You’ve been caching 5.56 NATO and .223 Remington ammunition in preparation for whatever may come. Now, here’s what you need to do with it…
by Lou Patrick
If you’re like us, you’ve been adding to your stash of AR-15 ammo over the last several months, topping off used inventory and adding where availability and pricing allows. The fortunate ones among us have at least a thousand or so rounds on hand. Some have WAY more than that. Regardless of how well you’ve managed to stock your ammo depot, making it ready for rapid deployment is something most folks don’t consider.
What are we talking about? Essentially, it is the next step in the preparation process. You need to go from the manufacturer’s packaging to a loaded magazine in the fastest, most efficient way possible, and having a basement full of 5.56/.223 cartridges in their original manufacturer’s boxes (which are, in turn, probably stored in other cardboard boxes) is not the best way to get there.
Environmental conditions such as heat and humidity can be detrimental to ammunition in the long term. The other consideration is portability and deployment. For example, should you have to bug out, you’ll want to have your ammo prepped in such a way that you can get it in your magazines and get those magazines in your rifle as quickly as you can. Again, manufacturer’s boxes are not your friend in a high-stress, high-mobility environment.
Fortunately, the U.S. military offers a solution. For a few bucks and some time spent online, you can acquire a handful of supplies that will not only keep your ammo safe and in top operational condition, it will allow you to easily transport the ammo and have it ready for use in an “everything’s gone south” situation. In this video, we explain the why and how of prepping your ammo for storage and load-out the military way…
