If an intruder makes it to your bedroom, shoot
him with the pistol. If he's trying to break in, use the shotgun.
If he is fifty yards or more away and shooting at you, pick him
off with the 30-06.
This is the real Survivalist's arsenal; basic,
inexpensive, effective. So why all the promotion of rapid-fire
weapons? If you aim at a man and don't hit him, he' going to move,
and probably shoot you. Banging away in the same general direction
is just a senseless waste of ammo. You need practice, not rapid-fire.
You also need a realistic attitude, not a fantasy.
But fantasy sells. There is big money in Macho.
The more awesome your weapon looks and sounds, the tougher and
sexier you look. Girls get off on rapid-fire. It's the Freudian
part of the package.
The Rambo Survivalist image being sold to neurotics
is making weapons dealers rich. It is also showing the profound
ignorance of weapons among the general public.
To know guns, you must understand the three
basic methods of shooting; sweeping, pointing and aiming.
Sweeping is with rapid-fire. Its main purpose
is to dispatch several enemies before one can shoot you. Such
confrontations are unlikely in any actual civil conflict. Raiders
don't bunch up. There would be no point to it. Of course, if you
are the raider you would have a better chance wiping out a couple
and two or three children if you have a rapid fire weapon.
Sweeping is also anticipated in cases of moving
targets. Proficiency with the shotgun will do more damage to the
moving target than expert use of rapid-fire.
There is a psychological disadvantage to dependency
on a rapid-fire weapon. One tends to sweep or just bang away ineffectually.
It is the nature of the weapon and a case of the weapon controlling
the man.
An example is a commercial for a TV crime story.
One of the heroes bursts into the room and says, "I just
had an Uzi emptied on me outside". Obviously, the character
with the Uzi swept, did not aim or even point. At least 20 shots
and nothing. Of course, it was fiction. But that kind of shooting
is becoming acceptable.
If an automatic weapon is shifted one and a
half feet, in 20 or more yards, the bullets are spaced several
feet apart. You could empty a clip on several people and not hit
one. The nut who unloaded several clips of an AK-47 at a crowd
of 35 children in Stockton only killed five. What if he had had
a rifle and had to aim? What if he had had a shotgun and had to
point? Couldn't he see his sweeps were ineffective?
He was crazy but he wasn't blind! He knew how
to operate the weapon. But he was psyched up with the glamor image
of that weapon. He was not controlling that weapon; it was controlling
him.
Another TV segment was on the Gulf. Here were
all these troops practicing, banging away at a dune, fully automatic,
as usual. I only hope the Iraqis are on full-auto. I wouldn't
want anyone to get hurt.
Yet another segment was at a California shooting
range. It told how the state had 300,000 assault weapons owners
but only 15,000 had registered as ordered.
There were about ten men banging away on semi-auto,
as fast as they could shoot. They were all pointing, as they were
shooting too fast to correct aim.
I suppose they were all wealthy, as ammo costs
a lot. Whatever practicality there might be in such weapons, only
the wealthy can afford them.
Watching those men, I could see that their
practice was ineffective. The targets were only 10 to 15 yards
away. No proficiency can be gained by simply banging away at a
stationary target from a distance at which one only has to point.
Watching them reminded me of the reason for
the arming of all the American forces with rapid-fire weapons.
During the Korean War it was found that only one in nineteen soldiers
would fire his rifle. They were mostly uniformed civilians in
a no-win war and didn't want to get killed. So they would just
hunker down and try to ignore the Chinese. Having Garands, which
demanded aiming, put them at risk of getting a bullet in the face.
So by the time the Vietnam fiasco rolled around
the boys all had the confidence-giving, noise-making M-16s. They
were effective enough for jungle fighting where one could not
aim anyway, even if he knew how to shoot. It didn't matter, however,
since the other side had AK-47s; just as worthless. Of course,
there were plenty enough bombs and napalm to keep the VC's numbers
manageable and most U.S. losses were due to booby-traps. So a
rifleman was about as useful as nipples on a boar.
I know it is hard to believe that glamor weapons
with all their sound and fury, are more hype than effect. However,
if one of their proud owners has it out with any practiced hunter
with any rifle, the hunter will win.
Now we come to pointing. Apart from shooting
at flying ducks, the shotgun is mainly for pointing. Man-killing
shot is from #4 to 00 buckshot. (Single 0 buckshot has 12 .30
caliber pellets per round). The best killing range is up to 50
yards.
The 12 gauge shotgun is the most devastating
hand-held weapon. Few people realize how really terrible the shotgun
is. The Geneva Convention bans its use in war but police use it.
It was also preferred in Vietnam over regulation arms, even though
a soldier's family had to send it to him.
A buckshot pellet does not have the penetrative
force of any bullet of equal diameter because it is round and
not as heavy as the longer bullet. Buckshot is also fired at lower
velocities than bullets.
But they still inflict wounds of maximum size,
induce considerable shock and hemorrhage. Also, when two or more
pellets hit, their total effect on the victim is as the square
of the number of hits, not just an additive progression; that
is, two hits equal four times the effect of one hit, three hits
equal nine times that effect, and so on. If the victim is hit
by three Single 0 buckshot pellets it is the same as if he had
been hit by nine .30 caliber Carbine rounds.
For the combat shotgun, it is best to take
a hacksaw and cut the barrel down to the legal 18 inches. This
gives it a slightly wider shot pattern and makes it a little more
maneuverable.
Rapid-fire, semi-auto from an assault weapon
has no greater killing range than does the shotgun. And since
the shotgun must be pointed, and the shot pattern is wider, multiple
hits per target are surer than with any assault weapon.
Next in pointing, is the pistol. Beyond a few
feet you want a shotgun or a rifle. Aiming a pistol is possible,
but only with practice. Practice, however, has made some pistol
shooters as deadly at long range as shot gunners or riflemen.
The American Rifleman article, "Debunking
The Debunkers", reprinted in US MILITIA Issue 1, tells what
can be done with a pistol. Read it. For the most part, the pistol
is for close quarters.
You ought to own a pistol and it should be
a .38 Police Special with a six inch barrel. I recommend a revolver
over an automatic, since the revolver has fewer parts to malfunction.
And if you don't think the .38 has stopping power, you just don't
realize what you can do when you practice. You may have been fantasizing
over glory guns, the most popular of which is the .45 automatic.
Read the aforementioned article.
Several years ago I was in a Los Angeles gun
shop. A plain-clothes officer was at the counter talking to the
dealer. The dealer stepped back into an alcove and reached up
to a shelf. A shot rang out. The gun the dealer had reached for
had fallen butt-first and discharged. Before the sound registered
with me the officer had his pistol drawn. Naturally, there was
no threat. His action was pure reflex. That cop was fast!
In the same time period, there was a funeral
for a police officer fallen in the line of duty. The media covered
the funeral and some dummy exploded a bomb outside the funeral
home as the attending officers were assembling. The newspaper
featured the frame of the newsreel of the explosion. In it was
an officer with his revolver half-way drawn out of his holster!
Both the accidental discharge and the explosion caught on film
showed the reflexes of these men to be a tiny fraction of a second
each. So you can believe the examples of speed in the article.
Also, if you practice and so become as proficient
as those two officers, both in speed and instinct aiming, you
can be sure of a fatal hit before your opponent can even touch
his own weapon.
For the .38 revolver, I recommend the six inch
barrel over the two or four inch. This is because of the barrel's
rifling. The rifling gives the bullet its spin, which keeps it
on course. The longer the barrel, the more the rifling and hence
the more spin. The more spin, the greater the accuracy. A six
inch barrel gives enough spin to guarantee about as much accuracy
as you will need when using your pistol.
The glamor weapon among pistols is the automatic,
especially the .45. It is heavier, bulkier and more than twice
as expensive as the .38. Its main claim to fame is its stopping
power. But a well-placed bullet is a greater guarantee of stopping
power than a bullet's size. And as the article shows, speed comes
with practice. Reliance in mechanics over skill leads to overconfidence.
Many glamor gun fantasizers are going to die when they confront
a foe who has mastered his weapon.
You may know of whole police departments adopting
.357 Magnums or automatics. Maybe their chief watched too much
TV. Again, skill with a basic weapon is better than reliance on
mechanics or power. The punk spraying lead is no match for a cop
skilled with his .38.
Now for aiming. The reason for aiming is to
hit the target at a greater distance than is practical for pointing.
A rifleman hits everything he aims at. A macho fool just bangs
away with a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing; except the
deserved death of the ignorant.
Unfortunately, few people aim today. They have
mistaken multiple loud reports for damage. One has but to watch
newsreels of Arab-Christian conflicts in Lebanon, closeup coverage
of the fire fights in Vietnam, the results of drive-by shootings
in Los Angeles, etc., to see that moderns simply are not learning
to shoot accurately. The discrepancy between shots fired and clean
kills is appalling. Our honored WW II dead are spinning in their
graves!
Aside from a shotgun or pistol, one should
not own a gun not designed for aimed hits. Anyone who advertises
such a gun should be boycotted as a traitor to his country. Those
who decry the deaths of little children should shame the incompetents
but not spare the sellers of weapons which flatter such ineptitude.
I got a laugh from a news report some time
ago. A character named T. J. Johnston in California, an anti-gun-registration-protester,
was burning his order to register his assault weapon. His cronies
were banging away at some targets ten yards away with more assault
weapons. No rifleman would waste ammo shooting at a target that
close.
If he goes to jail he might have time to reflect
that one rifleman with an M1 30-06 Garand could wipe out his whole
flock. He might also reflect that a well-regulated militia made
up of private citizens proficient in the use of real weapons would
have no fear of gun confiscation.
Have you ever heard of Sergeant Alvin York?
You have probably seen the movie, starring Gary Cooper. York was
a conscientious objector. But when his friends were dropping like
flies he reacted. A hillbilly, he was a trained hunter from childhood.
He first worked his way around the enemy's
flank. He was armed with a 1903 30-06 bolt-action Springfield
and a pistol. He killed 20 Germans and captured l32. Of course,
few of those captured knew it was a one-man job. The point is,
he could shoot! He killed 20 men with one well-placed bullet each.
He had no need for rapid-fire. He knew that every time he aimed
and fired a man was dead.
Most American and German soldiers at that time,
with their bolt-action Springfields and Mausers could also shoot.
They had to work those bolts and correct every time they fired.
And there were men actually trying to kill them all the while!
There was no getting around their having to know how to aim and
shoot. No room for fantasy.
Among the best combat rifles ever made is the
WW II U.S. M1 30-06 Garand. It is a semi-auto with a 1,000 yard
effective killing range. It holds only eight rounds so there is
no tendency to bang away at a single target.
However, don't discount the bolt-action rifle.
After aiming and firing, the bolt is worked as the gun is reaimed,
so no time is lost. Most good military and hunting rifles are
bolt-action anyway.
You might be tempted to buy the most expensive
rifle. But it is best to buy the most common, the tried and true,
the least flashy.
Pause a minute to reflect; if you were driving
cross-country on a very important trip, would you choose a common
car or a sports model? Of course, you would look grand in the
sportster. But if getting there were the only important consideration,
you would want the reliability, and serviceability of your dependable
standard model over the object of your fantasies.
The same goes for civilian combat. You may
fantasize owning an expensive rapid-fire gun, mowing down raiders
with ten slugs in each. It looks great in the movies, but why
use 10 bullets where one would do? Besides, raiders won't bunch
up and charge. They will fan out, using what cover is available,
and you will have to pick them off one by one.
Now, if in your fantasies, you used a 30-06,
preferably an M1 Garand, and could shoot, you could make your
fantasies pay off. Then, with practice in making every bullet
count, you could defend your territory against any number of predators.
So if you must fantasize about weapons, fantasize
being a better shot than any thieving parasite. Fantasize putting
one well-placed bullet into every looter with the stupidity to
set foot in your community.
