Cheap to shoot guns are a great way for a prepper to be able to afford to practice shooting regularly. Having said that, there’s more than just the cost per round to consider when choosing a training gun.
I’m going to present four different considerations for great prepper training choices, and I hope you find them useful. These four things are not the ONLY items to heed, but they all are things we think about when we choose what firearms to train with.
Practice guns
This article is going to feature me talking a lot a bout”practice guns”. For the purpose of this post, please assume I mean guns that are shaped/sized like full-carry firearms but that are chambered in an inexpensive bullet size like (for example) .22LR.
I’m using one gun in this example but there are many other guns that could apply… a Ruger LCR .22 substituted for a Ruger LCR .357, a Sig 1911 .22LR substituted for a 1911 .45, a S&W M&P AR-15 .22 in place of an AR-15 .223, etc.
Cheap to shoot means buying a lot of ammo
Spice and I love to shoot, but when you shoot as much as we do it gets both expensive. The money part is easy to understand, because no matter if you buy commercial ammo or reload, there’s a certain “cost per round” that there’s no just getting around.
If you shoot a lot, the cost per round often becomes more important than the cost of the gun overall when shooting “practice guns”.
Cost per round practice gun vs. carry gun
Let’s look at a good combination of a practice gun vs. a carry gun. The cheap to shoot practice gun we are using is the Smith & Wesson M&P .22LR & the M&P Shield. Now without getting to much into specifics (there are different models) you can get a .22LR and a 9MM that have very operating procedure and feel.
There’s less felt recoil in the .22LR but other than that, it feels pretty close.
I apologize in advance, but this section has just a bit of math in it.
Don’t worry, we’ve done the math for you!
Today I just bought four cheap 500 round boxes of Remington Thunderbolts for $15 a box. That’s three cents per round. A check of 500 rounds of 9mm training ammo (Winchester white box) is $120, or 24 cents per round.
The M&P .22LR street price is $325 (I paid a bit less for mine but that’s what Bud’s Gun Shop is charging at the moment).
In order to break even between the practice firearm vs. just shooting our normal carry gun, we need to shoot 1,547 rounds. Of course, this sets aside things like wear-and-tear of our everyday carry guns, so there’s a bit of an advantage there not calculated into.
Here’s the math, I’ll show the work. (Truth in advertising, Spice did the math… I’m terrible with numbers)
The difference per round shot is 21 cents. The break even point is the cost difference per round times the number or rounds to equal the cost of the additional gun.
The question, of course, this brings up is “will most people seriously shoot up that much ammo? Enough to make a difference?”
$325 / $0.21 = 1,547 = No. of rounds
I know, a lot of your out there are thinking “what do you mean, most preppers won’t shoot 1,500 rounds through one of their primary firearms. That’s nuts!” It may be nuts for you, and it’s certainly nuts for me, but I’d be willing to bet a whole lot of money that most guns in the USA never have 1,500 rounds put through them in their entire lifespans. Ammo sales numbers bear this out.
You see, there’s math… and then there’s psychology…
If you look at it using just the math, I think we all would agree that most normal preppers probably won’t shoot that many rounds in the lifetime of their guns, so it’s cheaper to just shoot the everyday carry / main prepping guns than to shoot a practice weapon.
That’s what the math says.
But here’s the thing… people aren’t computers, and we are ruled by our psychology, not a numeric processor.
People will use something that’s cheaper a lot more readily than they will something that’s expensive.
Here’s an example.
I stopped by my favorite area gun shop. They had Remington Thunderbolt .22’s (some of my favorite rounds) on sale for $15 a box of 500 (as mentioned before). Since I know we are probably going to be doing some shooting this weekend, I picked up 4 boxes. I dropped $60 (plus tax) but purchased 2,000 rounds.
While at the gun shop, I could have bought four boxes of Winchester White Box at $15 a box for 50 (gun store prices). I would have 200 rounds to split between the two of us for the same money.
A quarter a trigger squeeze, and that’s for cheap 9mm
I don’t know how you are, but I know that a lot of people really tie everything to money. I have a friend who explained why he doesn’t shoot very much to me.
He told me “I go ahead and load up my pistol, I charge the gun and aim. I squeeze the trigger, the gun fires, and my eyes see the shell fly out the ejector port. My brain sees a quarter flying through the air, because that’s what that one trigger squeeze just cost. I shoot through a double stack of 15 rounds and I just sent bullets that are the price of a Big Mac literally up in smoke.”
That’s part of the psychology I’m talking about.
If you buy 2,000 rounds you are much more likely to spend a lot more time shooting up those rounds than you would shooting the 200 rounds of 9mm.
Repetition matters
Setting aside the money, let’s just consider the difference of training level achieved between shooting 200 rounds vs shooting 2,000 rounds.
That’s 1,800 more trigger pulls, hundreds more magazine switches, 1,800 more targets sighted, hundreds of more rotations through shooting positions… I could go on and on.
Cheap ammo is the only factor when choosing a practice gun
Even though .22LR ammo is cheap to purchase and cheap to shoot, obviously not all .22LR shooting firearms are created equal.
We’ve had good success with some guns, while others have been horrible. You can read of the “terrible guns”, the ISSC M22 “Glock clone” and the Chiappa 1911-22 by clicking on those links. Fair warning, I’m a big negative on both of them.
Others I’ve had much better success with, including the previously mentioned Ruger LCR .22 / .357 combo.
Here are four things, IMHO, a practice gun needs to have. I’ll write about them in more detail in a future article.
- The gun must shoot ammo that offers a significant saving over the “main” gun
- It must be easy to clean. Guns that are a pain to clean don’t get shot much.
- The firearm must be affordable enough to pay for it’s self in savings
- It must be functionally similar to the main firearm, with a similar if not identical manual of arms
Similar is not the same, I get that…
Even with a round as tame in recoil as a 9mm, there’s a huge difference in felt recoil between a 9mm self-defense round and a .22LR.
It’s not the same experience at all with some guns. For example, there’s just no comparison of putting multiple rounds on target between the LCR .22 and the LCR .357.
Having said that, the fierce felt recoil of the .357 with a light polymer frame is so shocking, nobody in their right mind actually wants to shoot a box of ammo with the thing.
Shooting a substitute firearm doesn’t replace shooting the main gun, you still need to fire it, train with it and maintain it.
Using a cheap training gun does, however, have a lot of advantages including things I haven’t even touched on like easing beginners into the gun system, etc.
So what do you good people think? Does my theory hold water?
I agree with you Salty repetition creates muscle memory when your stressed. Works for the US Army when bullets are flying BOTH ways.
However could I suggest decent quality air pistols and rifles? Very inexpensive, cheap to feed. Can be done in a backyard most of the time unless you have a “Harriet the Spy” neighbor. Even useful as a way to “Feel” someone out concerning weapons with out showing them your AR etc.
Decent ones have triggers and sights just like real weapons and if an accident occurs a far better chance of less serious results. Yes an Air Gun is a GUN but errors occur like someone I saw slip on something while doing a in house drill. No one was hurt but pucker factor indeed.
I like to use Cowboy Action Shooting set ups so you have a fraction of a second to decide to Shoot-No Shoot as both hostiles and innocents pop up at doors and windows. In the several firefights Uncle Sam dropped me into (As a Medic) nobody stood there like a paper bad guy AND friendlies often got in the way. BB and Pellet weapons are so low damage that heavy cardboard and fishing line makes easy to set up moving targets including the 30-45 degree coming at you targets with a cheap fishing reel.
For a real blast try an air pistol drill of drawing and popping a ping pong ball. If you can bust a ping pong ball easily at 7 yards then try a buddy tossing it over there… If you wonder at the value of ping pong ball targeting take one in your hand look into a mirror and wonder just how accurate you can become hitting a moving object about the size of your eye.
All basic safety rules apply. Eye protection always!!
Your theory is genius (thank God for spell check… I misspelled genius). I have a couple pieces of hardware to do exactly what you describe, however they haven’t worked out exactly like I wanted. I bought a 22 pistol, but it is not similar to my carry pistol, so I need to get something closer. I also bought an insert for the AR that lets it shoot 22LR. You take out the bolt carrier group and slide in the contraption. It comes with its own mags. The problem is the point of aim is off by about 4 inches, probably due to the difference in bullet weight.
I have noticed though, that despite the shortcomings of the concept, it still manages to translate into better shooting with my carry pistol. You are still practicing grip, stance, breathing and trigger pull, as well as using all the same muscles. It helps me. YMMV
Subcaliber Training is good training.. Armies across the world have used it for 100 years.
Reduced wear on the Service Rifle or Pistol increase the lifespan.
Increased opportunities for training by reducing costs.
Increased small group firepower at a reduced cost.
Masking capabilities.. A 22. Cal long rifle AR would be difficult to discern from a standard AR at distance.