Survival Guns

Survival Guns. This topic has been rattling around in the queue for some time now. Waiting for me to shake by laziness and type it up. Then I saw this topic someone linked to on the survivalist blog.

Oh no! He beat me to the punch.

Nope. Phew. His are common sense guns that you'd want if balloon went up on the world as we know it. And you were prepared. Heck, I've been accumulating his recommendations with similar justification before I even read his article. They are good practical picks.

The Survival Guns I was interested in discussing are the types you might want to have on you if, say, you bailed out of your airplane. In fact, some of these are guns that were designed precisely for that contingency. And they are neato.

First of all, Lieutenant Fighter-Jock can't bail out with an M-14 and a Remington pump 12 gauge. Oh he COULD, I guess. But. It's impractical because of its size. He might want something more carbine like. Even smaller than the M-16. Or the M-4 stubby M-16, that I loathe.

(and you don't have to be a pilot to need a small compact single weapon that can do a whole lot of stuff for you for weeks in the wilderness with unknown critters of the 2 and 4 legged variety.)

So, anyway, I'm going to discuss capital "S" Survival Guns. Ones that might be found in the survival kit of a military emergency supply cache. Like the Springfield M6 Scout and the Henry AR-7.

Somebody DID beat me to the punch with a side by side comparison here.

I just find the whole concept neato torpedo. They aren't much of a self-defense arm... You aren't going to fight off a platoon of Viet Cong guerrillas and NVA regulars after bailing out of your crippled F-8 Crusader with either weapon. But if you find yourself Gilliganed on a South Pacific Island and want to eat every now and then for a coupla weeks, either would be invaluable.

The Scout is just a small over under rifle still popular in Europe (see above), but with simple stamped metal stock. It sort of folds in half and reassembles with wingnuts or pins or somesuch. You can shoot .22LR and .410 or even .45 Colt put of the larger barrel (though you should probably stick to .410... no rifling methinks in that bigger barrel). Lately, people have been wrapping nylon parachute cord around the barrels as a hand guard and a source of survival cordage

The Henry only shoots .22LR, but it is lighter, and the whole thing fits inside the butt stock, making it even MORE compact once collapsed up. It is supposed to be water proof and float when collapsed or otherwise, but I've read that people have to seal it up with something to keep the water out of the cap at the butt.

Am I EVER going to be in a place, in this day and age, where I'd need something like this to survive? Most definitely not. Still, it might be a fun little item to have for just plinking. If you had a small cabin in the boonies you went to for camping and hunting and such you might be able to stash one of these out there. It'd be easier to hide than a regular rifle in the event of vandals breaking in when you weren't there. In a survival situation, after the Hottentots commenced their land invasion of the United States, if you showed up naked at your cabin you'd have SOMETHING.