I bought that shortly after the Clinton AWB. the dealer at a show noted that he could buy a bunch of legal pre ban AKS but needed some cash so I got what was than about a 2000 dollar rifle for wholesale. Next show he had 15 NORINCO AKs that he was selling for probably 3X what he got them for. Even though W 1 had banned the import there were tons still floating around a year and a half later. I know because I had a dealer friend buy me a case (12) for less than 2 Grand. he stored them for a year and we made a couple K selling them after the ban
For home defense if you want to stay with a 22 get a semi auto high capacity pistol. You will be defending at close quarters by the time you sight in using a rifle with a scope you wife will be planning your funeral.
I recommend a nine or ten shot revolver loaded with stingers. 22 RF are not as reliable an as centerfire and if you get a bum round with a revolver you just pull the trigger again. and those stingers are nasty anti-personnel items. Another good choice is a 22 carbine gallery gun-pump action filled up with those stingers. often holding 15 rounds and you can shoot one of those suckers lightning fast-I'd keep iron sights on it or a zero magnification red dot.
The Romanov Czarist government toppled during WWI. Some if not many of the Russian troops took their army weapons home with them. Some percentage of these joined the Reds when the Korensky government collapsed. The WHITES were formed from units of Czarist troops who had weapons already. There were not any common people in the Czarist empire who had private weapons. The Bolsheviks once they of course confiscate weapon since they did not want to meet the same fate that they implsed upon the Czar and his family including the kids. Brutality must be in the Russian DNA.
There's a happy medium to be achieved. I suppose one could argue that our garden equates to "baiting," but it hasn't stopped me from taking out the skunks, porcupines, groundhogs, etc who manage to circumvent the barriers we've put in place. Ditto rattlesnakes. As a rule, I try to leave them alone. But if they get inside the yard or into any of my outbuildings, they're toast. I've not lost a moment's sleep dispatching those healthy wild animals.
Those of you that have talked about how many guns you own now have all that on record in some government data base that will be used to confiscate your guns someday.
When you practice with a David sling they can never take your gun away from you and anything in the two to four ounce range is a bullet as long as it is aerodynamic and small enough to fit in your pouch. What's that you say? A wheel weight, a spark plug or a stone, or a lead fishing sinker. Negative...... Those are all bullets to me. I ain't saying I'd kick a gun out of bed for eating crackers but you always need a backup plan. And don't throw rocks at people who have guns.
They're welcome to try. I forgot to mention the 30-40 Krag-Jørgensen I added to the gun locker when my dad passed; the military assault rifle he hunted with.
A friend of mine has some sort of semi-auto pistol that shoots 22 magnum and the magazine holds 30 rounds. If I had to have a 22 for home defense or God forbid a gunfight.... I'd certainly want that one. I bet @Turtledude is familiar with the gun in question
You are obviously not up to date on Constitutional Law issues as regards our individual gun rights. Within just the past few days, a Judge put a TRO on New Jersey's attempt to get around the Bruen ruling by making essentially everywhere but your own home a no-carry zone, in direct violation of the decision. Our gun rights will remain intact for at least 2-3 generations at this point, and changes then will depend on the makeup of the Court, what cases may come before them, and whether or not they're willing to reverse their own decision and the plain English text contained in the 2A. I expect that in between now and any hypothetical future where your wet dreams may come to pass, SCOTUS will be reinforcing and reiterating that decision in a number of cases, especially in NJ, NY, CA, and IL. But don't take my word for it, you will find analysis and discussion of the attempt to end-run the Supreme Court by a California gun rights attorney in the videos shown below. There are more on his channel should you care to actually understand what the Constitution says, as opposed to what you (a non-American whose opinion is neither relevant nor welcomed) wish it said.
Oh, I neglected to answer the OP, a mistake that I will rectify, but only vaguely. I have enough guns and ammo in my possession that if I were caught with it in any of the gun grabbing States I listed above, the 11PM news would refer to it as 'an arsenal, in spite of the fact that a beefy dude (or a cripple with powered wheels) could carry all of it in one large bag. Or maybe just some of it. Of course, I recently learned that while I was hospitalized, my wife went out in the Gulf to shoot into the water, and everything was lost in overboard in several hundred feet of saltwater, so within a year or two they will probably be completely broken down and absorbed into the ocean, in the process feeding some minerals and other goodies to the corals and other sea creatures who consume such things.
Unless you're really compromised physically (elderly & arthritic for example) there are so many better choices than .22 as a home defense pistol caliber, imo. When my dad became sufficiently arthritic that he had trouble working the slide on his PPK, I gave him my Colt Detective Special. He was accurate as hell to 20 yards shooting +Ps, despite the arthritis. Most civilian defensive gun usages occur within 7 yards, so dad was covered and then some. For those worried about recoil/muzzle flip/controllability, I'd suggest a .357 loaded with .38 specials. My 115 pound wife carries a Glock 43x & loves shooting it. She's also come to enjoy shooting .38 specials out of my GP100.
Consider a typical 22 long rifle bullet is 40 grains in weight. ( 15 grains equals 1 g ) Now a typical 22 magnum projectile is 60 grains in weight and has almost double the muzzle velocity. So versus typical 22 long rifle load you have a weight increase of 33% at almost double the velocity. A .22 mag is a different animal than .22 LR That being said, a larger caliber would be a good choice, nonetheless. No one should particularly choose 22 for home defense but if you just happen to have one laying around....
Guns are like parachutes and insurance policies... better to have them and not need them, than need them and not have them.
That's a question for the anti gunners among us, who don't know what AR stands for; who are making excuse after excuse for Alec Baldwin using a Colt Army to blow away the cinematographer.
I've been a "prepper" for years. I'm not as worried about burglars as I am about a war which seems more likely every day, or a similar major event leading to long term chaos. With that in mind I stick to military or law enforcement calibers, since they are the most likely calibers to remain available the longest. These include rifle: NATO 5.56 (223), NATO 7.62x51 (30, 5.7... pistol: 9mm, 45ACP, 40 S&W... shotgun: 12ga
Then why did they ban them instead of regulating whether or not you can fire them around on the streets?
