Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns SHTF Guns - A more realistic approach?

You are bad, you are bad to the bone!

I've got the most experience with a rifle but I would choose a concealed handgun and a shotgun when moving about. I'll most likely be running in a situation. A pistol does it for me by weight savings and a shotgun by virtue of being able to hit something while moving. I would use the rifles mostly for defensive positions. If limited to just one it would be a high capacity full size 9mm.

I've probably got more handguns than most. My idea is to use the surplus for barter to get the unknown items.

I shoot much better with a rifle than with a hand gun but a hand gun sure is a lot more of a challenge, especially shooting offhand.

The sound of a 230 gr cast bullet hitting a hundred yd gong sure is satisfying but not very loud. I can't do that with every shot but trying is fun.

Jay-zus, EE, who pizzed in your cornflakes this morning?!?!?

THAT IS IT! I also have a Savage 72 (modern Stevens Favorite) I chambered to .22WMR that is killer accurate, guess I will buy a couple hundred rounds for it as well.


Here it is with the #4 Rolling Block


The Lyman sight I installed

Both are Uber-Cool .22's for sure. I have the hot & sweaties for the Winchester pump action .22�s. Have an 1890, 62A, 61, and the Rossi 62�just too much fun, completely reliable, accurate, and a joy to hunt with. And of course, I�m not giving up my K-22 anytime soon.

Still have the Winchester 62A in the family I got when I was six, it resides with my daughter now but I get to visit.

Derbydude,
Try some #4 buckshot in a 12 gauge.
I'm just sayin.
whelennut

REALLY??????

The local range has some old welding tanks set out at 200 yards, these are about 4' high and maybe 8" across (someone familiar with welding tanks could probably give exact dimensions).

Anyway, it's always fun to watch folks miss them time after time with their rifles - from the bench over bags or rests of some kind - and then pull out my little Ruger SR22, Smith M18 4" .22 or M15 4" .38, GP-100 or other handgun, stand on my hind feet and hit them with the first shot.

The easy part is that you have 4' of elevation to work with so front sight holdup isn't too hard but with that narrow target the windage is critical. But as long as you hold the sights centered you get that nice little "ding!" sound as a reward.

It just takes practice (and knowing better than to try this in a strong crosswind. )

In that same vein -

At this same range last summer a rather obese fellow came over to look at my little peep sighted Marlin 16" .45 Colt. He opined as to how it was a neat little rifle but in his authorative and truly expert opinion (I'm enhancing just a tad here) those pistol caliber rifles like the .44 and .45 weren't any good after 100 yards because the trajectory was so curved you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

I remarked, in a voice awed by his knowledge of all things gunny, how that was probably true. Then I stood up and from offhand hit one of those same welding tanks at 200 yards five times out of five with my worthless little rifle.

It's fun being an old guy with a lot of experience shooting.

I realize this is a gun-related site, but let me interject a note of, I dunno, common sense? Yes, it's fun to think about what you would need if the Zombie Apocalypse (spare me!) hits, but a lot of SHTF scenarios (Hurricane Sandy being only the latest and greatest) are not like that.

Put it this way.

When the SHTF, you MAY need a weapon. You WILL need food, water, shelter, maybe heat, perhaps a cooking source, your medicines, perhaps a way to treat/manage an injury until you can get good medical care. A good flashlight and spare batteries may be more useful than a fully tricked out AR-15. Given that none of us have unlimited resources, is it better to have 10 $200 revolvers or 1 revolver and a pantry full of non-perishable food, clean drinking water, a fully stocked first-aid kit (and I DON'T mean a $5 plastic box full of band-aids from the local grocery store), etc. And by the way, if you have a pantry full of canned food, make sure you have a manual can opener, because guess what? You're probably not going to have electricity or water.

Carry on.

All due respect, but the advice you posted is pretty much a given here. "Common sense?" Hmm. Did you actually read the OP?

KG's OP was about the relative utility of "the handgun" as the go-to firearm platform of choice in socially-disrupted situations such as he and others have actually had to live through and work in, and which we might face here in the USA at some time in the not-too-distant future. That is the topic of discussion.

If you REALLY believe you need discuss on�'s overall preparedness for TEOTWAWKI, you might want to try posting on the Hunter's Campfire thread, or over at Accurate Reloading.

Ah, yes. Practice. A rare commodity among internet gunnery experts.

Glad you adhere to your regimen, amigo! Keep dingin' them welding plates.

I read the OP, and it looks like he recommended buying 12 handguns, not the ten you criticized the previous poster for using in his example.

All in all, his post is a lot more rational that recommending buying a bunch of handguns so you can surrender them at a checkpoint instead of an AR.

Doc,
I'm sorry I rubbed you the wrong way, as both Kevin Gibson and you have my respect, as do almost all of the posters on 24 Hour Campfire. Maybe I missed the post where all of those taken for granted things were pointed out - I just don't think it hurts to point it out again. And as I said, most of us don't have unlimited resources, so maybe it does make sense to buy 2 less firearms in order to buy fresh water, non-perishable food, etc.

I do have to say that a true nation-wide SHTF scenario is pretty remote - JMHO, of course and I could be wrong, but this country has had a lot of stuff happen in its past including a full-blown shooting civil war, without descending into the kind of total SHTF that others have seen in, say, Rwanda, etc. Even after Katrina and Sandy, and various riots, there have been local or maybe regional looting, lawlessness, etc. but never nationwide.

I am old enough to remember the Atomic bomb scares in the 50s when a few people were building fallout shelters in their back yards and stocking up with canned goods. Most of those people are gone, their shelters are molding. A lot of the first generation survivalists are no longer above ground either but their vision of a country disintegrating hasn't happened. I'm sure most of them were sincere. I'm also sure the people building bomb shelters were raking it in for a while.

So here's a thought - you can take it as seriously as you like, or ignore it altogether. A lot of times there's warning before the SHTF. If you have enough money to buy 10 handguns, you have enough money to buy a plane ticket out of town, or certainly enough gas to get out of town, at least until the worst is over. Hey, you can always move to Canada! :-) As my martial arts instructors always said, you can't lose a fight you're not in. Now, if you're stuck in a SHTF scenario, well then, maybe 10 handguns is the best solution. But if you're not, evacuation out of the scenario makes more sense to me - but then, I'm a natural born coward. :-)

Jim222

You may very well be right. However there is a big difference from the 1950's and now. The biggest is our dependency on technology. Which everything and I mean everything runs on some sorta of power, mainly electricity. Knock out the electricity on the east coast and you have pretty much crippled the country. If it takes weeks to fix power in a single state imagine what it would take to restore power to the entire east coast.

Another huge difference from the 1950's and today is the political divide we have in this country. I can assure you that every conservitive I know would close their doors to any liberal wanting help, shelter, food, and ect. Remember these are the people that want to take away our rights, our money, and our success.

Is it likely that a SHTF happen? Honestly its a 50/50 unless you can prove otherwise. It only takes one thing to get the ball rolling, if that ball has enough momentum it could very well happen. In my opinion we are ripe for something major to change in our country. I can only hope it not and prepare for the worst.

I guess I'm more of the Jlin 222 school of thought. I to grew up in the 50's when the smart money was on a bomb shelter in every back yard. Coming from a poor family we were the expendable ones so a bomb shelter never entered into the picture which turned out to be just as well.

And then I remember the Carter years when there was no oil and I even thought I would take up sailing (which I never did, fear of water and giant fish don't you know).

There is no doubt that the national government is going to fail but I believe it will fail in stages and for most of us we will notice little affect to our daily lives.

If one truly believes that the world will end as we know it than one should have a bug out kit that is carried every place one is going just in case.

The handgun of choice in the SHTF scenario is a good quality single action in a .44/.45 caliber. Why a single action? Because a single action has the least moving parts so it's likely to keep working with minimal maintenance. I'm thinking a Ruger New Model BlackHawk in .44 Special would be a good choice. One of the Ruger double action would be good to as they seem to be idiot proof as to take down and maintenance.

I'm to old to bug out to any place so I'm staying put. With my 1911 and Ruger SBH in .44 mag. If anybody wants me they can have at. They would be doing me a favor to put me out of my misery.

Derby Dude has spoken!

MontanaCreekHunter
I think you're right about the divide between liberals and conservatives, at least some of them. I remember reading that before Kennedy was assassinated, he and Goldwater talked about doing a national series of debates around the country ala the Lincoln-Douglas debates, because despite their political differences they could still be friends. And it used to be in Congress that liberals and conservatives would beat each other up during the day and go out drinking together at night. That doesn't happen much any more, and I think we are poorer for it. I have friends who listen to Rachel Maddow and friends who listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, and I happen to like it that way.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I happen to be more optimistic than you. Maybe because I work at a VA hospital. I know a lot of vets, some of them are conservatives, some of them are liberals, but all of them are united by service to and love of country. And remember that on 9/11, the terrorists didn't hit conservative Montana, they hit liberal New York City, and I think we all felt the same way that day. There is still more that unites us than divides us. JMHO, I may be wrong.

I am not optimistic only because no government/country has stood the test of time. Sooner or later its going to happen. Nothing last forever!