One Gun For SHTF

One Gun

If you could only have one gun when the Stuff Hit The Fan (SHTF), what would it be? This is a thought experiment that many preppers have played with over the years, and here’s our take on it.

We are going to try something different in this article, however… we published a podcast on this subject (listed below) and instead of writing an article covering the same ground, I’m going to just provide an edited transcript here (basically a condensed version modified in places to fit print better).

Please keep in mind this is a machine generated transcript, we’ve cleaned it up but there are going to be some items that we’ve missed. Please keep a sense of humor about this.

If this works well, we will do this again in the future (we have a ton of unpublished content just sitting in the vault, plus we can revisit some podcasts that never got supporting articles). Let us know what you think!

One Gun For SHTF

Salty: You are a normally knowledgeable person when it comes to firearms. Would you agree with that? You have at least a normal about knowledge when it comes to firearms.

Spice: I have more than the average American, right? But I am not a gun guru.

Salty: Fair enough. And you have been a person with a proper mindset for many years. Yeah, that’s fair. You are a gun enthusiast. At least when you’re shooting, you enjoy shooting guns. You like hearing them go bang. Feeling the recoil, the love on your hand, on your shoulder from the little…

Spice: Bottles filled with water exploding. Spurt water in the area!

Salty: Okay, So you enjoy it. Yes. And you find it a useful thing to do; you believe that you may need to use it in self defense at some point in time. Heaven forbid, but you may need to protect yourself with a firearm. It’s possible; it could happen.

Salty: You definitely and completely believe that you may have to protect your property from varmints; that’s already happening. Yes. So you see the use for firearm. You are a prepper. So if you could have but one gun in a survival situation — we’re talking about one gun — what is it?

If you could only have one gun and have enough ammo for it to you could have any kind of ammo that fits that particular gun. What would it be? And  the caveat: No cheating. And by cheating, I mean nothing like New England Arms handy rifles where you could get eight different barrels. Everything from a 12 gauge to a 30-06. No, that’s cheating.

No cheating.

I will not allow it. Except inasmuch as you can get a 12 gauge and then inserts what should be that 12 gauge single shot. But you could get inserts because they’re not that effective.

Shotguns

Spice: I intellectually see the value of shotguns, but I don’t love them. Okay, so I would not pick one.

Salty: I ask what you would pick; go ahead tell tell the story of what you would pick if you were picking.

Spice: Unsurprisingly, I went with something we do own because there’s a reason we own it. And that is the Tavor Bullpup.

Salty: She is talking about Tavor X-95 model. The newest model bullpup in 2.23 x 5.56 NATO. Now go ahead and explain your reasoning as to why you would pick the Tavor.

Spice: It’s about probabilities of what it’s needed for and how good the gun would be at it. Okay, it’s unlikely that I would ever need to shoot a human being to defend myself. But if I do need it, I really need it. And it’s a good choice for that. Yes, it’s easy for me to handle. It’s easy for me to aim accurately. I can carry it around comfortably. I could carry it anywhere, crashing through the woods or whatever. 

Range

Salty: And as we have it set up, it’s her sort of set up. Both Tavor carbines are actually set up as close quarters combat style rifles. They have the fast acquisition sights, but with adding a magnifier to that holographic sight. You can get out to the accurate rage of the gun, which is probably for hunting accuracy a couple hundred yards.

Spice: Which is as far as you can see in any one direction, in the kind of territory I would be likely to hunt because it’s all we own.

Salty: Right, and wooded.

Spice: Largely wooded. So if you can see that far, you’re doing better than most days.

Salty: Okay, so let’s let’s take a look at what are the things that you would be most likely to need.

Spice: Likely to need a gun for midsize varmints. Because if I’m in a survival situation, what I’m actually doing is I’m trying to keep some livestock and permaculture stuff and planting a big garden. Things like that. I’m planning on growing a lot of my food and keeping some livestock to supply the rest. That’s what I am most likely to need. And I know the varmints are a real problem. They will eat your lunch for you.

Varmints

Salty: Talk about the varmints that you would likely run into.

Spice: You mean the coyotes? I hear them every time I sleep out at the Place. But do you mean you mean the coyotes that live to the southwest of us or the coyotes that live to the southeast of us? Because we have two separate packs within hearing distance out there. There’s no way I’m gonna be able to keep fowl or rabbits out there without being able to protect them. We’ve also got at least a couple of families of foxes. Got a bunch of tracks …

Salty: Saw a fox a couple years ago walking out in the middle of daylight. Looks at me like “What are you doing here?” You know, I belong here. I’m saying he was giving us The Look.

Spice: I got the stare down from him just about a month ago when I was cutting wood out there as well. He wasn’t more than 20 yards from me and he was just like, “Yeah, what do you doing in my woods?” I was admiring you, you handsome boy.

Salty: But if we had chickens, we might need your pelt. Yes, your pelt might come in handy because …

Spice: They’re surprisingly ingenious about breaking into enclosures and slaughtering everything in sight.

Salty: And a 2.23 would handle Mr Fox. I think so.

Spice: And we got racoons all over the place there; which will trash a garden hard.

Salty: Yeah, well, people don’t think about raccoons trashing gardens, but the city people don’t think about trashing gardens.

Spice: We’ve seen that trick. So that’s the thing I would almost certainly actually need a gun for, and the Tavor would be a good choice.

Salty: You could actually — and people would will raise their eyebrows about this, but only people who don’t actually hunt —  you could actually hunt rabbits and squirrels with 2.23 if you hit them in the head. If you hit him in the body, they would explode.

Spice: Yeah, there wouldn’t be anything left.

Salty: But you could take their heads off. And you should be able to do that within 50 yards with the Tavor. 

Two Legged Varmints

Salty: So we have two-legged problems. We have four-legged problems. What about deer? Could you deer hunt with that gun?

Spice: I could deer hunt with that gun if I had at pretty close range, because it’s not as big a slug, as a big a bullet, as I would like to take down big game with. But I could do deer with it. If it was really close. I could do cattle with it. And if it’s a really survival situation, there’s probably a bunch of feral cattle around where we are.

Salty: And hogs. The hogs would get out.

Spice: Yeah, the hogs would be harder to shoot with that setup.

Salty: You could you could shoot. You can shoot hog.

Spice: Yeah, totally ruin their day. Yeah, they probably die. But I might not be able to catch him and eat him. And I don’t want to be right up with him if he’s wounded.

Salty: You gotta be watching that on wild hogs. Anyway. You’re careful on wild hogs. Yeah. True.

Spice: I’d want to get in a blind or stand to be shooting hogs with .223. 

Salty: An acquaintance — I’m not gonna actually call him a friend — raises free range hogs, which is totally different than a wild hog. He raises free range hogs. And even with a free range hog, the difference in the meat is astronomical.

Spice: Yeah, it doesn’t even look like store pork. It looks more like venison, fattier venison. But it looks more like venison. Much less marble. Much more red. The hogs have a much better diet, and they’re a lot healthier.

357 Reasons

Salty: Actually, I like her choice. I mean, you’re OK for home defense, although it absolutely would not be my first interior home defense choice. But it would be a decent one. The thing with the bullpup is it is very short. You can actually handle it in a very congested situation, which is, of course, why the Israelis do that. They have to deal with a lot of house-to-house type situations.

Now our bullpups are slightly longer than what the Israelis use. They pad length at the shoulders. And the barrel length is two inches longer than what the Israelis use because of the stupid law that you can’t have a short, short barreled rifle. So they meet the import laws, beat U.S. standards, but they’re still very, very maneuverable. Much shorter than most.

Good choice. It’s also one I would not have thought of. That’s why I asked her.

I can see many, many good choices. I’m gonna talk about a few.

Options

My first choice (and this is the really where the serendipity comes in) is a gun that I don’t actually own. I’ve been wanting to buy one of these for a long time. I’ve had similar guns.

My first choice is a Henry lever gun, specifically a large handgun caliber carbine. The model I like has a 16.5 inch barrel, and it comes in pretty much all the larger handgun calibers. I know they have 44 Magnum, and they have them all the way down to like .327 Federal Magnum (no, 327 is not a typo). All the basically the big hand gun cartridges. I know it’s available on 45 Long Colt. I know it’s available in .357 Magnum. I know it’s available in 327 Federal Magnum. I know it’s available in 44 Magnum.

One of those gets you the following:

It gets you a short, reliable recoil controlled repeating carbine, which means you can get out multiple shots, with fast shooting. You pop off four or five shots, in a real hurry with a gun that is easy to maneuver with. Has excellent iron sights or you could put optics on it if you want to.

Very, very easy to handle. Lightweight. And that’s also a gun that does exactly the same thing is what she was talking about. It will help you. You could control varmints both two legged and four legged with it. Very good home defense. The gun is short making it easy for you to move around, but you’re still getting that 16 and 1/2 inch barrel so the muzzle velocity goes way up on those rounds.

(Edited: Long story short, I ordered one in .357 Magnum)

Lever Guns Are Reliable

Spice: I think Henry’s are an enormously reliable and well made gun. This is something I could see working for you for, as as long as I’m gonna live. It’s got a lot of the same benefits as the war I was talking about in terms of ease, of use and, ah, versatility of missions you could use it for. And it’s just a sweet gun to hold and use its light. It’s maneuverable, you know, if I could just have one gun, that also might be one that I would pay. Yeah, I’m not saying this is a better choice than mine, but I’m saying I can. I can see going this way and it might be a better choice than mine.

Salty: It does have a couple of real advantages and one big disadvantage over the Tavor. I can think of two or three. It’s less likely to be made illegal. There is absolutely no possible way that you could consider a tube of magazine pistol caliber carbine as an assault assault rifle. You have six shots, six plus one and six plus one in the chamber.

So you talking seven shots perfectly safe to put in the chamber because of the trigger, the hammer cock. So it’s perfectly safe to walk around with one of the one of the pipe. There’s no chance that guy’s gonna be banned unless they’re banning all guns. And then all all bets are off.  This thing cost $700. Iit doesn’t look like a dangerous gun. I know that such a stupid concept that most people wouldn’t think of it. Most gun people but doesn’t look scary.

Spice: It looks more like something from an Old West movie.

The “Evil” Features

Salty: Yeah, a Tavor looks scary. A AR-10 or an AR-15 looks scary. A AK-47 looks scary. Again, it’s dumb, but that’s what we are dealing with today.

Spice: Let’s face it. If looking scary was not important, they never would have made bayonet mounts illegal

Salty: Exactly or pistol grips. That gun is as deadly for the 1st 6 shots as a lot of other guns, you know, 357 Magnum round coming out of that gun will wreck your day if you get hit by it. I mean, it’s actually arguably a much more potent round than a .223 coming out of a Tavor or AR on a human because it hits a lot with a lot more mass, and it really doesn’t matter when you’re talking about getting eight inches deep in a human, you’re like you’re probably more likely to be killed by a .357 Magnum round out of a long barrel than you are by .223… although I don’t want to be hit by either.

Spice: People aren’t eight inches deep to their core bits.

Salty: I think it’s a good choice now as to specifically why I’m doing .357.

Will we have calibers that we heal that we stick to those calibers? Be an hour revolvers. All of our revolvers that we use for a survival stuff are .357 or .38 special. If I were just buying a standalone gun, I would probably get a .44 Magnum

Let’s Look at the .22LR

Salty: What else might you look at? A lot of people will say the perfect survival round is a .22 and I disagree. I love .22. I shoot .22 all the time. I enjoy it. They’re fun.

Spice: For small game. Small game is not the highest thing on my needs list. If I’m in a survival situation, there’s not that much meat on squirrel. Rabbits. Okay? You gotta get rid of the rabbits.

Salty: You’re not the hunting squirrels with but a .22 you could. Okay, Could you use .22 for self defense? Yes, you could. Having said that…

Spice: I don’t want to. First of all, it’s rimfire and rimfire rounds are inherently unreliable. So ,22 just a very poor soft around. You can get the get the magnum around you can get this Stinger rounds is true. Other fairly reliable. And they hit pretty hard. You will definitely kill somebody.

Spice: I have used one as a pocket gun. On occasion when I wanted something right when I was gonna be out in the woods by myself and all I could all I really wanted to carry is something I could fit literally in a pocket. I’ve done that with hot rounds, but…

Salty: Yeah, but you weren’t actually carrying .22. You were carrying .22 magnums. That’s a different round. It’s a little more impactful round. So anyway, .22 you know, it’s not a choice we would make. Shotguns are great. Even though the shotguns can use multiple barrels, I’m gonna say it’s one gun. A shotgun, that can be a flexible type gun. 

Combo Over/Unders

Spice: How about one of those shotgun like the .22 – .410 over unders.

Salty: (vastly condensed from the audio version) Yes. 

Salty: Pack rifles like our Kel-Tec Sub 2000. It would be in actually a pretty good choice. Now, my first caveat is I don’t necessarily want to I have my life depend on a Kel-Tec because Kel-Tec’s I have owned have had some reliability issues.  Yeah, but with the good quality with a Glock magazine or with the magazine. It ships with the P mag. It was flawless.

I’ve had no trouble with shooting my sub 2000 and you’re going to see an article on that one of these days? Um, that might be a good choices. Nine millimeter carbine. I would not want to hunt with they nine millimeter though. You know, it’s legal. I wouldn’t wanna hunt deer with a nine millimeter carbine though.

It’s just not enough around to get the job done. I wouldn’t I would not hunt hogs with a nine millimeter carbine either. I would have no trouble taking out a coyote with it. Of course they do make Sub 2000’s in slightly bigger rounds, but any way you go it’s still a pistol round.

Spice: You want a deer with a light around? You’re risking not getting the deer. You want a hog with a light around. You’re risking having a bunch of really mad hogs trying to eat you those things can get me.

Salty: Hogs are mean. They will charge you. 

Options

Spice: So there are some options. Are there other options out there? Sure, there are. I don’t like any single shot option, though, frankly,

Salty: Not if it is your only gun.

Spice: Especially since I have never had to fire a weapon in anger. And if trouble ever happened to me I’m sure my accuracy would suffer.

Salty: Yeah, that is, if somebody were That is one big disadvantage with Henry as if you were in actual battle rounds limitations would be have a disadvantage, but it would still be a decent choice. Yeah, but frankly, I’m not to spend my life worrying that my chances of being in a gun battle are going to be high. I just don’t think that’s going to be very likely here. I’m not saying I’m not going to be prepared. I’m saying I just can’t see that happening. I just really can’t.

Spice: I can see a guy deciding he was a predator and I was his prey. Yes, because that happens to small women frankly.

Salty: I can see a guy going getting mad at you or me and we need to defend ourselves. But actually a full scale battle in my little tow?. Yeah, I don’t think so. Having said that, we do have weaponry if comes to that. So anyway, just some thoughts. What do you think? Do our theories hold water? You had other ideas. Leave us a comment. Let us know.