That is as hard hitting a piece as I have ever seen.

The best hand President Obama has left is “the dead man’s hand”. The problem we have is that we are the bet. An aweful lot of thugs will figure they can beat aces and eights.

Uh, make that “one of our favorite…”

…and, you really should hear Moncton’s debate challenge to Al Gore. it’s in the closing minute of the show. What a hoot –how can Gore ignore ? but then, how can he not ?

I have nothing against the Garand. My dad carried one across Europe with the 71st Infantry. He qualified Expert with it and bloody near any other weapon they had, including the BAR. I found this out after I found his military records after his last heart attack while helping look for his medical insurance papers. He never regained consciousness, and he never did talk much about the war. Turned out that he was one of the first non-white squad leaders in the combat infantry. I’m pretty sure that besides his natural inclinations to do everything the best he could, it involved the necessity of being able to beat the odd racist at every point of competition, including I suspect behind the barracks. I’d like a Garand myself, for family historical reasons.

It is a good weapon, albeit a bit heavy by modern standards. It is chambered for the older 30.06 instead of the .308/7.72 mm. 30.06 is made in this country, is still fairly common, and is heavily reloaded by private individuals. If I could not get a 7.62 NATO weapon, I would consider the GARAND a very acceptable substitute.

The M-16 in all of its modern variants [the old ones DID jam constantly if not religiously maintained] has its advantages and disadvantages. The 5.56 NATO round is our military standard so it has the logistical plus the same as the 7.62 NATO. It is lighter. The full auto mode is over-rated and is not on the modern versions because it is inaccurate and wastes ammo. 3 round bursts are all you need.

There are disadvantages in that it has a shorter effective range, and in brush it is more affected by what is growing between you and your target. These were partially compensated for with the SS109 round and a tighter rifling twist in the modern versions. Still and all, it is not going to reach out as far, or hit as hard at its extreme range as the 7.62 NATO or 30.06. This can have consequences if you are in more open country either in combat or are after large “bush tucker”. You have to stalk closer before firing.

A lot of the deployed troops, especially SpecOps types, have complained bitterly about the lack of effective range and killing power of the 5.56 round, and there is now a special upgraded 6.8mm version that does better that is being issued to deployed SpecOps. But the Army as a whole does not want to pay to replace its battle rifles with something better, so 5.56 is going to be around for a long time. Ammunition for the upgraded version is far from common, so even though it is a more effective weapon, unless you have a secure source for enough ammo, I would pass on it.

In “Military Operations in Urbanized Terrain” [MOUT] the M-16 is lighter, handier in tight spaces [especially the M-4 carbine variant], and range and killing power problems are cancelled by the shorter ranges involved.

Take your planned tactical situation into consideration as a factor in weapon choices.

Especially if you have a group of kindred souls, it might be worthwhile acquiring a couple of different Field Manuals for cash at gun shows. MOUT and Basic Combat come to mind, for study. Remember, your goal is to defend you and yours, not to go Goblin or Orc hunting; at least at first. If they don’t encounter you, they cannot hurt you. If there are later requirements to hunt Uruk Hai, hopefully there will be Oathkeepers about to organize things.

Subotai Bahadur

I couldn’t swing the thrity dollars for an M-1 but my dad had one that he shot regularly. A fine rifle if there ever was one.

Eggplant, try checking Gunbroker.com for prices. There has been a real run on guns in general since about July of last year with the assualt rifles leading the price wave. You could probably get three shotguns and a deer rifle for the price of an M-16.

The biggest thing to remember is that bad guys are rarely the psycho-killers of the movies, they are looking to steal something and be alive to use it. If you open fire they are apt to back off and look for a softer target.

Subotai Bahadur’s advice about practice cannot be overstated. Shoot at man-profile targets, shoot at small targets, practice rapid loading, do thirty or forty push-ups and then shoot right away so you will know what your group will look like under stress.

All that said, my weapon of choice out of the hundred-plus guns that I own is my Remington 870 pump loaded with buckshot and slugs alternately. Nothing says “Get The F%$k Out!” (in any language) the way the sound of the slide slamming forward does.

i remember being a little kid in 1950s Baton Rouge, Louisiana. we lived close to downtown where there was (and still is i’m sure) a big Nat’l Guard armory near the state capitol building, with several ‘army surplus stores’ (as they were called then) nearby. Back in the rear of the stores there’d be stacks and stacks of used M1 Garands (i have a mental picture that some were rusty & muddy as if straight from the field someplace) selling for iirc about five bucks apiece.

Had Miss Polly Hebert been thinking entrepreneurship in her first-grade classroom at Fairfield Elementary, maybe we coulda cornered the market on the cheap.

–’course i didn’t have the five bucks to get started, but that’s just a detail –a good business plan and maybe a fake moustache to look a little older, and ….

I imagine those same rifles are still around, for about fifteen hundred or two thousand bucks per, i’d guess sans searchi.

Both my grandfather (the ex-policeman) and my father swore by the M1 Garand. My father served in the USMC during the Korean War and was designated to carry a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). He absolutely hated that weapon. It was heavy, bucked like a mule and difficult to maintain. However my father had nothing but praise for the M1. My grandfather (who was also a corporal in the USMC) insisted that the M1 was the finest weapon ever made. I strongly suspect their opinions are obsolete and modern infantry rifles like the M16 are superior. My uncle, who served with the US Army in Vietnam, disliked the M16. He said the weapon felt like it was made by Mattel and had a nasty tendency to jam. My uncle manned a machine gun on an armor personal carrier. However my uncle always kept a shotgun handy which I believe was his preferred weapon.

>>excerpt from new Nyquist essay, The Executive Branch and the Roots of Order

It’ll be a repeat of that ugly scene in “Soylent Green” where they hand you a nice tasting poisoned drink and you can watch high definition nature movies while listening to pleasant music. That’s what Obama-Care really boils down to.

Sorry eggplant, can’t afford the carbon credits to turn on that bigscreen plasma for you. But you can stare at the nature mural Ms Twitchbeaks’s 3rd Grade Class from Oabama Elementary painted a few years ago.

Depending on exactly where you live, if there are critters that are edible in the area [birds, squirrels, rabbits, deer, etc.], consider not only heavier shotgun pellet loads for combat and/or larger game, but also lighter loads for taking small game.

.22s are good for small game. They’re cheap so you can buy several, and the ammo is cheap as well as still relatively plentiful (compared to the combat rounds anyway) so you can stock up. Nothing you’d want to bring to a gunfight, but something you could use for filling the stock pot. Plus, it means you can save your heavier rounds for defense.

If, y’know, it comes to that.