For My Own Reference: Rifle Cartridges
I’m trying to pick a rifle cartridge, and immediately thought of Kim DuToit, the Rifleman himself. Took me awhile to find the post I was thinking of, but here it is, with the comparison photo I was looking for:
This post will be updated as I find more stuff I care about. Again, for my own reference only; I’m not trying to make a point here.
(If you care, I’m looking at spending about $500 on a magazine-fed rifle suitable for fighting — although not for home defense, and not that I’m planning or hoping to get in a fight any time soon, or ever. I want the cartridge to be widely available. I don’t insist on semi-auto or huge magazine capacity. I don’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other about “tactical” styling. I think it should have iron sights, but my eyes are getting so creaky, I’m probably going to need a scope to hit anything more than 25 yards away. Right now, I’m leaning towards .30-06 or .308 Win/7.62×51 NATO.)
By the way, having invoked Kim, here’s his Basic Principles of Gun Ownership.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
I design guns for a living, did a hitch as a Marine, and compete in High Power Rifle. Still, may I suggest a SKS, preferably a Yugoslavian, all milled one?
Short, handy, rugged as hell, all the practical accuracy you could need, 30-30 ballistics from the same ammunition used for the AK47, but no detachable magazine or pistol grip, so no labelling as an “assault” rifle. I really have a great deal of repect for the handy little things, and regard them as dramatically superior to the semi-auto “AK47″’s you see around. The AK was designed for one thing, and one thing only, to be reasonably controllable in long bursts of full auto fire. Since nobody over here has a full auto AK, the sad copies are ergonomic nightmares.
The Chinese copies of the SKS are cruder, but still quite as functional. Just not as accurate as the European ones, and the stock is way too short for the average American. The Yugoslav SKS is an exceptionally good quality combat/defense/hunting weapon, from point blank to perhaps 200 yards.
Also, the $500 figure you mentioned would buy the rifle and several hundred rounds of ammunition to practice with. The rifle is only as good as the man behind the trigger.
It’s an incredibly simple weapon to disassemble and clean, plus the chrome plated bore and gas system allow you to use cheap corrosive ammo without worry if it takes you a few hours to get arount to cleaning it.