revolvers

REVOLVERS

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note: YKW, MM: got your snail mail donation of exceptional generosity-thanks a million!
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note: another "duh!" idea.  When building a dome with rebar and chicken wire, soak cloth in a cement slurry and lay on top of the structure.  When dry you can then add on more serious thickness of wire and cement.  YouTube vid on tire wall hut.
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I generally don’t care to relive ideas from my old blog five years ago.  Been there, done that and yawn.  I do it of course because I always need something to write about, but I don’t like it.  I just had one subject, survivalists “fighting the last war”, that I pulled out of the JMD blog from 2012, but not only did I already redo that in my “grandpappy” series and similar,  then I run across Commander Zero doing a piece on it the other day.  Granted, CZ has terrible hair, proof in the fact he has no photos out, too embarrassed to be compared to my perfect translucent dome, but I know if I followed through you all would inevitably taunt me for copying ( not that I have any compunction ripping off others ideas, I just have the grace and style to wait a suitable period until I do so ) even if I took a month of twelve hour days to research everything I’d ever written and noted each time I originated the thought, you would STILL have a little devil dude perched on your shoulder whispering in your ear how uninspiring and unoriginal I was, the ingrate minions that you are.  Luckily, today I was able to revert to responding to a readers comment.

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Let’s talk about revolvers.  I mentioned they were simple, and a minion took me to task.  If a revolver gets out of tune it takes a gunsmith to fix it, so auto’s were much simpler ( especially now after a hundred years of perfecting the design, I would imagine.  I actually just read an old Shotgun News-old for me, as it was in a stack waiting- article on a bunch of writers arguing over the best auto’s of WWII, and the 45 was both worshiped and poo-pahed for already being out of date.  I didn’t much care other than to get the gist on the improving simplicity ).  And yes, I knew about primitive gun makers creating auto’s where they really couldn’t revolvers.  I read that on the Vietnam War back in my teens, so this issue has been long known.  And I’m not arguing this here.  I will of course mention, because it bears repeating and I love poking sleeping bears-I used to try to shy away from that as I didn’t need the stress but now I like the thrill and challenge-that if you are a AR lover, you just crapped all over the simplicity argument anyway.  You want simple you stick with the AK, or better yet stick with bolts. 

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But I don’t care about gunsmithing simplicity.  I care about user simplicity.  How long do you really think guns are going to last in the apocalypse?  Probably at most ten thousand rounds, which while problematic in some cheap civilian firearms, accuracy long ago compromised, is rarely going to be problematic mechanically.  And that is rifles.  Pistols will most likely never be fired that often.  Not revolvers anyway.  If you own an auto you might be shooting the crap out of them now, and have thousands of rounds for them post collapse, but auto owners seem to think that they need to be ready to single handedly combat Jihads, protect the innocent by carrying concealed carry, and engage enemy combatants at close range ( wonder why the M4 guys always carry an auto back-up?  All that firing on their carbine at close ranges in the desert and you know the bastard is going to seize up.  But even if it doesn’t, hello, close range.  Didn’t we talk about survivalists NOT being soldiers? ) which by doing so they seemingly are able to emulate both of their boyhood heroes, cops and grunts.  Another childhood fantasy you need to let go of already.

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Auto owners are pray and spray pukes.  They believe their job will last past the economic collapse and they can practice and fire indiscriminately forever.  Prepper Pony Princesses unable to grasp simple equations of logistics and EROI.  Not to mention the laws of physics,  as applies to hauling gear.  Why in the name of sweet Jesus do you think you need a pistol back-up on your carry load?  Anything above twenty pounds above and beyond your boots and clothing almost automatically disqualifies you from Light Infantry.  And let me tell you straight up, if you ain’t light infantry you ain’t surviving all that long.  You need a back-up in combat, that is what a nice long knife is for.  I highly recommend the Kukri, at a very reasonable price of $25, carbon steel blade made in India-NOT China-but even better would be the bayonet.  I understand they are problematic in several ways but they beat the pistol all to hell in eliminating issues such as cost, portability and practicality.  It is hard to find a decent battle rifle with bayonet anymore.  But you can still find a near new Mauser for the same price, or so, as a factory hunting bolt, so you get that bonus bayonet ( it ain’t the much better Enfield, but all the smart and smartly coiffured survivalists already bought those up ).

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Do you ever WANT to use a bayonet in combat?  Probably not.  But who wants to get into a knife fight at ANY time, anyway?  If you are reduced to fighting after the ammo runs out, it is better to have a long ass spear than a knife.  You might be sputtering and spewing about how you’ll just carry a fifteen round 9mm auto and spare mags and kill any “spear chuckers”, but I’ve seen your load, guys.  Festooned with AR mags and those for the pistol, FLIR scopes and helmets and armor plate body armor, you are NOT light infantry.  You are mechanized infantry.  And you might do great in that role but as soon as your “mechanized” part is compromised you are suddenly Fighting The Last War ( to coyly refer back to where we started ) and true light infantry will kick your ass.  Hell, it already has.  When a nation that finances its wars with inflation runs out of quality troops ( because it takes too much to train them ), and quality mechanized tools and quality fuel to run them, irregular forces defeat you before you even start.  In a one on one pistol to bayonet fight, the pistol is obviously going to win.  In the long run, those pistol equipped troops will not prevail.  Bayonets will return to good effect.  They didn’t do jack against full mechanization, but they will be more effective once the fuel runs out.

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A pistol was only ever supposed to be about fighting your way back to your rifle, prepper wise.   If you are looking at it in a LEO or nation state soldier viewpoint, you are not looking at its role properly.  An auto has evolved into a spray and pray weapon, with all the attending sociological issues that entails.  We talked about that recently, with the over educated over paid understaffed LEO’s which are out today.  Why do you think the 45 was the way it first appeared ( I speak of course of the 1911A1, not its predecessors )?  It was a better “revolver“.  It was a replacement for an underpowered round and it was only ever intended for those personnel not carrying a real gun, ie a rifle.  Only seven or eight rounds?  That was an improvement over the revolver.  Spray and pray would come later, but this was a time of scarce ammunition.  It might have been on occasion delivered by a Model T Ford but the times were still predominantly mule and train for logistics.  The motor vehicle and petroleum assisted mining and smelting had yet to become widespread.  Ammunition was husbanded, not wasted wantonly.

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So, we come back around, as always, to energy.  You don’t want to hear about not because you’ve learned all you can but because you don’t want to do the hard work of thinking through the end of oil.  Starting with your ammunition wasting guns.  Your handgun doesn’t need to be an ammo waster, if you just use it as a homestead/town visit back-up to your rifle.  And if it doesn’t see a lot of use it will most likely never break, and if it most likely doesn’t have the issue of breaking because it lacks heavy use, you can use a revolver instead of an auto.  The revolver was never meant to be used in a prolonged firefight, not even by law enforcement.  The Miami FBI shoot-out and massacre incident which changed so much in the way of perceptions and equipage ( until then the revolver was standard and accepted by LEO’s, most of who never even discharged their sidearm in their career outside the shooting range ) was more of the apex of the consequences of the newly ramped up and militarized War On Drugs than it was about suddenly discovering a better way of doing things.  The cops in the Sixties, during a time of widespread civil unrest, did just fine with batons, using the revolver as the back-up.  They didn’t need semi-auto in the hundreds of rounds.  Only by inventing our version of the drug cartels did we begin to see street firefighting and paramilitary tactics.

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A revolver does one thing and one thing very well.  It sits there and does nothing.  When it is needed, it is ready to go with zero preparation.  It can outlast all but the best magazines, which might last years before losing spring strength but which are still a potential point of failure, sitting in a bedside drawer ready to use for years on end.  Or sitting in a holster for months between oiling.  For this attribute if nothing else ( there are others, such as ease of firing substandard in power rounds using salvaged components ), they are perfect for novices and survivalists.  Again, this is not the ONLY reason revolvers are superior to auto’s for the survivalist, just the answer to a minions comments.  Just keep in mind that in regards to complexity, a revolver isn’t your only weak link.  Just look at your LED bulb.  It might as well be magic, for all we can do to fix it.  I’ll leave it at that for now.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2urEeMX )

 

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