Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Run around the blogs often enough and you get to see the ‘survival guns on a budget’ posts that pop up from time to time. Usually the theme is that you don’t have to spend ‘leventybillion dollars on a ‘yuppie black rifle’ because for only $5.95 you can have a Mosin-Nagant rifle, a single shot 12 ga., and a TokaMakaBersarov pistol. And if you buy it used you’ll only pay $4.95 and have money left over for plenty of surplus ammo.

So…its 4am, the floodwaters are steadily rising, the radio says Katrina is the worst disaster in US history and you’re sitting on your porch keeping an eye open. Down the street you hear a car full of raucous ‘young men’ go by and the sounds of breaking glass and a dog barking. Yelling and shouting follow and then a gunshot or two. After about twenty minutes a car creeps down the street and four sets of eyes hungrily look at your house as they slowly cruise by.

Good time to have saved a few bucks, huh?

Dealer cost on a quality (not assembled on someones kitchen table) Ar-15 is $850. This means that a used one should be about the same price. Used Mossberg 500 shotguns can be had for $150 at a lot of pawn shops and gun shows. A used police trade-in Glock is $400. A trade-in police revolver is half that.

I can appreciate saving money, I’m pretty tight with a buck. But theres also some things that I grit my teeth and shell out the money for because sometimes you just can’t get away with Bob’s Budget Battle Rifles or Steve’s House of Discount Ballistic Nylon. Even the gets-no-respect $175 SKS is, in my opinion, a far better choice than a bolt-action shoulder-beater like the Mosin Nagant. “But my Mosin can shoot through a car from four miles away!”, says the diehard M-N fan. Terrific. And when you find three guys walking up your driveway with baseball bats and hammers you’re going to…get them to line up in a straight line? Bayonet them to death before they crack your skull like a walnut? Maybe you’ll get off a round from your bargain 12 ga. $89.95 H&R singleshot…that’s one down and two to…ouch, hey stop that! Maybe you can save the day with your Norinco TT-33 pistol assuming it works and doesn’t jam on every third round.

Some very simple math. Current federal minimum wage is about $6.55 an hour. This means there is no job you can legally have that will give you less than that. (Or, as one comedian opined, “Minimum wage is your bosses way of saying ‘Id pay you less if I could, but its against the law!”) Assume you lose 15% in taxes, your $6.65 is now about $5.60. Barely a combo meal at Wendy’s, but you’re not supposed to be supporting a family of four on it anyway. You would need about 160 hours to buy a basic quality AR-15. Wanna knock off from work early? Get an SKS for 35 hours. My point is that ‘I cant afford it’ isn’t a very good excuse for equipping yourself with less-than-ideal gear. If you can hurl a newspaper at a doorstep, wash dishes or stock shelves you can, in less than two months, have yourself a good semi-auto rifle, pistol and pump gun.

Is there a place in preparedness for ‘Deep Discount’ guns? Absolutely. They’re good for unexpected guests, as ‘last ditch’ guns far down the list of backups, probably a great choice for turning over to ‘the authorities’ so they don’t look too deep and find your FAL, and they are excellent ‘disposable’ guns for those places that are prone to break-ins and theft (vehicles, remote cabins, etc, etc). But if you had the choice, would they be your first pick if someone told you that tomorrow you’re going to have a home invasion?

If someone were to ask me what to buy, I’d tell them to get an AR or AK, a Rem 870 and a Glock in .40 or 9mm. Get the spare mags and accessories and you’d be better off than 95% of the population when the lights go off and the 911 operator says “you’re on your own”. To me, thats a reasonable setup on the average person’s budget. It represents about $1500. If you’re just not willing to spend the money then get an SKS, a Mossberg 500 and a quality .38/.357 double-action revolver (Ruger, Smith, Taurus, Colt)…thats about 1/3 the price of the previous package, but still a very good little bundle of firepower.

If you can’t afford better, than there is nothing wrong with getting yourself a Mosin Nagant, some cheapo break-open singleshot 12 ga. And a Makarov. But…if you can afford better but refuse to spend the money, then I think you may want to objectively revisit your rationale for those purchases.

A valid question here is “Why three guns? Wouldn’t I be served just fine with only a [pistol/carbine/shotgun]?” That is, I think, a valid question. My reasoning, and your mileage may vary, is that a pistol is great for when I have to be discreetly armed (like when the cops knock on the door, heading down to the Red Cross emergency communications center, when Im standing at the curb chatting with neighbors, etc) but it’s a poor choice for the 4am banging-on-the-door goofed-up gangbangers looking for fast and easy money. The AR or AK is a wonderful choice for that scenario. The shotgun..well, nothing says violent brutality and tell-the-ambulance-guys-they-wont-need-the-siren like a stubby 12 ga. It’s a good option for when the multiple attacker scenario moves in close. So..that’s why three guns – because one gun isn’t the best choice for every situation…I wish it was, it’d save me a lot of money. But the facts don’t bear it out.

Can you spend more? Sure. If you live in a world of ‘money is no object’ or your personal goals and ambitions put you above living in a van down by the river then by all means get yourself a DSA FAL, a Wilson/Scattergun Technologies shotgun and a couple of Glocks. More power to ya.

The bumper sticker saying is “First rule of a gunfight is: have a gun”. And certainly any gun is better than no gun when you have an unplanned violent encounter. However, I think preparing for such eventualities with an eye towards doing it as cheaply as possible seems like shopping for discount parachutes or ‘slightly irregular’ replacement heart valves. You don’t have to spend gobs of money, but you do have to spend some. Suck it up, spend the money, and be done with it so you can move on to other things like food, fuel, shelter, and the like.