Article: 10491 of rec.aviation.misc Newsgroups: rec.aviation.misc,rec.aviation.piloting,rec.aviation.products Path: newshost.ncd.com!ncd.com!olivea!charnel!charnel.net.csuchico.edu!nic-nac.CSU.net!usc!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!ames!sgi!peck.com!bounce From: elitist@vt.edu (Dr. T. Caceci) Subject: Survival Guns for Light Aircraft Message-ID: <1994Apr22.043729.20662@peck.com> Followup-To: rec.aviation.misc Sender: geoff@peck.com (Geoff Peck) Organization: not supplied Date: Fri, 22 Apr 1994 04:37:29 GMT Approved: geoff@peck.com Lines: 304 Xref: newshost.ncd.com rec.aviation.misc:10491 rec.aviation.piloting:4197 rec.aviation.products:1657 SURVIVAL GUNS FOR LIGHT AIRCRAFT By Dr. T. Caceci (elitist@vt.edu) North American private pilots frequently fly over remote, rugged, and difficult country. A forced landing in some areas can easily mean a week-long wait for rescue, or a week-long walk back to civilization. Proper preparation and suitable equipment greatly increase the chance of "coming back out in one piece" and one piece of survival gear pilots should consider is a lightweight firearm to fend off scavenging animals attracted to the crash site, or for obtaining food. In this discussion I will be working from the assumption that there will be no other intended use for a gun. That is, it's not going to be used for hunting or target practice, or home defense; it's just a piece of emergency equipment to help you stay alive through 50-100 miles of National Forest in the event of a forced landing. With that in mind, here are some choices, and a consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of each. Choice #1: A .22-caliber Rifle. There are scadrillions of .22's on the market, all of them suitable in some degree as a survival gun. A .22 has a lot going for it: ammunition is cheap (usually less than $1.50 for 50 rounds, sometimes less than $1.00) and you can carry quite a bit, since 100 rounds weighs only a few ounces. The .22 Long Rifle round is no powerhouse, but it's quite suitable for killing small to medium size animals up to the size of a fox, especially with high-velocity hollow-point bullets designed for hunting. Good-quality .22 rifles by makers like Marlin are inexpensive ($125 or less) and widely available. Having said that, it's worth considering some of the drawbacks of .22 rifles as a class. First, a rifle requires practice, and hitting moving targets is an acquired art. Snap shots at running bunnies are usually a waste of ammo, as is trying to hit a squirrel much over 15 yards off, unless you know what you're doing. If you opt for a rifle you should practice regularly so that you can be reasonably sure you will hit what you're aiming at. One .22 designed specifically with survival in mind is the AR-7, an 8- shot magazine-fed autoloader made by Survival Arms. This ingenious little rifle can be dismantled and stuffed inside itself to give a very compact package. The barrel unscrews and fits into the stock, as does the action; the whole thing is sealed up with a watertight rubber buttplate. The stock makes it buoyant and the AR-7 will float if dropped into water. These little guns have been made by various companies all virtually indistinguishable except for markings. The AR-7 is a civilian derivative of USAF pilot survival weapon and dates back to the 1950's. It is more or less the quintessential survival rifle, in that it really has few other uses. The flotation feature is perhaps more important to a boater than a pilot, but if you do a lot of flying over open water it may be important. It's very light and compact, and will stow easily in a small space, say behind a seat or in a tool well somewhere. The AR-7 is rugged and well suited to the rigors of life in the woods. List price on these is $150, and used ones don't run much cheaper. There are some drawbacks to the design, however. The AR-7 is no target gun, and while it's a respectable shooter, the level of accuracy demanded for consistent success in killing small animals just isn't built into a 2-1/2 pound take-down gun. (Keep in mind that a squirrel's head is about the size of a half-dollar; and the whole critter isn't much longer than a dollar bill, if you leave out the tail.) The AR-7's sights are crude, but with some practice you can reliably hit beer-can-sized objects at 25 yards or so. In a real-life survival situation, you may have to settle for really small quarry, such as chipmunks and small birds; potting sparrows with an AR-7 will be a demanding task, and again, you will be able to do it consistently only if you practice. Another shortcoming of the AR-7 is that it can't be fitted with a sling, which means you have to carry it in your hand all the way home. It's light, but walking a few dozen miles with your hand curled around it will make it a lot heavier. A sling is desirable for any type of gun, as it leaves your hands free for other things, like climbing rocks. Another good .22, slightly classier than the AR-7, is the Marlin "Papoose" a takedown rifle which comes in a neat little nylon carry bag. It has a wood stock (doesn't float) and is a good bit more accurate than the average AR-7. It weighs slightly over 3 pounds, and lists for $196. Marlin has a reputation for building good-quality guns that sell at reasonable prices, and the company is widely acknowledged to make the most accurate .22-caliber guns in their price range. All in all, these two are about the best rifle choices for a small aircraft with limited space and weight capacity. Larger-caliber rifles are really not worth considering for survival use unless you seriously expect to encounter dangerous animals if you are forced down, and maybe not even then, since a shotgun will serve the same purpose (see below). Choice #2: A Shotgun. The shotgun is the world's favorite hunting weapon. More animals, small and large, are killed yearly with shotguns than all the rifles in the world put together. They're a good bet for people who don't shoot much, because the handful of small birdshot they throw makes a hit much more likely, especially if the shooter is careful to pick slow-moving or immobile targets. Squirrel hunters sometimes will say, "Use a shotgun when you want to kill 'em, and a rifle if you just want to scare 'em a bit," a wry acknowledgement of the difficulty of hitting small agile animals with a single projectile. Another advantage of shotguns is the different types of ammunition available. Discount-store "game load" shotshells can be used for small to medium-sized animals. A box of 25 shells will run $4-8 depending on the shot size and weight. You can also carry along a few rounds of buckshot or "slugs" (single bullet-like projectiles) either of which will kill deer-sized animals easily. Shells loaded with buckshot or slugs are more expensive than those carrying small birdshot. Shotgun shells are generally sold in boxes of 25; slugs and buckshot usually in 5-packs. Shotguns have other virtues: many suitable ones are very inexpensive, most models will break down into pieces to fit in tight spaces, and virtually all of them can be fitted with a sling. Shotguns have their drawbacks, too. The ammunition is comparatively heavy and bulky, and consequently you can't carry too much of it. But 25 to 30 shots will be ample for most real survival situations, and you should do your practicing long before you think you might need your gun "for real". (This is especially true with slugs. Most shotguns aren't terribly accurate, but the real source of this problem is that few of them have much in the way of sights suitable for use with single projectiles. Most have just a groove in the back end of the barrel and a little bead up front, which is what you need for moving targets; but it usually means that slugs shoot well above the point of aim. Practice is required to find out where any given gun puts slugs in relation to the aiming point.) Shotguns come in different "gauges". The commonest gauges are 12, 20, and .410. The 12 is the biggest; the .410 the smallest. The .410 is really too small to be ideal, but .410 ammunition is light and you can easily carry 50 rounds of it. On the down side, the .410 throws much less shot than 20 or 12 gauges, decreasing the chance of a clean kill. And .410 slugs are pretty anemic, not really suited to killing animals much larger than foxes or coyotes. The 12-gauge is an excellent choice. Standard loads in this gauge carry 1 to 1-1/2 ounces of shot (compared to the .410's 3/4 ounce). Those large shot charges will reach 'w-a-a-a-a-y up into the foliage and reliably knock "tree chickens" down. The 12-gauge rifled slug will kill any animal in North America at close range (bears included); a properly placed 12-gauge slug kills deer like a lightning bolt. The mid-sized 20-gauge is a very good compromise between the portability of the .410 and the power of the 12. Loads carrying 7/8 of an ounce are standard, but you can get 20-gauges shells with up to 1-1/2 ounces if you want. The slugs are adequate for deer-size animals, though a little on the light side for really large game. The 20 kicks less than a 12 and you can carry 50 rounds without too much weight penalty. There are hundreds of suitable guns on the market, but the cheap way to go is to hike down to K-Mart or Wal-Mart and buy a single-shot 20- gauge New England Firearms Pardner. This is a robust, work-a-day utility gun, virtually indestructible in normal use. It will conveniently break down into two pieces, each less than 26" long. A brand-new one at K-Mart will set you back maybe $75, well below the list price of $110-125. Used ones can often be found for less, but the price of a new gun is so low that it hardly pays to buy a used one at all. If you opt for any shotgun, you should spend another $30 or so on a set of detachable sling swivels, a webbed nylon sling, and a 25-shot bandoleer to wear around your waist. For ammunition, buy 1 to 1-1/2- ounce loads of #6 birdshot, in 2-3/4" length shells. Also buy 5 or 10 slugs: 1-ounce for the 12 gauge, 7/8 ounce for the 20. Twelve- and twenty-gauge single-shot shotguns (and the Savage Arms combination gun, discussed below) have a valuable design feature relevant to survival use. They are "break-open" guns, i.e., hinged in the middle so that the barrel(s) drop down to load cartridges. This permits the use of a hand accessory called a "chamber adapter" in such guns, to permit the use of a very wide variety of ammunition in the shotgun barrel. The adapter is a an auxiliary barrel externally machined to duplicate the dimensions of a shotgun shell, but much longer, typically 12" to 18". The adapters can be had chambered to accept almost any common caliber, especially rifle-type cartridges. One or two of these adapters greatly enhances the flexibility of any shotgun. They are available through MCA Sports, Inc. (in California: 818-968-5806) and Alex, Inc. (in Montana: 406-282-7396). Choice #3: A Combination Gun This has the best of both the rifle and shotgun, and there is one clearly "best" choice: the tried-and-true Savage Model 24, which has been around for about 60 years in one form or another, and just keeps getting better. At one time Model 24's were issued to USAF pilots for survival use. I have owned three of them, including one that's been in my collection almost 30 years. If I could only own one gun, that's the one I would choose, without hesitation. With it in hand I would undertake to walk across Montana and Idaho if I had to. The Savage is an "over-under design," i.e., it has two barrels, a rifle on top and a shotgun on the bottom; you can select which barrel to fire with a lever. It's essentially two single-shot gun stacked on top of each other. Various caliber/gauge combinations are made. The best rifle caliber choice is .22 Long Rifle, regardless of which shotgun gauge is chosen for the lower barrel. The lower barrels are available in .410, 20- and 12-gauge, and for the reasons discussed above, the 20 is probably the best compromise. The current version, designated the Model 24F, has a hollow polymer stock (it won't float) in which you can store small items like choke tubes, matches, extra ammo, a pocketknife, etc. Older versions generally have wood stocks. The Model 24 is a really flexible and useful package, and many hunters use them, to the exclusion of all other types of guns. Like the single-shot shotgun, the Model 24 will break down into two compact pieces that are easy to stow. A big advantage is that it has much better sights than most cheap rifles, and in this respect it's far better than any single-shot shotgun. The Model 24's drawbacks include weight, price, and size. It's about the same length as a single-barrel shotgun, but bulkier because of the extra barrel and the heavier action; and the current 24F weighs about 8 pounds. The 24F is comparatively expensive (it lists for about $400,but can be had for considerably less, even new). Nevertheless, they are great guns and well worth the money the money they cost. Another combination gun worth consideration is the M-6 Scout survival gun, made by Springfield Armory. This is another civilian copy of an Air Force-issue survival firearm. It has a metal skeleton stock, and is chambered in .22 Long Rifle (or .22 Hornet) over .410. The M-6 folds in half for compact storage, and weighs 4-1/2 pounds. It is a genuine military-styled article without a doubt, but offers no real advantage over a Model 24 in size or weight, and is almost as expensive. I have rarely seen them new for much below $275. Because of price and limited resale value for these special-purpose guns, and the unavailability of anything bigger than .410, they are not as good a choice as the Savage Model 24. Handguns: A Bad Choice You should not choose a handgun as a survival weapon. While they are very light, and easily carried, there are several reasons for not choosing one. The first reason has to do not with survival in the woods, but in the court system. Considering the current anti-gun hysteria in this country, you could easily find yourself in BIG trouble in some jurisdictions (such as New Jersey or Illinois) if you have one in your possession. Rifles and shotguns (so far) are generally tolerated except in a few really paranoia-prone places, but a handgun that gets spotted (even if it's unloaded, wrapped, and locked up) will send some people into screaming fits and probably bring the local gendarmerie down on your neck. Unless you are absolutely sure it's legal for you to have it where you are going (or unless you're willing to gamble) a rifle or shotgun is preferable, as less likely to involve legal complications. Needless to say, you should always check the applicable statutes in your intended destination, regardless of what kind of gun you have on board. This is doubly true if you fly into Canada or Mexico. Both have very strict laws against the importation of firearms. An additional consideration is that handguns are a lot easier for people working on your plane to steal, if they are so inclined. There are (or could be) serious liability implications if this happens and the gun later is used in a crime. The Federal government can trace virtually any legally-obtained firearm to its original owner, and you could find the police knocking on your door to ask questions about how your gun turned up in a robbery 800 miles away; not a pleasant prospect. More to the point, killing small game with a handgun demands considerable shooting skill, and you'll go hungry if you aren't really an expert shot. And no handgun, even a big Magnum, has anywhere near the power and reach of a shotgun, if you do have the chance to shoot something with some size to it. Training Courses If you are new to firearms ownership and use, you should take a course in proper handling and responsible gun ownership, and do so BEFORE you buy any gun. Such courses are widely available, and usually last only one or two evenings. The National Rifle Association has a "Home Firearms Safety" course, offered through local sportsmen's clubs and gunshops. Virtually all state-level fish and game departments offer a "Hunter Safety Course" which is often mandatory for the issuance of a hunting license. Either of these will familiarize the novice gun owner with the basic principles of firearms operation and safe use. To find out what's available in your area, contact the local fish and game authorities. Or call the NRA's Education and Training Division at (703) 481-3340 to ask about course availability where you live. ***** Postscript: Readers who find this information useful are encouraged to reply by e- mail to elitist@vt.edu with feedback, comments, or requests for further information. I am not a regular reader of rec.aviation. TC