Chapter 11
Guns
Ownership and deployment of proper firearms is a sufficiently serious consideration for city survivors that an entire chapter on the subject seems appropriate.
While I believe good evidence exists to support my belief that country survivors could get by without firearms, other experience screams that city survivors absolutely must have adequate guns of the correct type. The idea that country survivors could get by without guns is based on the real-life experience of Bill Moreland, who lived alone without contact with any other humans for 13 years. Moreland’s adventure is relatively recent. He survived in Idaho’s rugged Clearwater National Forest from 1932 to 1945. Incredibly, Moreland had a .22-caliber rifle with perhaps 25 rounds of ammunition for only the last 2 years of his saga.
Personal experiences of city survivors during the past 30 years abundantly demonstrate that all city survivors will have far too many opportunities to defend their area. They will also seriously (perhaps fatally) cripple their survival food plans by not being able to shoot the occasional dog, cat, rat, goat, or duck if no guns are available. The experiences have convinced me that city survival is impossible without adequate firearms and the knowledge of how to use them.
Some of the guns and. ammunition mentioned below are tough to acquire. Rather than belaboring this issue, I assume that successful survivors will be people of tenacity, perseverance, and resourcefulness. A silencer is a good example of something that will test a survivor’s resolve. Under most city survival circumstances in the United States they are very illegal. At the same time, silencers—or something like them—are essential.
Many survivalists like myself have discovered perfectly workable substitutes for silenced weapons. These are inexpensive, relatively easy to make, and legal. Some readers will demand the real thing. Since many, many books are out there on the subject of homemade silencers, I won’t try to cover that information here.
The first serious problem I encountered while researching this chapter involves the fact that even average Americans who know little about guns know infinitely more about them than survivors of Beirut or Berlin who may have actually shot it out with marauding intruders.
Here is an example. City survivors will definitely need sniper rifles, I was told with great seriousness and enthusiasm by an Arab friend from Beirut.
“So what constitutes a sniper rifle?” I asked.
“Its one with a telescopic sight,” I was informed. To me, a sniper rifle is a tactical rifle capable of 4-inch groups at a minimum 800 yards. This fellow was actually describing what we commonly refer to as a deer rifle.
Are accurate 500-yard shots inside cities sufficient? Perhaps yes and perhaps no. Firearms are always very personal matters. My position is that sniper rifles of some sort are extremely important, and that an 800- to 1,000-yard rifle will also do well at 500 yards. But it doesn’t work the other way around.
My analysis of this Beiruti fellow’s grasp of this subject was complicated by the fact that, although he had been an active soldier engaged in fighting in the city, he had no clue regarding differences between hunting and sniper rifles. He did not even know how to sight in a rifle with optic sights!
Israeli army tacticians started it with development of their Uzi submachine guns. Instead of taking careful aim, the concept here was to let a hail of bullets fly in the direction of a potential target, who cowered to hide or ran in terror.
The concept of just firing toward a target rather than taking aim became doctrine in the Middle East and then in the old Soviet army. Things are slowly changing back again, but we still see military units today composed of infantry who engage the enemy by firing AK-47s blindly around corners or over the tops of barriers. There are also increasing numbers of soldiers who carry what we might refer to as scope-sighted deer rifles. They are called snipers, but these are the guys who are supposed to shoot at specific enemy targets out to the limit of their weapon’s range (about 500 to 600 yards). Will shooters aiming at an enemy again outnumber general-direction shooters? Changes seem to be occurring. How far they go is anybody’s guess.
My personal conviction is that true long-range, superaccurate sniper rifles are the next wave. This is principally because these weapons can inflict incredible material damage on enemy equipment without actually physically engaging enemy personnel. For those who can really acclimate themselves to coldly shooting another human, sniper rifles can also be a real deterrent to invaders. Shoot the pilot or ruin his helicopter on the ground; the results are similar.
There is .always the danger of fighting this war with last war’s technology. Sniper rifles may fall into that category, but for the foreseeable future they seem to have secured their role as destroyers of valuable, often irreplaceable property from great distance and as a deterrent to infantry. It also seems that after a veritable explosion of recent sniper rifle technology, things have stabilized to some extent. It’s a good time to put a sniper rifle together.
ASSEMBLING A SNIPER RIFLE
Assembling a tactical rifle takes at least 18 months and about $2,000. City survivors who might need this type of equipment are well advised to get cracking. Not only does assembling all the components take time, it only takes one nut to bring the wrath of the government down on these weapons. Absolutely everyone with any qualifications who makes these weapons is currently booked ahead about 6 to 8 months. If new regulations are proposed, prices will zoom skyward and waiting lines will become hopeless.
There are, of course, many ways to proceed. First and easiest, but not usually best, is to purchase a completely assembled, heavy-barreled Winchester or Remington sniper rifle. Because these stock packages are not usually ¼-minute-of-angle grade without further tuning by a competent sniper rifle gunsmith, this is not usually considered to be the best course of action.
Bill Hicks and Co., Ltd., 15155 23rd Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN 55447, often seems to have the best inventory of these types of rifles. Hicks is a wholesaler, so one would have to ask a local dealer to order for them.
Most basic actions used in tactical rifles require extensive hand turning on the part of skilled gunsmiths who have worked on many rifles of this type. One dramatic exception includes rifles and actions manufactured by Sako in Finland. Sakos are usually very accurate right out of the box. Alas, bare Sako actions are not imported in large numbers. When one is found for sale, the price will be high to very high. Bill Hicks and Co., Ltd., is often a good place to inquire about Sako actions. If not, contact Stoeger Industries, 5 Mandsard Court, Wayne, NJ 07470, to find out which wholesale distributors recently took delivery on a number of actions. Probably it will be a Sako Model L691 Mag action unless you intend to try and make a much smaller .308 or .223 into a tactical rifle. Sako’s small actions are Model S49s.