Take your gear camping and get back to me
I always enjoy watching the weekend warrior guys show up with their $4000 worth of M4 and accessories that are the first ones to panic and want to leave the range if it starts to drizzle. The idea that your $4000 rifle will some how get ruined in the rain and the majority of firearms like it are expected to be combat reliable. Well… what is combat reliability? Combat reliability is a gun that will take a level of abuse in bad weather and dirty conditions without malfunctioning. If you have a military issued rifle, the gun better darn well be combat reliable and a little bit of rain shouldn’t concern you.
Combat optics are are also given this description because they better take the abuse and still hold zero. The gun should work if it gets dropped and the glass better not break. I’ve retired a few rifle scopes because they would fog up and I learned the lesson of wiping all of my hunting rifles down with a light amount of CLP whenever I brought them back from a trip. Take your gun cases and your firearms out on a day when the weather isn’t that great and have some confidence. A good nylon rifle case should protect your firearms from moisture and dirt and there’s nothing to cry about if you know your gear.
When getting asked the question how many guns we own, the question should be asked “what do I not own?” After several years of dealing with the high speed, low drag weapon systems, and after watching the 2008 election results, there was huge jumps in ammo prices. I thought to myself when 5.56 ammo was hitting close to the $700 per 1000rds range, that maybe ammo was going to be worth more than gold soon. After putting a little thought into why the ammo prices were going up, I pretty much guessed that they won’t stay up that long in a bad economy, because nobody in their right mind would spend money on something that was 200-300% over inflated. I decided that if It was reloaded ammo, I wasn’t going to touch any factory ammo, and it was now time for a 22lr bolt action rifle.
SKB and Pelican make gun storage units that will protect your guns if they get knocked around. The foam pads can always be customized for specific guns and gear and I highly recommend doing so. I strongly believe in buying gun cases that are for specific firearms and especially so for rifles. You will be able to fit varying sizes of handguns in the pistol cases depeding on which way you place them, but rifles will get tricky and since most of them will have optics, you gotta be careful how much you pack them. There are even some rifle cases that can hold your magazines, pistol, and pistol magazines.
Not everyone needs to think about long deployments in Afghanistan when getting their shooting gear together, but knowing where your guns and gear are can prevent you from making silly mistakes. I’ve heard plenty of stories that sound funny at first, but I know it wasn’t funny when it occurred. The stories are about people getting a day off from the family and driving an hour or more to a gun range and finding out they didn’t pack any rifle magazines, forgot the ammo, forgot to put a gun in a bag ect.
Assault rifle case cases can also hold ammo and store sight in tools, too. Uncle Mike’s also has an inexpensive line of rifle cases that can hold anything from a collapsed M4 Carbine to a full size A2. The soft cases are soft, but can still be folded in half to be used as a rest if you’re will to be creative on the firing line.
2 1/4″ Total Soft padding