in your primary defense guns.
Although most modern ammunition has a long shelf life (five, ten, maybe even twenty or more years depending on how it is stored) the ammunition you keep loaded in your guns will have a much shorter life, while also needing to have the highest degree of reliability.
The ammunition that you carry is all the time being attacked by corrosive sweat, humidity, temperature changes, and, if in your gun, possibly by gun oil and other cleaners/lubricants too.
We suggest that every six months you shoot off the ammo that is always in your guns, and replace that with the ammo that are in your extra magazines (which will then get shot off in six months time too). That way the ammo in your gun never sits there for more than six months, and the other carry ammo spends probably six months being carried, then six months in the gun, before also being used up.
Shooting your ‘real’ defensive ammo is of course more expensive than your plinking ammunition, but needs to be done from time to time just to reassure yourself that it is still working perfectly, feeding perfectly, and to remind you of the different shooting experience you’ll get from shooting possibly hotter loads than you use for plinking and practice.
6. Magazines
No, not the things you buy at the bookstore to read. The things that hold your ammunition. 🙂
We generally recommend that you never load magazines all the way to maximum capacity. Single stack magazines should have one less than the maximum number of rounds, and double stack magazines two less.
This reduces the stress on the spring in the magazine, and also it seems that if a semi-auto is going to jam, it is most likely to do so when the magazine is completely full (also can jam when nearly empty). So by not filling your magazines all the way to the top, you give yourself a bit more reliability.
We recommend that every six months, you rotate your magazines. Empty out the ones you normally carry loaded, and fill up a matching set of spares. That way, your magazines and their springs get six months of duty followed by six months of recovery.
Yes, do the math. If you typically have a magazine in your semi-auto pistol and two extra magazines, that does mean you’ll need to have six magazines total. It is a small price to pay.
7. Range Visit
Several of the things you need to do every six months might involve shooting some ammo. Even if nothing causes you to ‘need’ to go shooting, when did you last spend some time at the range?
Skill at arms is a ‘perishable’ skill. While it is probably true that you never forget how to ride a bike, your skill at arms definitely drops off if you don’t practice it from time to time.
In truth, you should visit a range much more than once every six months. But if other things get in the way of spending an hour at the range on a regular basis, you’re far from the first person to mean to go to the range more often than you actually make it there. But do make it a high priority item to go at least twice a year – and this is as good a time trigger as any other.
This is even more true if you’ve never built up a basic mastery (is that an oxymoron – ‘basic mastery’) of your weapons in the first place. If you don’t instinctively know how to work your safety lever, if you can’t almost without thinking respond to and clear a jam, if you don’t always focus solely on the front sight, then you should invest more time to build your skills up to the point where they are more readily maintained.
8. Everything Else
What else is part of your home/car/personal defense gear? All sorts of things. Well, for sure, you have fire extinguishers in your home, right? Check those for pressure and expiry dates. Check the pressure in the spare tire in your car(s). If you keep spare cans of gas in the garage, even after treating them with fuel stabilizer, you need to use those up and replace them perhaps every six months.
If you keep a bulk supply of emergency drinking water, that needs to be flushed and replaced, perhaps also every six months. Frozen food and dry goods also has finite shelf life.
How about other things not so obviously related to defense? Emergency contact details, both your own that you’ve given to other people, and those of people you in turn want to be able to reach in an emergency. Are your present emergency routes – for example, to the nearest hospital – still correct?
If you have children, you may need to update details of their school contacts, their probable friends, and such things too.
You should consider also having a ‘family meeting’ to quickly go through the family plans for emergencies of all kinds. Again, if you have children, their roles will be changing as the grow up and mature, and with other changes in your life and situation, other aspects of how best to respond to all emergencies – not just those involving lethal force in a life or death self-defense situation – are ideally revised and reviewed every six months too.
Have there been any legal changes that might alter how you should respond to an emergency? You should check with a reliable source every so often to see if the laws have changed – either for the better or worse. Remember that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
A little time spent going through a checklist such as this every six months will help ensure that if you ever need to use any of these emergency items or strategies, they are likely to work as needed at the time when they are indeed desperately needed, and also means that you are more likely to be familiar with how to use these items and best respond to whatever the emergency is.