Some personal thoughts and general observations from teaching weapons and combatives largely to like minded (survivalist) types for several decades now-
This post was spurred by the all to usual question regarding "which rifle is best" type of question. It was in relation to AR choices.
After having several go down on me and seeing multiple more go down hard, I walked away from AR's in the 90's for a long while.
The BCM rifles got me back to ARs and something I never thought I would ever say again- I trust my BCM rifles with my life. I was known as an "AK guy" and "AR hater" for decades. For me, a rifle has to have 100% reliability. No BS, no "well your rifle jammed cause the moon was in line with Pluto and it was a Wednesday..." or any similar BS excuses.
Total reliability if your serious about using your rifle for defense and survival. Nothing less.
What that actually means however is getting out and USING your rifle extensively so you can know FOR SURE, not "think you know" but KNOW that the platform is reliable.
That's where the stereotypical cheapskate prepper that doesn't practice "cause ammo is expensive" (yeah duh) but has 20K rounds stockpiled is messing up. Most have cheap arse rifles, frankenbuilds, etc.that they rarely shoot, yet feel they could use effectively in a bad situation. In short, most are kidding themselves.
Then they show up to class.... and they also didn't bother to read the three pages of recommendations they were emailed.... and their rifle isn't even lubed. Many rifles fail on people within the first few hours of class, literally maybe 200 rounds. Then I hear how the rifle has worked fine for them before- but when you look at the rifle it's so shiny and new looking you expect to still seeing a price tag hanging off of it.
Often times they have attached too many useless accessories. Usually cheap optics and rarely are the mounts loc-tited. Now don't get me wrong, some of the budget priced optics are good, but never the less, they need to be PROOFED.
We bring usually about 2-3 loaner rifles with us to class in addition to my main rifle and my son's. I've had ALL of those including our personal ones loaned out before (5 or more) in a class size of 10-12 people. Yes, 50% of the people in that class had jacked up rifles that would not work. That's literally how big of a problem this can be. Keep in mind these are all people who THOUGHT they knew, instead of actually knowing.
I've had people show up with rifles that literally the magazines would not fit in the well. I don't mean the normal crazy "I put 31 in a 30 round magazine" non sense that happens a lot, I mean dude had some off brand AR and Pmags would not even fit in the well! I thought he was able to get one round off on drill one and that was it, he was using one of our rifles for the rest of the course- and then complaining that the rifle wasn't set up like his... Well hell, crazy idea here, but bring a FUNCTIONING RIFLE to class and you won't have to borrow one! And God forbid you are thankful someone loaned you a rifle and you didn't have to just watch class!!!
And ALL of these were weapons these folks thought they would use to defend their lives and families with if TSHTF.
Buy a quality rifle, get at least 5,000 rounds of ammo and a dozen magazines, a quality optic and that's it. IR laser if you have NODs. You don't need a tactical luggage wheel attached to the rail, you don't need a tactical rear view mirror and a tactical cowbell attached to the rail. Keep it simple with what you need. Remember the gun industry will sell you everything you (don't) need... In other words, there can be a BS justification for the tactical cowbell, the tactical rearview mirrow and other stupid shittake people put on their rifles.
You should be able to hold the rifle out in one hand like a pistol (extended) for at least a minute, then switch hands and do it with the other hand. If you can't do that, I would suggest you have:
A. Too many crap hanging off your rifle
B. Need to spend more time in the knuckle pushup position
C. Both of the above.
I've watched students in class that had soooo much crap on their rifles they looked like they were doing a dance move just bringing the rifle up in ready up type drills after not many repetitions.
Your sling- can be your friend or can be a problem. We normally see it being a bit of a problem for people in class, especially once the drills get outside the box of the "same old same old" gunskewl drills.
Will your sling allow you to shoot ambidextrous? Or will it choke you in the process?
Do you know how to manipulate your weapons ambidextrous? Have you ever shot more than a few rounds that way?
What happens for most "shooters" is that they don't get to the range very often and when they do, they do things that stroke their own ego/make them feel good. So that's the typical slow fire from a bench, look at how tight my group is/take the target home and put it on the fridge for Mom to look at how good I did BS.
Being able to slowly shoot accurately is important also But that sort of shooting is just one small piece of the puzzle of skill at arms.
Many folks never move past that. Why? Because learning new skills is tough, and it takes a while to get them and in the meantime you feel like you aren't doing that super awesome blue ribbon winning job you were doing before when you were stuck in Kindergarten stuff. So many people don't try, or they were never taught the importance of things like dynamic movement while shooting, shooting in awkward positions (supine for example), ambidextrous gun handling, etc. And for the prepper crowd, this is where you usually hear the trite responses like " I don't PLAN to be moving around" or "I don't PLAN to fight off the ground" or any number of silly responses similar to the standard drivel of "I know Glock Fu" in response to people needing to learn H2H skills.
Yet NONE OF US know what the fight will be.
And the fight will be what the fight will be. For that reason, we need a broad mix of skills, not just the "I'm going to play porch sniper" prepper fantasy BS.
Once you find your "ultimate" SHTF rifle, you need to proof it, or you don't know. It's that simple. That requires using it, not it just sitting in a closet waiting for SHTF.
After much use showing it's RELIABILITY, then and only then can you consider a rifle your "SHTF rifle."
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