Defending Your Home, Food & Family With a Handgun

As promised in my blog post on defending your home, food and family, here's the last of my suggestions for your must-have weapons.

  A hand gun. A hand gun is a great addition to your home defense plan. When your shot gun or rifle is out of ammo or craps out on you it's great to have a handgun of some kind to fall back on. I say fall back on as a handgun is not the best choice for home defense. A hand gun is a last ditch weapon for when you have nothing better. Handguns are much harder to use effectively and have really limited range.


Choice of Manufacturer & Ammo is Important
Now as to what kind you get that's up to you. Just stick to a well known manufacture. Ruger, Colt, Smith and Wesson or one of the others. And stick to a common caliber like 9mm. .40cal. 38special. 45auto or the like. I love my old .455 Webly but it would be really hard to find ammo for it in an emergency.

My gun of choice is my CZ75. It's a great gun and it fits my hand like a glove. I have mentioned how important it is to pick a firearm that ammunition is readily available for. It should be said that this is of course much more important in a long term survival situation than it is in the short term. If you are only planing for the short term than you may feel that a few boxes of ammo are fine and you are probably right.

Any gunfight you find yourself in will probably be over quickly with only a few rounds fired. Long gunfights are rare. Most only last a few seconds before someone runs away or is shot. For proof of this look at how much ammo your average police officer carries. It's not much.

 One other firearm I like
 In a long term situation you would be wise to have a .22. I myself like the Ruger 10/22. I think it's the best on the market. The .22 my not be the best self defense firearm in the world but it does have a few good points for self defense that are worth mentioning.

#1 the gun itself is cheap.

#2 the ammo is cheap. And as the ammo is cheap you can practice shooting it a lot and you can stock pile so much of it you can afford to waste it. Wasting ammo can be a useful defensive tactic. Large volumes of fire can deter potential aggressors. Some people call this spray and pray. I call it spray to make them go away.

#3 low noise and recoil. Because of the low noise a .22 will attract less attention. The low/no recoil makes accurate shooting easy. It's easy with a .22 to put all your rounds into the target really fast. And it's better to hit the bad guy 2 or 3 times in the chest with a .22 than it is to miss him with your M14. And of course the .22 is great for hunting small game to put some meat on the table.

Weapons: Defending your Home, Food & Family with Light Carbine or Rifle

As promised in my last blog post on defending your home, food and family, here's #2 of my suggestions for your must-have weapons.

A light carbine or rifle

SKS

There are hundreds of firearms in this category and many of them are excellent. So I will simply tell you what I like and you can make up your own mind.

The SKS. If money is hard to come by and for a lot of us it is then you can't beat the SKS. It's not the best rifle in the world but you can get one for around $100 bucks. That's an incredible price for a good solid rifle. And it has the added benefit of the availability of cheap ammo. You can get crates of the stuff for a few hundred bucks.

VZ58

The VZ58. I am a big fan of the VZ58. It's a great rifle and you can get one at a great price. There are a few different models and I won't go into that here but you should be able to pick up one for $500 to $800. It's a much better rifle than the SKS but as it fires the same ammo so you can afford lots of it. 

One other thing to point out about the VZ and the SKS is how tough they are. They are old school weapons made from steel and wood. They can take a lot of abuse and keep on going.

Beretta CX4 Storm

Beretta CX4 Storm. 

Now this little gun is totally different from the SKS and VZ. It's a modern design made with a lot of plastic parts and it fires pistol ammo. But I really like mine. It's light and handy with no recoil to speak of and it would be a fantastic weapon for defending your apartment or suburban house. The pistol caliber ammo is also suitable for hunting small game like rabbits and you could drop a dear or other large animal if you had to. Not that I would recommend it for large animals. 

One drawback is that it is an expensive little gun. At around $1000 to $1200 it's not something everyone can afford. But it's a great little gun.  Another nice feature worth mentioning is that if you are a fan of Beretta pistols you can get one that takes the same mags as the Storm. That can be really handy.

AR 15

The AR 15 family of firearms. A person could write an entire book on the AR 15.  All I will say is that it is an excellent firearm. It has lower recoil and is more accurate than the SKS and VZ58. On the down side it's a little more prone to breaking and it's requires a bit more maintenance. The ammunition is more expensive but it's available just about everywhere. It is also more expensive at around $1000 to $1200.

As I said before there are lots of great carbines and rifles. The AK 47 family. The FN FAL family. The Ruger Mini 14. The M14 family of rifles. The list goes on forever. I am actually a big fan of my M1 carbine and would have listed it but for the fact that the .30 carbine ammo is getting a little harder to find.

Next up will be #3 - the handgun

Defending Your Family, Food and Property in an Emergency Situation

Weapons. It's a sad fact of life that we sometimes need to resort to violence to protect ourselves and our property. With this fact in mind you need to think about having weapons to defend your perimeter from intruders. The most effective weapons are of course firearms but for those of you who can't get or don't want a firearm think about what else you can have on hand to defend yourself with. Things like.....

A baseball bat. A sword. A bow and arrow or crossbow. A flare gun. An axe. A big knife. A simple flame thrower ( I can show you how to make a simple one in just a few minutes ) Use your brains and imagination.

Firearms are the best weapons of course and I recommend that every one who is serious about survival should have at least one. What kind of firearm you choose to get is up to you. Everyone will tell you something different when it comes to what gun is best.

For now let me share with you the three most important types of firearms you should have in your arsenal:

1. The 12 gauge pump action shotgun
2. A light carbine or rifle
3. A handgun

I will explain each of these weapon choices in detail (pros and cons) in my next blog post, and I'll post photos so you can see what I'm talking about

Defending What You Have in an Emergency Situation

Defending what you have

So you are going to a lot of work to make sure you have all the supplies you need to weather the coming storm. Now it's time to start thinking about how you will defend what you have.

No one can tell you how to defend your place as only you know your unique circumstances. But there are a few general things that everyone needs to think about.

A Strong Defensive Perimeter

You need a strong perimeter. No matter how big or how small your perimeter is you must make it as secure as possible. Now perhaps your perimeter is only the walls of your apartment. Maybe it's the walls or yard of your home in suburbia. Or it's the fence around your 100 acres in the country.
The principle is still the same. You want to make it as secure as you possibly can to keep the bad guys out and you and your stuff safe.

Secure Doors & Windows

With that in mind start thinking about what you can do to strengthen your perimeter now and what you can do when the Zombies hit the fan. Look at your doors. Look at your windows. Look at your fence. What can you do to secure them. Extra locks? Bars on the windows? Some barbwire on your fence.

What can you have on hand to make them even more secure in an emergency? Big chains and padlocks? Heavy furniture pushed up against the doors and windows? Plywood to nail over the windows? Boards with nails in them to slow down attackers? There are hundreds of things you can do.

Do What You Can NOW, Not After the Crisis Hits

But you must start to plan it now. You won't be able to run to the store and get what you need in the middle of a disaster. And you may be too stressed out to think as clearly about what you need to do during a disaster.

And don't forget, you are planning what you can quickly do to strengthen your perimeter until you can fortify your dwelling even more or better. This is your Quick Plan for Defense.

Make Your Emergency Defense Plan

So make your plan and discuss it with others who will be there with you. Make sure everyone knows exactly what their job is to secure your shelter and your food stores.

We'll talk about weapons in my next blog post.