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Preparedness ammunition stockpile philosophy is the original question and that is how I answered it but I do have to agree with you that there is other things to consider as well in the beginning. I was one of those young kids that had to sell a few toys in my early years because of poor financial planning and the addition of children in my life. I chalked it up to priorities and responsibility at the time but it was basically poor financial planning.Years ago on another forum there was often the for sale ad that read something to the effect of: "bought this gun, need to pay some bills, have to sell it,"
I cannot agree with you more because all the guns and ammo in the world is not worth a dang thing if you have no idea how to use it. A basic Carbine and a pistol 101 class would be a good start with added classes down the road as I do believe in continued training but at the same time if you do not have cheap ammo to shoot then it's hard to take a class or practice.Know a guy who at the start of the rona plandemic went out and bought 2 AR's and 2 pistols out of fear of social unrest, first guns he ever owned, he bought 1000 rounds of .223, has shot about 30 of them and still barely knows much more about the AR than which end the bullet comes out.
So while ammo stashes are important, if you suck, having all that ammo won't matter so much.
Around here 9mm was almost the same or twice the price of some of the classes offered in these parts if you could even find ammo. For a while all you could find was 24.95 a box for 20 rds of home defense 9mm so if the class required 250 rounds you were looking at $343 with tax for a $150 class and that's a lot of money for a new shooter.
I even held off doing local Glock matches as I was not sure if I could replace what I shot so I switched to steel case as it was cheaper and I could find it. I also just repeated my Idaho enhanced class and pretty much every one in there was also shooting steel case as it was all they could find for the 100 required rounds. One guy said he paid $35 for a 50 rd box of steel case 9mm because brass was 69 a box at the time.
So having all the other stuff like plate carriers and night vision is nice to have but getting ammo when its cheap and available to me is more important. I am not saying plate carriers and night vision or even red dots for your rifle (unless you have no sites at all) are not nice to have but if you can not even practice with 50 rounds a month even during bad times then will all this other stuff do you any good.
We all look at being prepared differently and set priorities accordingly and that is why I like to read these posts as it makes me think about my priorities and if I am truly looking at everything and many of you bring up things, I may not have thought of.
I have been doing this for a long time and do have most of the toys folks talk about in some form or another but one good gun that you can trust and lots of ammo to practice I believe is still the top priority.
But what do I know as I am just old, fat and ugly!