I say if you live in an apartment in the city and don't have a bug out plan or location the only prep you need is a gun and one bullet for each member of your family.
I'm doing my own take on the ar7. Except mine is an internal suppressed 10/22 take down main thing it doesn't do that the ar7 does is fit in side it's own stock. Who wants to shoot a bunny or bird with a 223? There wont be anything left of it. Just meat spray coating near by ground, plants and trees.
I've made a habit of printing out and binding any reference material I use more than once. It eats a lot of shelf space, but: a computer without power, (or with a bullet through it), is a door stop. And people give these things to me - usually as a box of lose parts. For lack of good instructions.
Into your cost breakdown don't neglect ears & eyes as well as possibly a range membership. And as to cleaning the moment you open that nice new box: YES! My wife & I picked up his/hers Kimber Micro 380s for those days around here when a golf shirt, or even a tee is too hot. Off to the range we go. Really odd Fail-to-Fire failures fairly regularly but the same round fed back through fired the 2nd time. Sitting down and really checking things the failures didn't even have a dimple in the primer face. Back home and strip the buggers down - they were packed to the brim with a cosmoline type goo, but thicker and stickier. Kimber stated that they are packed like that off the manufacturing line but were supposed to have been cleaned prior to being shipped to the final distributor. Oops... Excellent random failure training at he line, but could have been disastrous in a defensive situation.
I have all the fire arms and ammo I need ,and I don't but it up at the range . My practice trigger time is with air guns , cheaper quieter and possess most of the functions necessary to maintain my shooting skills. One last thing . Another item often ignored is having a ram rod for clearing a misfired round . It is suicide to attempt to fire another round behind a misfire that happened to leave a bullet in the barrel . firing another round behind it in an attempt to clear it, will fragment that barrel like a grenade and drive the bolt back in your face . I was very glad to have been made aware of this possibility when I was new at reloading and had a misfire ,fortunately the message of caution paid off and I took my steel ram rod and drove the bullet out . I was shooting 44 mag. Ruger single 6 . if I fire a weapon and do not see a response or even suspect that a dead round had stopped in the barrel a ram rod in the barrel is small insurance against doing something really stupid. During the revolutionary war a great many of the soldiers died due to attempting to fire double charged guns. consecutive wars men had died in the heat of battle firing against a plugged barrel ,neglecting to clear the misfired round correctly, even though a steel ram rod was installed as a part of the weapon . Storing practices regardless of age CAN have an detrimental effect on ammo. A while back some folks got angry because whole boxes of ammo they bought failed ,turns out they had sprayed them all with WD40, a penetrant . and what ammo wasn't sprayed directly the guns were soaked with it and bullets in the chambers and mags got a good dosing of it. It was no ones fault but the user that choose to use a penetrant/lubricant on his gun/ammo . Bullets are not completely air tight. Not for the lack of trying , wax was used for a while but it caused fouling and chambering issues and hard to remove . Crimped rounds help but handling is still going to cause some break down in the connection bullet to shell. its lead after all. While oiling is important ,too much can lead to holding more dirt and dust in a area you don't want it causing even more wear. And you certainly don't want it in your ammo.
Which is why I'm such a fan of the .22 conversion kits. I have one for every major platform I own. Even with the rise in prices .22lr is still cheaper than 5.56/7.62 Russian or NATO.
Great post Bro. I differ a bit with what we do here but I'm sure many of us do in a lot of things. I round my basic mag count up to an even dozen. I usually exceed that eventually esp for the rifles, but that's what I start out with. It stays the same for pistols. My 1911's/BHP's have a dozen each. 6 are used and six are set back. 1st of the year they get swapped. My HK's have a dozen each. For my FAL's and AR/AK types I have well over 100 for each-but I bought many of those back when new in the wrapper FAL mags were 3 bux. I honestly have no idea how many AR mags I have, over 200 I know. That's just me. While I stock spare parts, I got to where I just started buying complete kits and setting them aside. That way I know I have all the bases covered and if the need arises I can quickly build up basic M4s to make up for a shortfall within the team. I am a yuuge fan of .22lr kits for training. Platform remains the same, you can run the same drills on the cheap. Finish off with full house loads and you make your training budget stretch a bit further. Been doing this for as long as I've owned semi autos. Not taking away anything from a quality .22 pistol/rifle combo, I think everybody should own at least one of each. I'm currently working on converting one of my 10/22's into a take down for a possible load out.
The one build that has me super excited is the Surbu side charger, piston gun! It takes most AR parts, and is the same basic pattern, but solves a number of issues I have always found issue with. No buffer system behind the bolt, it uses a sort of H-K/ FAL type bolt drive and recoil spring system, no spring twang in the stock, no gassing the fire control group, an adjustable gas system that can also be shut off, making suppessed fire super quiet, a folding or collpsing stock to make the rifle extra compact, and it can still use the AR .22 conversion with a side charge handle mod which I did. This little SBR is a game changer for me, and makes this carbine a much more viable system, especially as part of a two gun high speed, low drag load out! And with standard AR parts interchangability, it' a darn near perfect set up! While it wasn't cheap, it's about what a well spec'd AR runs! That it shoots. 22 and uses the same suppressor as full pop .5.56 is a seriously useful tool!
Need pictures and a write up on that one. I'm interested in how robust the recoil spring arrangement - I've seen pictures of a few Sigs that failed, IIRC due to flexing of synthetic parts.
So far, so good! It's recoil set up is kinda like a FAL para, or an IWI dessert eagle! Uses fairly short flat wound springs that are captive! Will get some pictures soon!
