Sustainable Guns.

[Mortblanc]

Over the years I have found that my BP rifles will keep up accuracy wise with my modern guns out to 100 meters when iron sights are in use. We regularly hit standard sized playing cards at 25M and occasionally candy wafers at 15m during our novelty matches. Thing is that I seldom use iron sights except for the BP guns. My scoped rifles will walk rings around the BP guns at any range from the muzzle out. I do not think any of my BP rifles will ever achieve the sub-minute of angle groups that most of my modern rifles can attain.

I live about 50 miles from a place called Friendship, Indianian, home of the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association, where our national muzzle loading championship shoots take place. I am a range safety officer during the national matches. I have seen BP guns that would shoot close to MOA at those shoots but they weighed 50 pounds, had barrels 2" across the flats, were mounted on big blocks of wood 6" square and had their projectiles hammered down the bore using a brass rod and a mallet. It takes about 5 minutes to load one.

Smoothbore BP guns such as muskets and fusils I have found not so efficient. The BP guns usually have no choke and will not print the even shot patterns that modern shotguns will provide. Gun-makers worked for 400 years to develop a good choke system and it took the change to cartridge guns to get past the loading problems of the constricted muzzle for the smoothbore to become truly efficient.

The ML smoothbores shoot round ball about as well as modern shotguns place slugs out to 50 yards but I am lucky to hit the 24"x 24" target backer past the 50 yard mark with the BP smoothbore. I have .36 caliber, .50 caliber, 20 gauge and 12 gauge snoothbores on hand so I am talking about a variety of guns and many hundred rounds of shooting. I have some specially equipped modern shotguns that will place slugs inside 6" at 100M but they are both rifled and scoped.

Here in the states we also have people that feel reverting to past technology is the answer to any and every problem. They promote muzzle loaders and especially the single shot shotgun as superior to "modern" technology. You know, those "modern" pump action shotguns that were invented in the 1880s and semiautomatics that have been in use since 1900!

(Many do the same thing with optics on firearms, insisting on iron sights, ignoring the fact that scopes are a 300 year old technology and reflex sights were widely used during WW1. In the US we do not even train our military using iron sights any more and the British have a scope built into the modern Enfield)

They do so without realizing that as soon as the "off grid frontier family" could afford one of those new cartridge guns they bought one and hung the old ML gun over the mantle. It was a matter of survival, not preference. And as soon as they could afford a double barrel they retired the single shot. The only reason anyone retained the old technology after the new had arrived was because they could not afford better.

Here in the states it went even farther and as soon as the repeating rifles and shotguns were developed 5-15 shot weapons became the standard. We were fighting some pretty vicious enemies during those times. So were the British in most of the colonial areas. The frontiers of the world were not fully opened until the development of something a bit better than the single shot muzzle loader. In the US we were stopped from further settlement at the 100th meridian until repeating arms allowed us to compete with the Plains Indians on even terms. Our muzzle loading guns were no match for their horn and sinew bows.

Those famous American covered wagon trains ambling across the Great Plains of the American west had a list of required equipment which was mandatory before one was allowed to join the group. Each man was required to own a Colt repeating revolver.

As for long term survival use??? I am an American prepper with a slightly different attitude and philosophy than the British, Canadian or Ozite. When dealing with firearms the normal attitude is not which one do I want, it is "two is one and one is none so four of a kind has to be better". We buy ammo cheap and stack it deep. We will do so until our political system forces a change. At that point we will bury it all and wait for the young warriors to dig it up when the time is right.