Zombie Apocalypse - Page 19

1) But that's the point though. You don't have to. Rifles have almost exactly the same power as shotguns do, and better maintain the power the farther out you go. You might make the argument that you might miss less with a shotgun, but really... Most people have optics with rifles and not the shotguns. Most shotguns don't even come with decent irons, just a front bead. You have to pay more to get tri-irons or ghost rings.

1A) AK's will function far longer then your shotgun will, and under worse conditions. Bolt rifles will function far longer then your shotgun will function.

2) Having that many rounds isn't luck. It's preparation.

3) In a zombie apocalypse situation you have more then just zombies to deal with. Zombies. And people trying to take your shit. Imagine the bad guys in Book of Eli. The chances of close range zombie encounters go up the closer you are in to urban areas. The chances of meeting up with other people scrounging for supplies increases the close you get to urban areas.

4) Barrier penetration is kind of valuable when fighting against people. Remember, we aren't just planning for zombies. Not many people carry body armor sure. But the ones that have it are the ones you don't need to worry about, or the ones you really really really need to worry about. Why not have something that can deal with it?

5) No, No, and maybe. Have you taught people to shoot? I've taught all sorts of people to shoot. They tend to learn rifles far faster then shotguns. Why? because the semi automatic principal crosses over from nearly any other previous firearms knowledge they have. For novices, once you get the weapon all set up to go bang, you want it to keep going bang without having any intermediate steps. Further, if we are talking about novices, the downsides to shotguns and reloading really come back to bite you. For getting on target? Rifles all come with generally decent / useable iron sights. Shotguns do not.

Also, you're equating comparing a pump driven to a pump driven vs every type of rifle. When you break it down, controls will always have to be learned. They are in different spots and require different things on rifles just like they are on shotguns. The fact that you need to work the action between every shot in a shotgun is a downside, not a simplicity thing. Follow me here, on both shotguns and rifles you need to learn the safety. On shotguns you need to learn to pump every shot. On rifles, just work the charging handle once.

6) Pretty much exactly. There aren't range advantages pistols hold over shotguns or rifles, but neither do rifles or shotguns hold range advantages inside a pistols effective range (whatever we feel like arbitrarily defining it as... 25 probably is a little too far out for new shooters). However, situational advantages would make me pick the handgun over the shotgun for close in work. I might be biased because I've trained for more extensively with them though.

7) No doubt it's harder to get combat effective hits with handguns then it is with rifles or shotguns. But zombies are only going to die from headshots and they move slowly anyways. Re mags and number: Reload with retention. Re: bashing. The cool thing about handguns is you can hold other things while still shooting the handgun.