A friend recently purchased a vacation house and is furnishing it. He sent me an instant message: “I made up a nice AR15 and put it in the new house in a wall safe. A house is not a home until the rifle is there.”
12 thoughts on “Setting up the vacation house”
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Truer words couldn’t be spoken by even the U.S. Vice President himself.
Where is this “vacation” house? Afghanistan?
I prefer to take vacations where I don’t need firearms.
Also, that sounds like one large wall safe. The AR15 is not small!
tonk a tonk a tonk – goes the AR-15. might not be the best choice for a civil rifle. Certainly if used indoors, everyone in the house will be deafened instantly.
I’d be more content with ‘A house is not a home until inhabited by a dog.’
A friend has family who lives in rural Oklahoma. I hear some very interesting stories about the natives who live out there. If you must live in a place like that then a gun may be a necessary house accessory.
I prefer to live in a more urban environment. YMMV
Being the southern hillbilly of this group, I don’t mind admitting that I own one of these weapons. And Peter, it isn’t a very large firearm.
It will fit in any manner of modest gun cabinet.
I don’t have it for personal protection, rather just part of a modest collection.
It is a rather cheaply made gun and not very impressive as far as quality goes.
It can shoot a bunch of bullets very quickly, though. And it looks scary.
I have never fired mine.
I’m pretty sure any firearm is going to be loud, and noise isn’t a great reason to compromise on defense capability. Civilian version of M4s have 16″ barrels and can be made reasonably small, shorter than any shotgun and at least as light. While one typically thinks of a safe as a giant cube of steel, guns are long and narrow so it’s probably shaped more like a shoebox scaled up.
Whether you believe you will need a rifle or not, the wall safe keeps the rifle safe and out of the way until you need it, so it’s not really a burden. And typically, when one needs a rifle, there is not a whole lot of time or opportunity to improvise.
For further exposition on the matter, I recommend you consult Dr. Olin Shivers’s brilliant exposition on the relationship between assault rifles and academia: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/autoweapons.html
Urgh. 16″ barrel on a .223 rifle. Markedly reduces muzzle velocity in part due to all of the still burning powder that blasts out of the muzzle. All firearms fired inside are going to be loud, but .223 in confined quarters have blasts that seriously will make your ears instantly ring, and can impart vertigo by shaking up your vestibular system.
You’re basically throwing 3 paperclips worth of copper and lead at over a kilometer a second. Lots of energy involved in moving a tiny thing very fast.
Don’t get me wrong, the AR15/M4 platform is the ergonomic champion, light agile, and accurate with it’s negligible recoil, and the lighter bullets tend to fragment violently and decelerate on hitting most barriers: furniture, walls, etc, lessening the threat to your neighbors from stray shots.
Lower velocity ammunition such buckshot, shotgun slugs, handgun rounds, slower/heavier rifle loads such as 7.62×39 tend to over penetrate typical residential construction materials. In reality there is no good single solution for home defense in a residential area, everything ends up being a compromise.
I guess that while pistol calibre carbines usually arent terrific in the ft-lbs on target, I’d probably reccomend one of them loaded with frangible magsafe cartridges. AR-15 in pistol calibres, Beretta CX4 storm, etc. Firing signature wont be sense dulling, just loud.
Another option, with better ft-lbs on the target, and potentially more politically correct is a lever action carbine, such as the Marlin 1894CP chambered for a revolver cartridge, such as .32 H&R magnum, .357 mag, and .44magnum. They lose in ergonomics compared to the AR-15, but look very non threatening. Muzzle blast in the latter two can be substantial, but can put as much ft-lbs onto the target as a .223 (revolver cartridges loose pressure in short barreled and gas leaky revolvers, but in gas tight and long barreled carbines can double their muzzle energy)
The Russians (practical as they are) have developed a low-signature cartridge for use in close-quarters / indoors / urban fighting- partially due to their standard 5.54x39mm assault rifle having a terrible muzzle blast like our 5.56/.223 loading. The Russian round is 9x39mm, it is a 7.62×39 cartridge necked up to 9mm and tossing an extremely weighty bullet (255gr) at subsonic velocities. It is used in the AS Vikhr, OC-14 Groza (AK bullpup) or VSS Vantal rifles, all of which can be fitted with a supressor to further reduce firing signature, or for use in a no-flame environment.
Impractical for home defense due to severe penetration of building materials, not to mention body armor (10mm of steel plate at 50m), and obviously supressors are only available to federally vetted individuals in the US, but an interesting side note.
The AR15 in the house is equipped with a sound suppressor to address the deafening noise. It is a much-needed accessory.
One does not need to be in Afghanistan to need a rifle any more than one needs to be in Pompeii to own a fire extinguisher. Look at these headlines from very nice neighborhoods:
“Homeowner Found Dead; Suspect in Custody
NEEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — A man installing an irrigation system at a home was arrested Friday in connection with the apparent bludgeoning death of the 78-year-old homeowner and the beating of his daughter-in-law, police said.”
“NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) – The second man charged with killing a Connecticut mother and her two daughters during a home invasion is pleading not guilty.”
If you have a fire, you call the fire department and use the fire extinguisher in the time before they arrive. If you have a home invasion, you use your firearm in the same way as the a lot can happen in 30 seconds, let alone in the 12-25 minutes before the police arrive.
The point should be that un-laser-sighted pistols and other single-projectile weapons without precision sights are virtually useless for home defense. Very few would have the nerves during a hostile encounter with an intruder, especially if the intruder is attacking, to hold a true line of fire.
So what then?
Plain and simple: A 12ga shot-gun loaded with #7 rounds. Go with buckshot if one feels they need more punch, but do all a favor and make that weapon a pump-action, and keep it loose, slack, well-oiled. Nothing says “GET OUT!” like the sound of a pump-action being jacked to chamber a round. Should one need to fire that weapon, it can be done with haste, and from the hip, while proving to be quite lethal.
AR15… my goodness. That guy’s asking to get pwned unless he’s superman with the peeps.
Out
C.
In the confines of the average house – even a fairly large house – the difference in width of the shot string from the scattergun and the AR projectile is negligible. Even with a cylinder bore and 18″ barrel the shotgun will have a softball sized pattern, if that. It seems that Dorian has suppressed his AR, so he is either familiar with NFA weapons or unconcerned with the law – either way he could build a defensive shotgun with a 10″ barrel (registered as a Short Barreled Shotgun or Any Other Weapon, depending on how it was built) that would allow a bit wider pattern. Loaded with #7 birdshot, a shotgun is devastating against close flushing quail and other vicious game, but is likely to make a bad guy wearing a heavy coat really angry.
Dorian (again, based on the fact that he built up a suppressed AR for home defense) probably spec’d out his rifle quite well. “C” has probably watched too many movies and played too many video games.
/rl
I believe that it is every law abiding American’s right to own a firearm. I will stop short of saying that it is every American’s duty, but I feel that it is my personal duty as a member of this free democracy. The 2nd amendment is simply a check and balance against an overbearing and armed government. I think that any American that owns firearms for this reason should also be adequately equipped; civilian versions of the standard US military rile and handgun are readily available.
Cambridge MA is a VERY gun unfriendly city! In Cambridge and all of MA, owning either an AR15 or a Beretta 92F requires a MA License to Carry. Almost all LTC issued by Cambridge are restricted to “target and hunting” which precludes carrying a concealed weapon.
Although I feel it is my duty to own firearms, I do not publicizes the fact. Just as I would not publicize the nature of my voting. Even if I did, it would fall on largely deaf ears in Cambridge MA.