gigag04 wrote:
5m - Laure OBR
10m - Larue OBR
15m - Larue OBR
100m - Larue OBR
500m - Larue OBR
1000m - Larue OBR
'Course, you'll be waiting for about a year trying to acquire one.
Had an extended conversation with a friend just last week about what to buy. He owns one firearm, a .22 LR rifle, and doesn't do any hunting or sport shooting. His concern was for a reasonably stocked, general-purpose collection. The not hunting/not sport shooting put a definite slant on it, and we had to agree that the current, inflationary market prices and pressures wouldn't affect the decisions.
The first thing I advised him to do was get his CHL and choose an EDC handgun of no less than 9mm. I wholly agree with Clint Smith that a handgun's purpose
should be be to fight your way back to the rifle you left behind, but as a civilian in a densely-populated, urban environment, you have only one realistic option for readily-available personal protection: a handgun.
Most handguns are underpowered compared to their long-barreled brethren, but they can be carried pretty much wherever you go. And, assuming you don't choose something too small, it can serve as a modest home-defense weapon.
The number two purchase on my list would be a carbine. There is a very sane prepper position that would have you acquire a carbine that uses the same type of ammunition and magazines as your handgun. I agree; but that would be farther down on the wish list simply because pistol-caliber carbines don't offer much more firepower than their service-handgun counterparts.
No, I'd want either an AR-15 in 5.56 (probably my first choice just because of familiarity) or an AK-47. The AR actually makes for an excellent home-defense firearm. The standard rounds have a lower probability of penetrating interior walls than those fired from a 9mm handgun (check The Box O' Truth for past tests); a 16" carbine barrel is relatively maneuverable--though not as maneuverable as a handgun--in clearing the inside of a structure; you have a
reasonable magazine capacity; and with decent optics you have very fast CQB target acquisition and sight picture. You can put the round where you want it to go.
Your carbine can also be effective out to at least 200 meters against two-legged predators and medium-sized game. The AR-15 and the AK-47 are the most commonly owned rifles in the world...by a longshot. That means parts, upgrades, and even instructional videos are prevalent. Two months ago, I also would have said that ammunition was easily available. There's still a lot of it being manufactured...we just can't find it.
I have an EDC handgun and a carbine. Now I want a shotgun.
Movies have done the non-gunner a big disservice with shotguns. First and foremost is the representation that the shotgun is a scattergun: that you just point and shoot, that the shot will spread miraculously from the barrel and blanket the target that’s 20 feet away.
Out of a typical 12-guage defensive shotgun's 18.5" cylinder barrel, the baseline formula for the spread of 00 buckshot is two centimeters for every meter in distance traveled. That's about 0.8" for every 3.3 feet. At 20 feet, that's less than a 5" spread. Definitely handy, but comes nowhere near not having to aim. Reduced-recoil loads spread less and produce patterns that are more dense.
Generally speaking, the smaller the shot size, the faster it spreads...but also the less effective it is as a threat-stopper. Under most circumstances, 00-buck is defensively effective out to 35, maybe 40 yards; #4 buck out to 20 yards, maybe a little farther.
And if over-penetration is a concern, shot spread probably is, too. If you go for smaller shot and larger spread it's going to be both less likely to penetrate deep enough to stop the threat, and it's going to become a less-than-good idea if you need to take a reasonably accurate shot anywhere near a family member or other innocent.
I've known some guys who think that opting for a rifled shotgun barrel will improve the accuracy situation. It will if you're shooting appropriate slugs, but accuracy--and certainly effectiveness--is suspect if shooting multiple pellets. The problem is that, as the pellets are compressed and fired down the bore, they catch the grooves and landings of the rifling and start to spin. But converse to the way you want a single object spinning--a rifle bullet or a shotgun slug--what happens is that, upon exiting the barrel, the pellets start to expand in a fairly even, circular pattern.
Not what you want with a cluster of pellets. The advantage of a shot shell is the inches-wide area at the point-of-aim where you get a random but contained pattern of hits. With a rifled bore, what you end up with is a circular pattern of hits...with none of the hits at the point-of-aim: they're all around the POA in a nice circle. Not desirable.
Okay. I have an EDC handgun, a carbine, and a defensive shotgun. Choice four may be surprising: I’d go for another handgun.
The handgun market—and engineering—over the past decade has, for the most part, trended toward the millions of new concealed handgun license holders. The market demand has been for smaller and lighter.
Smaller and lighter is the antithesis of more stable and accurate. You may have opted for a Kahr PM9 or similar for your EDC. And it will serve you well where you need to be mobile and comfortable.
Is a short-barreled, low capacity 9mm handgun what you want for home defense? No, it isn’t. And if you decide to get more gun-handling practice in IDPA or USPSA, you will quickly learn that a small gun does not serve you well.
Purchase four is a full-size handgun of at least 9mm. Personally, I’m a .45 ACP guy. My most-times EDC is a Kimber Ultra UDP II. But I sometimes carry its big brother, another government-sized .45, or a .40 S&W Springfield XDm.
I choose to carry the Kimber Ultra because it’s the best trade-off I’ve found between effectiveness and concealability. But it is a trade-off. If I could have only one home-defense handgun, it would not be a reduced sized anything.
You have your carbine and your shotgun, but when something kicks in your backdoor at zero dark thirty, you need something readily at hand and easily maneuvered. That’s probably a handgun: a full-sized, big-bore handgun.
You have an EDC handgun, a carbine, a defensive shotgun, and a tactical handgun.
Now you need something that can reach out and touch something beyond 200 or 300 meters.
I love the .308 round (7.62x51mm NATO) because it’s effective, (was) relatively inexpensive, and (was) easy to find.
A Remington 700 is about as solid a choice as you can make.
