Specialized Firearms Have Their Place, But…

I sometimes chuckle when I see people talkkng about why they NEED to have an exact “super specific” use gun for each of their firearm needs. I get it, a lot of folks like very specialized firearms… to have one gun for each and every possible use.

The thing is, though, if you buy a gun specialized “exactly” to every need, you can way overspend on this one category of prepping needs and shortchange the rest of your preps.

Sometimes it’s better to mostly have multi-role guns, and keep the specialization to a minimum.

There is no single “jack of all trades prepping gun” out there. Having said that, we gotta admit that some guns are far more versatile than others,

If we keep versatility in mind, it can save us a bunch of money. To a point.

This topic reminds me of a gun story from my youth

For several years in the 1970’s my father owned a small town hardware store. He had a gun area at the store, as a lot of the small town mom-and-pop hardware stores had.

The guns were kept back behind the counter on a large rack (he only sold long guns, not handguns), and he usually had about 20 or so guns in stock.

As I have mentioned, this was in the 1970s, and he had the typical guns you would expect in a rural store in a state that bans high-powered rifle deer hunting.

The guns

He would generally have a couple of Harrington Richardson topper single shot shotguns, at least one Marlin 30-30, a couple of Remington nylons (guns that were in enormously popular at the time), a single shot .22, a Remington 870 or two, and various other guns.

Since we were near the Mississippi and Illinois Valley flyway’s, he would always keep a goose gun or two on the rack as well.

I remember he had a bolt action Marlin 55 12-gauge goose gun with a 36 inch barrel at the end of the rack at one point in time. The 55 bolt action is a beast of a gun it weighs a little under a metric ton (more or less). It’s designed to do one thing and one thing only: to shoot birds flying very far away from the hunter.

The 55 sold

One day I came into the store after school and I noticed that the Marlin 55 had sold. It was September and migratory bird hunting season was just about to start, so that’s when the goose guns tended to fly off the shelf.

I didn’t think anything more about it and got on with my work (my job was to dust and sweep the floors) and I forgot about the gun. I went to school the next day as normal, and after school I came into the store to do my chores and I noticed at the Marlin 55 was back.

Strange things were afoot at the Western Auto

Just like it is today, gun sales back then were “you bought it, you own it”.

I knew (since I cleaned the gun safe area) we didn’t have another Marlin 55 in the back, so this had to be the same gun that sold yesterday.

I went over to my father’s office and asked him about it, and he just kind of shook his head with a somewhat bewildered smile. He had taken the 36 inch goose gun back in trade for a Harrington Richardson .410 topper.

Of course I asked why the original buyer of the gun had traded the 55 back in after only one night.

My dad replied trying, not to break into laughter, “well, you see, the fella took the 55 out hunting last night. He said he was bringing the gun back because every time he shot a squirrel with it all that was left was a ball of puff.”

Specialized guns are not always the answer.

Multi-role guns

One gun cannot do every single task that needs to be done, we all know that.

There are some well-rounded guns that can, however, get pretty close (or close enough in a pinch).

Some types of guns are much more versatile than others. I personally tend to steer myself towards the more versatile and leave the more specialized guns either in the safe or, better yet, on the rack at the gun shop for somebody else to take home.

The key words there are “tend to”… because sometimes I do go specialized in a big way. Not often, but sometimes.

When to go specialized, and when to go multi-role

Spice and I has several guns in our collection/inventory/horde that are quite specialized and there’s a good reason we do.

These particular guns are designed to do the most important jobs that we need done,  jobs that would not be nearly as well served by a more multi role firearm.

Example: Spice and I both have Tavor X95 bullpups that are configured for close combat weapons, perimeter defense of guns for either one of our two homes. For this job we need very short in length high-powered easy to maneuver high-capacity 100% reliable all weather firearms.

A matched, redundant set of specialized guns

We have a matched set because we believe in redundancy. The firearms are configured nearly identically and they are set up to engage contacts at less than 100 yards because those are our specific needs.

We don’t need to worry about defending a larger perimeter than that. Why? Because 100 yards is what the line of sight is from anyplace that we anticipate needing to defend.

The bull pup design is something that Spice can easily handle, can comfortably quickly point in any direction, and can fire without getting fatigued

That makes this specialized gun the best choice for us to get this particular job covered.

The downside of such intense specialization?

Consider again these two X95’s.

With the X95’s, we have two guns that, with their optics, set us back about $5000. Brothers and sisters I’m here to tell you that is a a whole a lot of scratch for two guns, especially when considering that there’s a very small likelihood we will ever use other than just to practice with.

They are no good for hunting (although you could use them for varmint removal I suppose. They wouldn’t be the best choice for that but you could use them).

The other specific guns that we have are a couple of Mossberg pump riot guns, four inside the home defense should it ever come to that. With their short barrels and wide-open chokes these guns are only good for personal defense.

The riot guns are, at least, relatively cheap by comparison to the Tavor beasts.

Guns can be specific without being over specialized

An example of how guns can be specific without being over specialized is Spice’s trap shooting gun.

It was given to her as a gift. The gun is probably not something she would’ve bought for herself, but it’s a very nice pump shotgun with a standard set of  replaceable chokes, allowing the gun to be used in a variety of hunting roles as well as for shooting trap.

It could certainly be used for shooting turkey, or other winged game. Using the various chokes included with the gun, we could load it with slugs and use it to hunt deer with in a pinch.

Think long and hard

To sum up my point, I’m not saying a prepper should never own a super specialized gun.

We do, and for what we consider a good purpose.

What I’m recommending is to keep super specialized guns to as much of a minimum of your gun inventory as possible, and when you can concentrate on purchasing and owning multi role guns.

It will help you avoid spending too much of your overall budget on firearms, and not spending enough on everything else.