let's discuss your "small arms skills"

[thru]

what standard do you use? slowfire groups? those are meaningless, except perhaps for some types of hunting. Do you KNOW how fast you are for a given "raise rifle and hit" scenario, different ranges, cover using heads, head on prone men, not just erect torsos? What if you have to pivot a bit, as vs facing the target? do you know how much that slows you down? How much more time is needed to hit another target at that same range (at how much distance between them? How do you rank compared to the top men? Is your belief in your adequacy based upon anything in reality, or is it just your unsupported "faith"? What makes you think that you will have lots of time in which to get the hits, hmm? Do you have luminous sights or a night scope on your shtf rifle? It IS dark half of the time, folks. Can you hit swiftly in the dark?

 

[telpinaro]

I'd probably spend a lifetime learning all the stuff I "need to know" for survival if things really got bad. Being prepared is good. Being ready for anything and extremely prolonged horrible situations would be nice, but I'd have to spend all my time and money on it. I'm not going to spend so much time and energy worrying about the end of times or "SHTF" stuff that I don't have a life worth losing. I'll prepare as I can, when I can. I'll collect the things I can afford as I can get them. I'll practice as I'm able. But it's not going to be my whole life.

 

[thru]

of course not. With a sound suppressed auto rifle, a .22 conversion unit for it and an airsoft variant of same with the shot timer application for your smartphone, some steel disks, a bit of google searching and some video viewing, and you can be much faster than the average soldier. I favor a lot more pistol work than rifle, most of it from the "hand in pocket" start position, and more yet hand to hand training, cause that's reality. the rifle is really only a shtf item, and if shtf, the pistol won't amount to a hill of beans. Cause everyone will have a longarm and know to use cover and darkness. the ones that don't know this won't be around very long.