fundamentals-basic rifle

FRIDAY FUNDAMENTALS-BASIC RIFLE


When you are poor, expecting a pink slip any day and certain that the Four Horsemen will strike when you least expect it, you endeavor to acquire Better Than Nothing supplies. Wheat, water filter, a grinder and a basic rifle. Later on, provided more time and finances allow, you can upgrade. Dry beans, a handgun and rimfire, reloading supplies, etc. But like everything else, your basic supplies do a good enough job that if they prove to be your sole piece of equipment they will do the job more than adequately. You can’t expect the Best, but you can expect Good Enough. The basic rifle might not be the absolute best defensive weapon, but it is more than enough gun to do the job. Whereas calories are calories, with a firearm you can always get cheap skills to compensate for a cheap firearm. An AR-15 in the hands of an idiot is less gun than a single shot rimfire in practiced hands. That said, to some extent you can substitute money for skill. A few thousand rounds down range from a carbine should do the trick against one skilled opponent.

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Your frugal prepper has roughly four choices in picking a thirty caliber rifle. If he wants the most affordable there is one choice. If he wants modern ammunition ( insofar as military use, current manufacture, a non-niche round ) he has one choice ( the same choice if a female/diminutive male wants a manageable round ). If he wants accuracy there is one choice, as well as one for firepower/reliability. I do not consider semi-automatics for several reasons. One, you pay four times the price. Twice/three times for the weapon, once again in magazines. Two, you will absolutely need to conserve your ammunition. 99% of all preppers are amateur, non-trained, non-military personnel that absolutely cannot expect to realistically exercise fire discipline while under the stress of combat. The rifle mechanism acts as the discipline rather than your non-existent training. Every round that you fire after the apocalypse is one less round of ammunition that will ever exist. There won’t be anymore. You can improvise rounds, but you’ll never have modern manufactured, reliable and dependent, well engineered rounds ever again once you cook that bitch off. Ammunition conservation is much more important than high cap magazines being able to lay down suppressive fire ( the whole concept of which will need to be rethought ).

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When you choose between military surplus bolt action weapons, as a bonus you are using a weapon that uses a far superior round. Except for the 7.62x39, and that is only suitable for certain terrains. The other rounds are overkill for man targets. If your target stood obligingly in the open. The overkill in penetration and stopping power compensate for concealment. We all know the stories of the M16 round being deflected by leaves. Not hard to understand since it uses a .22 with a bit more powder. Thirty caliber rounds do not have that problem. And we’ve all heard about the problems the .223 has dropping malnourished insurgents ( three rounds to drop a Skinny ). Better one round to stop the threat. And since you don’t have any rounds to waste, you want one that does the job right the first time.

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If you are poor as poor can be, you only have the option of the Mosin Nagant. This was the Russian, then the Commie, bolt gun for both World Wars. Its round is right there with the 30-06. There are two problems with this rifle. First, it doesn’t have a gas bleed safety. If your primer or case rupture, the super hot gases are directed into the shooter face. This seems to be a non-issue using the current ammunition, but it is something to be very aware of. The next problem is that its iron sites are pure crap. If you want to scope it, you must get a gunsmith to drill and tap a mount. This makes for a no longer cheap rifle. However, if this is all you can afford, get it and make it work. The ammunition is so affordable, unlike all other ammo outside the SKS rounds. You can buy this rifle and four hundred rounds for less than any other rifle without ammunition. It has its problems, but affordability ain’t one of them.

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If you want a modern rifle that uses easy to find and affordable ammunition, you can look into the SKS. It is a carbine rather than a battle rifle, so only use this if your terrain is suitable. I am not advocating a semi-auto rifle. You should convert this to a bolt action. Vlad, one of my longest suffering readers, had this to say almost three years ago…

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“Think one shot one kill. instructions with pictures (dis) assembly SKS
instructions with pictures (dis) assembly SKS


http://www.surplusrifle.com/sks/carbine/index.asp

Remove gas piston from inside gas tube. Replace gas tube.bolt operating rod from inside gas tube. replace gas tube.(IF YOU FAIL TO REPLACE GAS TUBE, GAS FROM GAS PORT WILL BLOW YOUR EYES OUT.) You will soon learn to quickly operate SKS as pullbolt. Make every shot count. Ammo supply is limited. One shot to the head or torso kills them as dead as they can get. Two or more shots in the head will not make them any deader. Save ammo. Kill the wounded enemy with a hammer or ax.”

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Thank you, Vlad. A more handy piece of advice is hard to find. The SKS has the disadvantage of an underpowered round, and an inaccurate weapon, and its bayonet is crap, but it is new and the ammo is cheap and available. It is the only one the small statured will be comfortable with. For the longest time I advocated a chamber insert turning your Enfield into an SKS substitute. Having the option of stockpiling the commie round was nice. Alas, upon ordering the insert I was informed it was no longer available since the steel case rounds were cracking the insert.

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If you want a very accurate rifle, go with a surplus Mauser rifle. Although they are easily fouled in the field and thus will be problematic to reload during a fight, they are very accurate. The SKS and the Enfield get Pie Plate Accuracy, whereas the Mauser gets your more modern Inches. The Mausers also have a no gunsmith scope mount available. For you wanna be snipers. As a bonus, the Mauser action is far more gentle on brass, for reloading. Last up, the rifle near and dear to my heart, the Lee-Enfield no.4, the best surplus rifle out there. It is not the most accurate, it mistreats brass. But it has ten rounds, compared to the five of the MN or the Mauser. You are not supposed to be hosing the enemy with lead, but the ability to double the available rounds ready for use in a prolonged firefight is nice. And because it is not accurate, the other side of the coin to a sloppy chamber is that you can reload a cartridge twice as fast as a Mauser. It laughs at dirt and mud in the field. Again, not for suppressive fire but for the inevitable quickly needed follow up shot. Handy to have for multiple opponents. And, while hard to put into words, there is the feel of the rifle. It is sexy, a warm and fuzzy companion. It molds to its user. The Mauser is just a sterile hunk of metal. The Enfield is more alive, organic. Like I said, a bit hard to describe. But you can feel the difference.

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A rifle for every need. And far cheaper at $100-$300, compared to the $700-$1500 of semi-autos. You can put the difference into ammo.

END-two guest articles today, also.  Scroll down.

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