Hey yall the current insanity has finally pushed me into a place where I want to purchase a rife for self defense. Do any of you have access to a good guide on purchasing as well as any advice on finding a good firearms safety course/instruction?
EDIT: Wow! Thanks for the responses yall! A handgun wouldnt be ideal for a lot of reasons, and I wouldnt plan on carrying it around on my person anyway; I have pepper spray for that. I also dont plan on using it like in a home intruder situation, I mostly just want to be prepared if things really start to go sideways. I dont want to be the queer who is lead away to the camps without a fight, plus I have greatly enjoyed target shoting the few times I have done it. Mostly I am just looking for advice on what type of rife I should get and what is an affordable way to get it, I dont want to be taken advantage of.
Defending the home/community? Cheap PSA AR-15. Get a complete upper and a lower, slap them together, go to range and practice with many magazine of cartridge. Also get a sling and a flashlight so that you do not drop gun or shoot thing you can not see.
Defending the self outside of home? Cheap PSA DAGR Glock 19 clone. Go to range and practice with many magazine of cartridge. Get license and holster and follow rules so that the state does not end your revolutionary potential early.
Have money for second gun and want to practice fundamentals first? Ruger 10/22, many magazine of cartridge. You know what to do. Maybe join an Appleseed brainwashing session and learn to shoot. Or shoot with comrades, even better.
Safes and cabinets will keep honest people and children away from guns, but mean nothing to a determined thief. Get one so your girlfriend won't complain about rifle sitting in closet.
Get one so your girlfriend won’t complain about rifle sitting in closet.
I worry this might not even be enough for me. Wanting a gun and also wanting to live with somebody whose had live-changing traumatic experiences with a gun.
I've more or less resolved that I won't be getting a gun then, there's no magical solution and I'd never hide it. It helps that i don't live in a state where a lynch mob of conservatives will come for me. Kinda just venting and wondering if anyone has dealt with the same.
I used to live with a girl from New Jersey who was terrified of guns. She insisted I not only kept mine in a cabinet, but also that I get trigger locks for all of them. Fortunately I had tons of spare trigger locks, from all the times I forgot to bring one to the gun store (all guns need to leave with a lock here. If you don't bring one, the store will sell you one for a couple bucks.)
The only one that she said wasn't scary was the mosin.
Not a direct answer, but here's a homegrown starting point: https://hexbear.net/post/3356
This also is fairly useful: https://www.reddit.com/r/SocialistRA/comments/gzyya5/stop_recommending_larp_guns_to_newcomers/
Also, what SerLava said. If you can drop a decent sum, a Ruger MPR is a great midrange (in price/quality) AR-15 model. If you want to deal-hunt and understand the firearm better, you can dig around for the right info and put your own together. You may also want to consider a handgun, since you could conceal it (either legally, or illegally if you needed to in an emergency), and it would be more accessible if you need to defend yourself quickly.
This is where you need to think about what sort of situation you'd defend yourself in. Is your concern that some individual is going to attack you at home, or do you want to be able to defend yourself if there is some sort of a militant uprising in your area? Do you feel like you need the day-to-day availability of concealed carry?
I'm general, I would recommend doing things in this order:
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Training
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Buy a rifle
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Buy a handgun
Mix in finding a non-chud local gun group to help you find training and the guns.
The gun is most dangerous to you and your loved ones - not the fash - until you've trained. Once trained on shooting rifles, rifles will be easier for learning on and more powerful and general-purpose, particularly for self-defense. Once you're comfortable with the rifle, you could purchase and train with a handgun and look into concealed carry for defense on the go. Obviously if you are in immediate danger you can make different decisions.
In terms of choice, I recommend the most popular things in your area so that you can get ammo and accessories and not stand out when training, but that's just my mode of operation so if you wanna be loud and out there I'm not gonna tell you not to, just to be cautious even then.
Totally understandable. In that case I'd repeat my rec of training with a rifle, as it's much easier to learn the basics and aiming and so on starting with a rifle. That's why they start kids with .22s.
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Uncle Harrel's got your back (this is more of a first-time gun user/buyer's guide than an in-depth look at rifles specifically.
Look into your closest SRA chapter if there is one, they will be able to point you to classes/range/instrucitons, many of which may be SRA-run.
Just be aware that the SRA is a complete shitshow at the national level, and local chapters can be hit or miss. I tried to be very active in my local chapter, helping instruct and train, but there are serious problems with the org on local and national levels that caused me to quit the org.
I'm not saying don't, I'm just saying be aware of its faults.
Much of the org is just people posting and arguing. There is a small sliver of people trying to train and instruction, but they are vastly outnumbered by the terminally online that may not even own a firearm
National ran out of money and didn't pay taxes, and the new budget eliminates pretty much all the paid staff because the union refused to reach an agreement that wasn't "just charge more for dues"
My unfounded opinion was that during FY 2019-2021 the national org was treated as a piggy bank for members of a clique to get themselves hired on to the national org and draw a steady paycheck, with little to no oversight on how much work was actually done.
My local chapter had issues with extremely divisive sectarian fights and a toxic culture that caused long time organizers to quit the org. I ran for an elected position, won (no other candidates ran) and immediately was called very hurtful things publicly during the first member meeting in my capacity as that elected position. After helping train with daily virtual dry fire sessions on and off for a couple years that I would host on my own time for the benefit of the org, because I believed in the mission, it just broke me to be called awful things because of a disagreement.
I resigned and left the org.
comrade, in case you didn't already realize, it definitely sounds like you were targeted by feds / wreckers in your local SRA chapter. I'm not surprised by this, if anything I expected the SRA would be dismantled sooner. Membership numbers did shoot up after the George Floyd uprisings, so that's likely when more focus started going into destroying it.
It wasn't because of anything you did. You made the right choice to walk away from that and I hope it didn't put you off organizing altogether.
It certainly has been tempting to blame it all on outside forces (wreckers/infiltration), but I believe that would excuse behavior by regular members. It can't all be infiltrators abusing each other, calling each other Nazis, absolutely destroying each other in sectarian conflict. I saw this on the national message boards, and in the local chapter communication apps.
Nobody was willing to treat anyone else respectfully. Any argument/misunderstanding/disagreement immediately escalated to "you are wrong, and you are also an awful person who should have no place in this organization"
Certainly there was and is harassment going on, and I believe that even though a small fraction of interactions in the organization were those that warranted expulsion, it has caused people to go into a mindset that everyone else in the organization is not arguing in good faith and that any disagreement means that person is racist, sexist, and should be exposed as such, and then have a Welfare Committee procedure initiated so that they can be publicly humiliated and then cast out.
That's how an organization dies, and is currently dying.
I don't know. I have been struggling with this. I have thought about writing a big post here to start a discussion, but is it worth it? Maybe, just maybe my experience is an isolated event, and while I personally may drop out of leftist organizing, that doesn't mean the whole thing is doomed and you should also feel like I do.
The idea that I have been kicking around, is that most leftist organizations are just social clubs that people want to hang out in. Even the SRA, ostensibly with a straight forward mission statement, has basically failed the mission it set out to do. Because it's not really tied to people's day to day issues. Shooting guns is a hobby, and that means that anyone can believe anything they like, and it doesn't matter. Everyone's entitled to their own opinions about what the org needs to do.
Real leftist organizing is based on material interests. The people organizing unions in Starbucks and Amazon? They have real concrete goals that actually matter. The union wants to make working conditions better for its members. They organize in order to achieve that goal. Ideally, anything that doesn't help achieve that objective is not something the org is going to spend time on. Really, if you're trying to get your hourly wage to be a minimum of $15, there's no space for people to just go after each other about pointless ideological bickering.
What's up with mental health stuff when it comes to background checks? I can't imagine they have access to my medical records, but I could see there being some sort of system where folks are flagged when they are involuntarily committed or something?
I don't think I'm ever going to be a gun guy, but this is something I've always been curious about.
cant help but see the irony of blocking the mentally ill from having guns but still allowing them to drive 2 ton death machines
It's very inconsistent and opaque. There are a few things that with definitely get you flagged, and a long list of things that may or may not get you flagged. Not only does it vary from state to state, but from institution to institution.
For instance, if you are declared mentally unfit by a court you will always be rejected by a background check if it isn't later expunged. If you are involuntarily committed it's a matter of if it was reported or not, and the state you were in when that happened. Some institutions will report based on what you were committed, some do it to everyone, some it's just a matter of if they remembered to do the paperwork. Sometimes people are rejected even though they were never committed, it's all over the place.
I don't know of a guide but here's my 2 cents. An AR-15 is cheap, easy to use, fix, find ammo for, find parts for. In the USA, an AK is a step down in those regards, but still relatively popular so it's not completely unreasonable to own or anything.
The AR-15 uses 5.56 aka .223 caliber ammunition so it kicks very lightly. But it's still ridiculously deadly because it goes fast as hell.
A lot of firearms courses will be run by freakish chuds, not sure what to do about that. Even those people tend to kind of mind their own business around gun ranges and don't typically start shit because well, everyone's strapped.
If home defense is one of the scenarios, keep in mind that your rifle is a laser beam that goes through walls like they aren't there. Including your neighbor's exterior walls to almost the same degree.
But also, the vast majority of rifles that can fire them, can fire both. I have never actually seen a rifle that can fire .223 and not .556, though I suppose they must exist.
The only ones that exist are ancient varmint rifles. Like 1950s Remington 700s and such.
True, don't mix them. It's rare that it'll be a problem in a given rifle model but not unheard of.
Concealed carry is great if your state allows it. Any option or cert to legally transport and use a gun for self-defense helps give you a bit more coverage in the event you have to use it.
Got a question on behalf of someone who wants to purchase a firearm (not joking, really is for someone else). They were in an accident not too long ago and vision in their right eye has basically deteriorated to the point where they're legally blind in that eye. If they're right hand dominant, how do they aim firearms? Is it possible to use the firearm with the left hand?
You should be aiming with your dominant eye, so they should just shoot lefty. Just know that most semi auto guns will be annoying with ejecting cases towards your face when shooting lefty. Also they make left hand guns but they're more expensive and less common
If you are right handed but left eyed, it's easier to just shoot left handed than it is to try and shoot right handed. It will take more practice to reach a certain minimum level of competence, but once you have reached that you will generally progress your skills further just as fast as anyone else.
I'd build an AR-15. Aero complete upper. Any cheap lower. PSA uppers are kinda crap, but if that's all you want to spend then go for it.
Also, the Ruger MPR is great bang for the buck.
