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Today I want to talk about a methodology for selection of firearms and arguably other tools. I put these in order intentionally; the way I did it was working through the perspective of a person trying to decide on a type of weapon to purchase. It is also worth noting I am focusing on weapons for practical, predominantly defensive, use. For sporting weapons reliability is less important as the worst case is a ruined day of hunting or whatever your hobby is. Weapons purchased for enjoyment of shooting or collecting can fail to meet any of the criteria and still be your thing. If you like shooting black powder rifles or surplus Swiss Schmidd Rubens in 7.5×55 which is currently on sale for .51 cents a round at Lucky Gunner then roll with it, the act is it’s own reward. So here we go.

The first category is concept of use. It took a lot of consideration to put this one first. The reason is that it is going to decide the general type of weapons you are going to be looking into.

I will explain in a brief tangent. A gun can be great but entirely wrong for what you want it to do. A Glock 22 is the pistol most likely to be in an LEO’s holster in any town USA. A fishermen in Alaska might very well be packing a Ruger or S&W .44 mag. A normal guy down in Florida who wants a discrete summer CCW piece he doesn’t need to dress around might be packing a tiny .380 like a Ruger LCP. Lets say they all rotate leaving the fishermen with the Glock 40, the cop with the Ruger LCP and the guy down in Florida with the big ole .44 mag. Obviously this is a big old ball of fail.

Think of it like walking into a big well stocked gun store. The fishermen would go to the racks of big bore revolvers, specifically the double action ones. The LEO would gravitate to the racks of semi automatic pistols specifically looking at the compact and full sized models. The guy from Florida would go look at the smaller semi automatic pistols and revolvers.

While you obviously need to look at the general type of weapons that fit your need I would urge against being TOO SPECIFIC. The reason for this is a tendency to create artificially specific requirements to lead you down a path to a gun you want and feel justified in getting whatever you want. One might say this is fine. I disagree for two reasons. First people do not look to justify a decision they inherently know is sound. They are looking to justify a decision because it is too expensive, entirely unneeded or has other various downsides. Second by putting these arbitrary specific criteria at the beginning of the selection process (vs at the end) they may come to a conclusion that has some fundamental problems.

The second category is reliability. Guns owned to save your life in an emergency need to be reliable. I’m not talking ‘this gun is reliable if it has been cleaned the day before, is lubricated just so and has special ammunition made of unicorn horns and big foot bones’ but under all manner of conditions.

Generally the easiest way to get this is to buy a firearm made to a professional standard. As such it might not be a bad idea to look at weapons used by the military (not just ours) and law enforcement. I don’t want to get into any arguments but we’re talking big, quality companies like Ruger, Glock, Smith and Wesson, Remington, Sig Sauer, H&K, etc. Avoid fly by night manufacturers and ‘price point’ brands. Of course even the lowest end Saturday Night Special manufacturer probably, if just by luck, managed to put out a couple guns that work really well. If you happen to have one of those then rock with it. That being said generally after one digs into the ‘my Ghetto Blaster Pimptastic Model’ works perfectly they find the gun is actually used very little. They haven’t tested their guns enough for anything to happen.

Next comes commonality. Commonality of manufacturer, model and chambering. There are a lot of reasons for this. The biggest single one is that common manufacturers/ models and cartridges are common for a reason. Glock hasn’t sold millions of 9mm Glock 17′s  because it is a piece of junk. Winchester Model 94 30-30 stood the test of time and stayed in production for over a century because they were great rifles and people loved them.

Additionally commonality of a weapon tends to mean more accessories, holsters, custom parts, etc are available for that weapon. Pretty much every holster company makes every model for say a Glock 17 or Sig P226. You can’t say that about a Broomhandled Mauser.

Commonality also goes a long way in showing you what sort of support there is for a firearm. Support in terms of spare parts should something break, continued availability of mags, etc all is largely dictated by a weapons commonality. It is a lot easier to find a spring or pin for an AR-15in 5.56 than for an FN-FAL in 280 British.

These are considerations for any firearm owner. A preparedness inclined person is going to weigh availability (which is linked to commonality) of mags and spare parts a whole lot higher than a normal shooter. In an ugly situation I would be able to find say a spare part for an AK-47 or a Glock 17 9mm in my community. It would be a big hassle and I would pay dearly for it, which is why I stock spare parts, but I could get it. On the other hand if the guns were a new boutique rifle  in 6.8 and a Makarov pistol there might not be spare parts within 500 miles which I would not be able to find them in an emergency or realistically get them. Commonality and the ability to trade/ cross level/ scavenge parts/ mags has been weighted heavily for me in recent years and has been a seriously limiting factor in my weapons choices.

Hate to be a buzz kill but affordability matters. We all have budgets and competing demands. I believe owning good modern weapons is important but we have to be realistic. If you are on a $500 Glock/ S&W M&P/ Springfield XD budget there isn’t much point in looking at $950 stainless steel SIGs, let alone 3k custom 1911′s.

Look beyond the cost of the gun. Consider the cost of mags, spare parts, ammo, etc all to equip the gun however you deem necessary. For example for a fighting pistol like my Glock 19 I like to have at least 10 mags and 1,000 rounds of ammo.  The cost difference figured this way between say my G19 and an H&K .45 is going to be significant.

Awhile back Commander Zero broke down exactly how long it would take to save enough money for a Glock and an AR-15 earning just minimum wage. A couple months of delivering Pizza’s a few shifts a week after work would do it. Granted that would suck but if you really want some decent guns and money is tight it would be a way to do it.

Personal Preference comes last. We have already narrowed down the pool of potential options that fit our concept of use to reliable, fairly common models within our budget. Now we can look within those options and make personal preference decisions.

James Yeager talks personal preference. In short he thinks it is a bunch of crap. I agree with Mr. Yeagers general point that personal preference can be taken to extremes. In some circles it is an ‘everyone is a unique and special snowflake’ sort of thing. This is doubly true with inexperienced shooters. The truth is that your unique choice might in fact be stupid.

Where I disagree with Mr Yeager is that, within an intentionally selected pool of options I see no issue with people making choices based on personal preference. Maybe a person is in the market for a defensive shotgun and logically narrowed their choices down to the Mossberg 500 and Remington 870. Say that person is a lefty so they go for the Mossberg 500 whose controls are easier to handle. Say a perspective LEO was looking for a duty weapon and for the sake of this discussion he had free reign to carry any non single action compact or full sized 9mm, 40 S&W or .45 acp .That young man might handle all of those pistols and rent the three or four he liked best to shoot.

So to close out on personal preference I do believe personal preference has a valid role in firearm selection so long as it is within a pool of weapons that meet some logical pre determined criteria.

Anyway I hope this gives you a way to think about future purchases and hopefully save the hassle of buying the wrong gun(s).

Thoughts?