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Guns are like sex, every generation thinks it all began with them. Greybeards stroke their walnut stocks and glass-bedded barrels and quote W.D.M. Bell and Townsend Whelen. Newbies are dazzled by Star Wars props wrapped around cartridges older than their parents and believe, deeply and sincerely, that looks can kill or at least ought to. Picatinny-mounted "tactical" cup holders can't be far off. Enthusiasts speak of guns in terms of received truthettes, say, ballistic coefficients or pressure profiles and the like, as if it were a kozmik kalling to proselytize among their fellows with no apparent benefit to either. Gun haters ask us to be shocked that firearms are "allowed" to the citizenry and intimate they appeared during the Kennedy administration as some reversible misstep, like tail fins on cars.
Demographics is a reliable indicator of preference. Those who came of age after World War II when the place was awash in surplus Garands and Mausers stand distinct and different from the following wave which lusted after wildcats so zippy the bullets were in danger of disintegrating into a blue cloud immediately upon exiting the muzzle. Now we're seeing the adoration of sheer mass, the "bullets as speeding locomotives" school harking back to the 1861 Joslyn or World War I tank busters. The intent seems to crush as much as to penetrate. There's something in this for everybody. Enthusiasts heft those cigar-size rounds and caress those chunky muzzle brakes with moistened eyes and reverent hands. Gun haters are happily re-shocked and demand to know what legitimate use there is for, say, a .50 BMG, knowing full well the legitimate use for any gun is to put a bullet down range. After that it's all opinion and tediously so.
What gun, or guns, should the survivalist rely on?
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