Best SHTF rifles have changed - What's the best now?

[Music] hey guys welcome back so today we're out the range and talk about survival weapons weapons that you would pick up that are generally affordable that you could arm yourself or family members with pick up one or more of them and this is something that's nothing new really to the 2A Community when I was a younger man in the 1980s survivalism is what they called it and it was all the rage they made movies about it Robin Williams had a movie called The survivalists I believe so it it's been this ongoing theme and I also want to apologize if you guys hear wind noise if you're wondering why many of our videos are filmed in this Shooting Shack it's because when we picked up the range out here we didn't know that the only safe direction to shoot would be out west and then if you look out here as we're shooting downrange we put downrange cameras and stuff up you'll see that it's just flat as a pancake and we get regularly high winds and with high winds microphones don't work so well when it's cold outside in high winds it gets unbearable very quickly that's why we built the Shooting Shack but as soon as it warms up and we get rid of some of these high winds and we can actually get good audio we'll be back outside so just wanted to throw that out there cuz some people have asked all right so the rifle I have in front of me is the SS this rifle when I was a younger man this was the goto Survival Rifle why was that well the ammunition 762 x39 was Dirt Cheap it was coming in out of China back then it had the steel penetrators in it before all that was banned because the a93 pistol separate story and the guns themselves were anywhere from $50 to $70 and they were like unissued condition back then these would be Chinese ninko type rifles and stuff like this the one I have in front of me here is a Romanian but there were a number of different sks's that would come into the country over the years the the more rare the more expensive they became the point being the Chinese ones in the 80s maybe the early 90s were dirt dirt cheap so people would buy them in bulk they go out and buy them maybe 10 at a time and then they would have enough firearms for their entire family and the 762 of course was by 39 was very affordable that has changed in 2024 these things are no longer inexpensive these things are no longer commonly available and the ammunition has gone up in price significantly for a number of different factors which we'll talk briefly about in today's video so let's start off taking a look at the SKS and then let's talk about some options that have replaced the SKS as affordable options and they're not going to be $79 those days are gone folks they're just gone but they're affordable by today's standards and so we'll talk about that so let's get started a lot of folks ask me how can I get involved in the Firearms business in that particular community and one of the best ways to do that is to become a gunsmith every gunsmith I know is just overbooked with work it's a very good living and so if you would like to become a gunsmith you need to go to a Gunsmithing school or become an apprentice for an existing gunsmith but modern gun school is a credited college that also works with veterans in the GI Bill where you can go and get a degree from accredited college in Gunsmithing and then go out and start your own Gunsmithing business which I think is a really great option again throughout my entire life gunsmiths have always been able to earn a really good living assuming they have a really strong work ethic so please check out modern gun school I do have a link in the video description below so the SKS as I already mentioned was really really popular during the 80s survivalist craze but rifles like this akm were also commonly available not very popular and affordable by today's standards rifles like this would sell for 270 bucks to $300 generally a gun show the AKs were considered to be Chinese junk back then and nobody really wanted them keeping in mind that we had just we were just coming out of the Vietnam War Vietnam War was 10 years ago when these things were $300 and a lot of people hated the Communist junk right because back then we were anti-communists now the Communists run the show but people thought they were garbage so they were really affordable and sometimes you could find them even cheaper than that the spikers would probably be a little bit more expensive it's been a few years but just a basic akm was really really affordable that was imported from China but these things were Dirt Cheap now the SKS because it was in the $70 range let's say was the most popular and people would pick them up and you'd see people try to accurize them they'd put little B Square mounts back here place the dust cover put really chintzy Optics on them everything they did was really really generally speaking affordable then stocks started coming out like chit stocks and stuff like that for them to put side folders on them people would modify them to get rid of their 10 round magazines that are internal and they would modif I them to use akm style magazines and even the Chinese got in on that game and modified some of them and I featured those rifles here on the channel so there was this effort to turn these into AKs because they were a third of the price let's say but these things were also really reliable the SKS is a great rifle keep in mind this gun was designed in the 1940s it would go into military service immediately after World War II and the Soviet Union but many of the com block countries would also pick it up so like this is a Romanian the Chinese there's all sorts of sks's out there to choose from for collectors today that's fun but this rifle I'm going to guess because it's a Romanian is going to be in the 600 plus dollar range I'm guessing I can't keep up with the prices as they go up so it's not that affordable gun anymore the cool thing about them is they use stripper clips and back in the days when we were still getting oreno ak ammo it would generally come on stripper clips and people would throw these things away because every single case of ammunition you bought the ammo was already on a stripper clip so you can easily put it into the rifle and charge the weapon up quite easily and all that good stuff so the stripper clip was popular the Chinese chest rigs were popular that will hold the St the stripper clips and you can go out and shoot these things all day long I mean gosh ammunition was like $60 for 1,000 rounds or something ridiculous it was just so cheap and so you can go out and shoot all day get lots of practice which is important for a defensive rifle like this let's just do a little bit of quick shooting here with this and fire off those rounds I'd put in here just some PMC going to get the safety in the right position so they're very pleasant rifles to shoot they use a short stroke gas piston they're very easy to maintain they're extremely easy to take apart it there's just not much to them and so you would find that people would use them for that purpose I mean field stripping them is really literally that simple so you know it it it made a lot of sense it really really did and so did the AKs but again these I would say were less popular than these simply because they were two three times more expensive it wouldn't be until the Chinese import bands came about that these rifles especially the ninko and stuff like that started skyrocketing in price that the Chinese akm started skyrocketing in price and then they became truly not something you would want to use in a self-defense situation rifle like the Spiker I there wereth thousands now I would not even think about using this thing as a survival rifle or a go-to rifle this is a collectible now it went from being a $300 junker to a highly valuable you know collectible it's funny how the market can switch so what would you do today I mean the $79 days are gone but are the three and $400 days gone not so much so you may ask yourself why are we talking about cost cost isn't everything and I would agree with that but keep in mind folks we're talking about rifles that you might want to Stack up for use not just for yourself but for family members friends things like that so you want to have rifles that are affordable use the same magazines use the same ammunition just because of logistics that's why we're talking about affordable I'm not saying that your go-to rifle has to be something that's $4 or $500 go out and buy that Knight's Armament go out and buy the Daniel Defense go out and buy whatever it is your heart desires I like the Sig spear but do I have the resources to stack up 10 Sig Spears to hand out to my friends and family no I I I don't not even close so that's the reason we're talking about affordable and typically in the survival Community they want affordable handguns and rifles and even shotguns to stow away some people like to go out and bury things at different locations just in case something go sideways they have to leave their home at least they know they can go here here or here and they'll have food water weapons ammunition things that they need to survive and so it's for those types of people I'm talking about these lower cost options or for those of you on a budget so what's the new affordable hotness I'm glad you asked AR-15 so keep this in mind guys I bought my first AR-15 in high school would have been the late 80s and the cost of the rifle I still have it written in its owner's manual was $550 okay that was for a Colt A2 it was an A2 Sporter 2 but we've again featured that rifle here on the channel before and what's interesting about that is if I put it into an inflation calculator and calculate the cost of $550 back in the 80s versus 2024 numbers that $550 AR-15 is equivalent to $1,586 in today's currency seems about right a quality AR-15 is going to cost you $12 to $1,500 I mean that's just what they're going to go for and you can spend twice that much if you get into Gucci Brands like you know lwrc kns Armament those types of rifles but there are extremely affordable ARs and there's a number of reasons for that so the cost of production has come way down because it's the thing it was developed 1960s right so there's so many companies making parts and accessories and everything like that so many competing products out there it's driven that market pressure has driven the price down so you can get PSA ARS which this is a PSA lower they have on here and an expo Arms Upper from primary arms with a really affordable Cyclops uh prism sight from primary arms on top of it so this would be a budget AR-15 but you can pick up complete rifles from PSA for $499 you can get blims sometimes even less than that but if you pick them up on the used Market if somebody spends $500 for a PSA trades it in on something else you can usually pick that thing up for less than $400 350 bucks or something like that so the AR15 has really really come down in price and if you take a look at that $300 for the akm that I would have paid for that Spiker back in the day yeah that equates to $865 in 2024 currency that's about what PSA is selling their AKs for $8.99 for an AK same thing with K USA right around $1,000 so it really seems like some of those prices really haven't changed all that much but what has changed the most is that the affordable Imports like the SKS those Imports have dried up due to laws due to shortage of you know products they've only had so many of them in storage that they could sell they dried up and now the market is shift to shifted to the AR-15 America's rifle and it's now the most affordable option out there and I think that's awesome because you if you serve in the military you're going to serve with an M16 at home you can own an AR15 unless the anti-gunners get their way it is truly America's rifle is universally used it's used for hunting self defense it's used all over the board matter of fact I just came back from Europe I went to the EA show and the AR-15 they're telling me is gaining in popularity in Europe where it's legal for hunting over there as well and so the AR really is an amazing rifle and the fact that you can pick up a good rifle for 500 bucks is awesome so that is your new prepping gun in my opinion pick up something like a PSA $400 and some odd dollar rifle and people are going to say well what about the quality is the quality there well I'm going to tell you we'll test this so most of my AR-15s like this is pretty much the only budget AR-15 I have most of mine are mid to Upper tier rifles that's just what I gravitate towards I do need to pick up a PSA and Run 3 to 5,000 rounds through it and let's just find out will the thing handle it I'm sure it will almost dropped this one on the ground I'm sure it will but let's find out and you have to ask yourself if this is for self-defense purposes and you know unrestful times you know whatever you want to call it shisn't it hits the fan how many rounds do you really think you're going to fire in that type of a situation you think going to be in running gun battles every single day you need to stockpile 60,000 rounds and and you know set out range markers all over your property so you can engage in that morning's firefight activities no that's not how you're going to stay alive you're not going to want to shoot it all that much hunt a little bit defense if necessary but try to stay out of trouble so people that would say well that gun will never make it to 20,000 rounds well that gun doesn't need to make it to 20,000 rounds all the gun needs to make it to is 5,000 rounds right so anyway let's do a little bit of shooting with this bad boy we are using some federal and this is 62 grain ammunition love Federal ammo they do send the ammunition free of charge to us and been using this stuff since I was a kid literally been shooting it out of my AR15 since the80s and let's see I don't think I've zeroed this site let's do some stump shooting I tell you guys those fulllength buffer tubes really really are smooth that recoil impulse on these things is Awesome with that wind is really awesome with that rifle length buff buffer tube on there so in closing what do you guys think if you had to pick an affordable go-to rifle what would you pick comment down below maybe we'll make a video on that rifle maybe I've overlooked something here I'm going to go with the AR 15 rifles like the PSA there's other competitive products out there that are just as affordable just under a different brand name let me know in the comments if you guys would like to support us here at the Military Arms channel the best way to do that become part of our patreon family you'll get early access to videos like this one you have direct access to me I answer all private Communications Link in the video description below right here on YouTube you got the support buttons underneath the video player you're 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Channel: Military Arms Channel

Views: 241,577

Keywords: firearm, rifle, review, military arms, military, small arms, call of duty, video game, movie, gun review, firearms review, testing, firearm testing, gun testing, akm, ak47, sks, ar15, shtf, survival rifle, best rifle, shtf guns, best survival rifle, prepper guns, bug out, best survival guns

Id: abr3gaIcFqc

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2024