I think that Durai was pretty quick guy and good with the planning and organizing. So the Mallers got there stuff together quickly.
Gun shops would be a prime target for raids by anyone with the wherewithal to be out looking. Having a safecracker on the team, i would put him on the gun shop runs.

I agree with Liam above in that I think we needed a start to a brewing conflict between Scratch and Burt early on. We also needed the Mallers to have access to the RPGs. 2 birds with one safe crack.

Scratch HAD to be out of ammo at the time of that first meeting by the tanker or she would have probably blazed away at somebody before Burt's fancy shooting. That would have put one or more main characters down early on. Not good.....

Anyway, I'm moving over to the side that says the Family probably has more to do with the story than just tying in Scratch's story. What that is, I don't know. But it could get interesting.