single shot

SINGLE SHOT


I simply must write these kinds of articles if for no other reason than every time I see a gushing orgasm inducing consumer love fest elsewhere imploring you to rush out and buy several thousand dollars in modern weaponry or you won’t have every needed tool to survive. Of course it is super duper and wonderful if you can have oodles and gobs of different weapons. It would be just as grand if I could have the proper tools to commute. A Japanese compact for long distant travel, for great gas mileage. A four-wheel drive pick-up to travel over snowy or mud filled roads on the way to work. A moped to get to work during fair weather, to get super gas mileage. A bicycle motor to get twice that mileage. Then, so you can’t say I don’t have enough vehicles to insure or maintain, let’s add in some propane or ethanol powered vehicles. Just in case. Jesus Jumpin Almighty God, you spoiled rotten Oil Age addicted, pansy mo humpin Yuppie Friggin Scum. If you are “financially challenged”, how about just a bicycle and the occasional rental car? Much cheaper, it will get the job done, even if the job is half-assed or difficult. A “proper tool box” of weapons for those who refuse to ever be inconvenienced by doing without the perfect anything, be it a spouse, a car, a bug-out vehicle, a concrete bunker, a gun, or anything else, is a great thing, if you can afford it. Okay, let me put that another way. Any of us can afford a perfect arsenal. Even if you get all the recommended, it doesn’t have to be insanely priced. A generic HK-91 for a grand, a pump shotgun for $200. A rimfire for $200. A Russian revolver and auto for not much for than $200 ( I’m talking about the best weapons systems, not the best brand name ). Even though mags and ammo cost is an issue, the arsenal itself isn’t beyond the means of most of us, given proper motivation. But in the real world, the spouse and your children and an accumulation of every bad financial decision you ever made all together biting you in the ass right now, all of those evil forces conspire against you spending much at all on a firearm. And, hey, this is most likely academic anyway, since I would wager 99% of my readers are already armed. The main point here is that anyone giving advice that a large arsenal is an absolute must is blowing smoke up your bung.

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Oh merciful lord! Look at those poor Mountain Men 170 years ago. How could they possibly have survived with only ONE GUN!?!? Oh, the bloody humanity! How could those using single shot blackpowder ever have survived against enemies employing rapid fire close range weapons ( bows and arrows )?!?! Does your brain seriously hurt that much when you try to use it? Is recognizing common practice when it flies in the face of the “perfect” advice that hard ( I’m guilty of that on occasion, such as when I advocate junk land knowing full well not 1% of you will even think about it, but at least the advice is financially doable for those few )? To blissfully throw out advice to procure a dozen weapons, then naturally assume we all have the financial means to go train on them in a tactical course, and have the resources to keep buying ammunition to keep that training fresh, this is the kind of Yuppie Survivalist bovine waste discharge that sticks in my craw. The advice being given is most certainly without any doubt the perfect advice. But it is by no means practical advice. Back here on Planet Resource Depletion ( with its orbiting satellite Moon Economic Crash ) you can’t have the perfect everything. But you certainly can have a whole lot of better than nothing.

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A single rifle as your arsenal is not a perfect solution. But it is by no means going to get you killed. Most fighters do quite well with only having one weapon for their personal use. They are called infantrymen. And before you get all weepy on me and go on about artillery support and air strikes and other supporting weapons, I didn’t necessarily mean modern American infantrymen. Your Afghan fighter does well with just his rifle. I understand the rational desire for other weapons, and I myself own most of them. A revolver for concealment and immediate use, a rimfire for hunting and for long term use when all other arms have no ammunition ( where I am I see no need for a shotgun, but I’m not saying they don’t have a place ). And while I would miss them terribly if I no longer had them, I wouldn’t feel like my life was in danger without them. If I didn’t have a rifle, on the other hand, I’d feel very vulnerable. If finances are that bad, you can survive just fine with only a rifle.

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Now, my preferred choice for a rifle is a surplus bolt. It takes a bayonet, is built to survive where a flimsy plastic Mattel Toy fears to tread, and it conserves ammunition. Alas, they are no longer as affordable as they once were. And there is no surplus ammunition left for them. Less than four years ago I was paying 45 cents per 303B round, just buying a box at a time. They were brass, and reloadable with a bit of effort going from Berden to Boxer. Now, you pay $1 a round unless you want to pay case price. Yes, the Russian bolt is still affordable and if you don’t want to reload the ammo is still very cheap. I don’t care for the lack of a gas safety bleed, but that’s just me. Some folks love their lever action carbines. I don’t like them because I need some range, plus you know I’m gay over bayonets. There will come a time when you will need to save on the ammo and that pig sticker will pay for itself many times over. However, a lever action, if you’re good with it, is all the gun you need for a lot of people. It saves you half the needed powder and lead and the revolver uses the same ammo if that is important to you. But there is also the single shot to consider. If you really want to conserve on that ammunition. If you don’t want to deal with the problems of obsolete ammunition. And if you want to use the same ammo as the enemy.

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A single shot is not meant to be used by Rambo wannabe, room clearing, SWAT team adrenaline fueled jag-bags who equate ammunition fired to success on the battlefield. If you are in the military, and that is your mission, of course you want a rapid fire carbine. You want to waste ammunition to protect yourself. But as a survivalist you want to stay well away from the enemy, and you must husband your resources as their will be absolutely no resupply. A single shot does both well. For the price of one Mattel Toy you could have a single shot rifle, a revolver in case you worry about close in ambush and having to extract yourself, and a lot of ammo. And the AR price didn’t even include all the mags and spare parts you need ( a bonus for the single shot is that there are almost no parts to break, unlike the AR which has, on last count, several friggin hundred ). Plus the extra ammo you will be cooking off. Tactics work very well for supplementing less than perfect tools, and they certainly work better than toys.

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