Millitary rifle in a hunting caliber.

[LarryC]

Op, have you ever fired and reloaded a Garand? The 8 round En bloc clip is faster to load than a removable magazine in my opinion. I have 2 Garand's, got the last one this week from CMP. I also have a Eddystone 30-06 - my son who collects with me has a 1903-A3. I also have a LR 308, AK, SKS's Russian Tokorov SVD and many other military arms.

In my opinion you would be better off spending the money on Ammo. It will come down in price and supplies are already returning to the shelves. My son and I were well prepared and do not have any shortage of any calibers. With our stock and reloading stock, we could shoot nearly 60K rounds before running short.

Ammo doesn't eat anything, increases in value, has an indefinite shelf life if stored properly. As soon as some reasonable prices return - I will continue to stock. I haven't had to purchase anything since the panic. Did run into some primers and bullets reasonable at a GS so bought 5k of LR mag primers and 500 62 gr new .223 bullets.

Several of my Mausers and English Enfield, Swiss K-31 are what I would consider pretty good defense weapons if SHTF. My Winchester lever .308 or Rem 700 in .243 are also decent weapons but load slow. Always could revert to 12 gage's or handguns if I had to in a pinch.

 

[BigMoose]

Op, have you ever fired and reloaded a Garand? The 8 round En bloc clip is faster to load than a removable magazine in my opinion. I have 2 Garand's, got the last one this week from CMP. I also have a Eddystone 30-06 - my son who collects with me has a 1903-A3. I also have a LR 308, AK, SKS's Russian Tokorov SVD and many other military arms.

In my opinion you would be better off spending the money on Ammo. It will come down in price and supplies are already returning to the shelves. My son and I were well prepared and do not have any shortage of any calibers. With our stock and reloading stock, we could shoot nearly 60K rounds before running short.

Ammo doesn't eat anything, increases in value, has an indefinite shelf life if stored properly. As soon as some reasonable prices return - I will continue to stock. I haven't had to purchase anything since the panic. Did run into some primers and bullets reasonable at a GS so bought 5k of LR mag primers and 500 62 gr new .223 bullets.

Several of my Mausers and English Enfield, Swiss K-31 are what I would consider pretty good defense weapons if SHTF. My Winchester lever .308 or Rem 700 in .243 are also decent weapons but load slow. Always could revert to 12 gage's or handguns if I had to in a pinch.

I have an M14 all ready, so essentially I have. (20% of the parts swap between the two, and the rest are very similar) But I have handled the M1, they feel very similar. But the enblocs won't fit my load bearing equipment.
Other wise I would get a CMP Garand and rebarrel it to 308 when this madness is done. That and I have gotten spoiled to having 20 rounds.

I have a stash of 7.62NATO, It's just the hoarder in me I guess that doesn't want to shoot it. I got tired of going into these stores and seeing ammo I couldn't use and remembered there are M14 barrels in some of those calibers, and I want to build another M14 type anyway (this time an M21 clone) so I was going to have it built with a hunting caliber barrel and then swap it later. But I just decided to have it built in 7.62NATO.