Prepping for Defense
First, the best defense is being unnoticed, whether that’s you as an individual, group, or home.
In an emergency situation, it would be foolhardy to be sipping from your Camelbak while munching on M&Ms from one hand while holding an MRE in your other hand while you walk past unprepared people who are hungry and thirsty. I just saw some pictures from the relief efforts in Haiti; the rush on food and water delivery was nothing short of chaotic. I do not want to have to experience the mad rush on the relief workers. I want and will avoid that by being prepared. Likewise, it would be poor ‘op sec’ (operational security) to have the interior of your home lit up by flashlights or whatever while you BBQ a few steaks in the backyard while neighbors or passerby’s are struggling in the dark, cold and hungry. Op sec has been discussed in numerous blogs, and I would suggest reviewing the material at SurvivalBlog.com. That site has incredible depth and is worth your time to carefully review and learn. Mr. Rawles is also the author of PATRIOTS, a novel of collapse of the American economy (prescient given that it was written in 1990 or so.) Actually, it is more of an ‘how to prep’ manual disguised as a novel.
Mr. Rawles has done a far better job, and continues to do a far better job, than I ever could discussing the myriad of details that come under the umbrella of survival. What sets this site apart is in the details. We are trying to primarily serve the Jewish community, and since we are over-represented in cities and suburbs and under-represented in the countryside and farmland, our focus will be more towards suburban and urban folks. Apologies to any Jewish farmers or ranchers. Much of my focus will be on surviving short to moderate duration ‘contingencies’ rather than a TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) scenario –for now.
So, the first step to defending yourself, family and friends – as a prepper – is to be able to help others as you are able without revealing your well-prepared state or location also avoid being over-run and having your supplies forcibly taken. It’s nice to share, but not to be ripped off. The second step of defending yourself, family and friends, is just that: defend yourself.
OK, so you blew it out of the kindness of your heart, your tzadka is biting you in the ass and there are people demanding more water/food than you can safely give them. Their demands would put you and yours in the position of running out of water that very night. You can accept going without food for a week, but not water. What then? Morally, you do have the right to defend ‘only water’ if your life depends on it. The Talmud (and forgive my terrible paraphrasing ) says that if you are stuck in the desert with only enough water for you to make it to the next oasis, you do not have to share it for to do so would be akin to suicide. Makes sense to me. There are other biblical sources (see Aish.com’s ask the rabbi and go ask a rabbi).
Here comes the hard part. You got water enough for another 8 days and the ‘contingency’ looks like it will be a short one (let’s imagine that it is weather related) and help is on the way and expected to be up and running to serve the 1000’s, perhaps 10,000’s that need it. You can’t just turn on the water-hose for in this scenario, the water supply has been contaminated from the storm. You guess that water trucks protected by the National Guard will be by in another 3 or 4 days. Food will be by in 4 or 5 days. You have given away as much water as you feel safe giving away. But it’s not enough for the 100 or so people milling about on your front lawn who want more and are demanding more. Some are shouting out “hoarder”. More are gathering as the crowd (mob?) follows the shouts to learn that you gave away a whole case of bottled water earlier in the day from your front steps. The shouting gives way to people banging on your front door, People are now streaming around both sides of your house, looking for another way in… You now have two options.
Option 1. Give away all your water. Maybe the crowd will believe you when you tell them you have no more and will leave. Maybe they won’t and will want to search your home for more water and maybe some food too. If you’re smart enough to stash water, maybe you’re smart enough to stash some food too! Maybe they won’t trash you home (or apartment) as they search, maybe they will wipe their feet before entering. Maybe they won’t take out their frustration and fear on your home, you, your wife, and kids. Maybe. Jews don’t fare too well in mobs. Dang mizzuzah gave you away. You shout to go away. A rock crashes through your bay window. Uhh, you shout even louder for them to leave. Your panicked wife looks at the phone in disbelief as it continues to tell her that her message to 911 is important and to wait for the next available operator. She’s been holding for 10 or 15 minutes already. You know most of the Police are busy elsewhere protecting the mini-malls from looters. The front door is being forced off its hinges and someone is starting to crawl through the bay window. Gather up your family and run, rabbit, run. You now have joined the ranks of the unprepared, and maybe worse as you will do anything to keep your wife and children alive. Much like those people rummaging through your home for more water.
Option 2. While the people are shouting, you strap on your holstered 45 ACP sidearm to your hip and grab your shotgun. Your wife grabbed her 9mm pistol and holstered it, and her semiauto rifle in 5.56. Your 15 year old son (he is bar mitzvahed—and treated like a man), has his 308 bolt-action rifle, your 17 year old daughter refused to learn how to shoot and stands there looking scared. Your wife give her the phone to monitor, more to keep her busy than in hopes 911 will answer. Everyone armed remembered to put on their hearing protection – guns are loud and can really mess with your hearing! You go out the front door, with your wife and son covering you right and left . You then shout “Please leave. I have given out all the water I can spare.” A chorus of “bullshit” returns, and the crowd does not disperse. You aim the shotgun at the ground halfway between you and the crowd and let off 2 rounds. The blasts quiets the crowd and the resulting damage to the lawn makes the aggressors in front rethink their plans and they back off. Your son then goes to the back of the house to ‘patrol it’. You consider your options as you watch the mob disperse.
I like option #2 a bit better. My theoretical wife remained safe as did my children. My wife and daughter did not get raped. My son and I did not get beaten. My home and its memory-laden items remained safe. And the family has enough food and water to last a week if rationed carefully.
The two counter arguments I see forming in my head are: A)People will not force their way into your house for just water. My answer: BS, the veneer of civilized behavior is thinner than we like to believe. Germany was the epitome of civilized European in the early 20th century. That didn’t turn out too well for us. Remember the LA riots? Ohh, you live in a nice part of town or a nice suburb? Great, and unless you have a moat, those living in less desirable parts know exactly where to go. And your quaint Police force… well, they may be taking care of their own families and absent from work or be hopelessly outnumbered and given orders to protect infrastructure that does not include you. I think the Police force down in LA are still looking for replacements of cops that left Katrina. And B) They will not run from a warning shot and you don’t have enough ammo to kill everyone. My answer: Even cockroaches run when the light goes on in the middle of the night. If the crowd, now a mob, continues to advance despite the warning shot, then I would find out if I had courage to shoot to stop the closest member of the mob and protect me and mine or would I piss in my pants. Likely after a few of the mob are hit –wounded or dead – the rest will search elsewhere. Screaming wounded and blood splatter probably work better than police sirens for dispersing an angry, hungry mob. Once a mob gets started, I have grave doubts that the looters would stop after taking food and water. And I am not talking about having nice insured objects stolen, but rather the safety of my family.
OK, I have made a cheesy scenario to defend the need for weapons. Maybe everyone will be peaceful, help each other, and share with anyone that has less. That would be great. The money spent on rifles, pistols, ammunition, and etc should have been spent on a pretty saddle for the unicorn that’s walking down the street. Still, I got the cheesy scenario. Think of a more realistic one. Maybe next year the N1H1 flu lives up to its hype, and one out four truck drivers are too ill drive, and one out of four electrical workers are too ill to repair and maintain the power wires. Of the remaining 75%, one out of three stay home, leaving only ½ the usual manpower, and there is less and less food being unloaded at night at your grocery store. No matter how cheesy my scenario might be, how likely do YOU think some really bad event will take place in the next 10 or 15 years? If you wait until you think something bad will very likely happen in a few weeks, you are probably too late. You need time to learn, to stash some food that has a good shelf life, and to learn how to use a weapon(s).
Step 1. Come to the realization that you might need a weapon(s) to protect the lives of you and yours, and that it is far better to have a weapon and not need it than the converse. Until you can wrap your head around that idea and accept it, do more research and return when you're ready to defend yourself and your loved ones rather than watch them getting raped and beaten.
Step 2. Do your research and education, with hands-on ‘labs’, ie training. I liked Boston’s Gun Bible, and there are many other great sources. Books go only so far. Get to gun shop/gun range and rent some pistols and rifles. See what feels right in your hands. Appleseed Shoot.
Step 3. Try and figure out what weapons will serve your needs the best. If you live in SoHo in NYC, well, first get a lawyer to see what weapons you can legally own. I think you are kind of screwed. Hopefully, NYC will do better than most cities to take of its sheep, err, citizens because of its experience with terrorists. As seen in Washington DC this year, empowering civilians to protect themselves dramatically decreased the murder rate in that city (see http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/21/guns-decrease-murder-rates/#top10block) If you live in a urban center, what are your plans? Try and get to Aunt Sadie in the ‘burbs? Hunker down in your apartment? Just GOOD (Get Out Of Dodge)? Do you live in the suburbs? How far is your line of sight, your field of fire?
FIREARM BASICS
Round: Often thought of as the ‘bullet’. A round is composed of the bullet (the projectile part of the round), the casing which holds the bullet, gun powder and primer.
Caliber: There are several ways to describe a weapon’s round. Sometimes described as width in as a fraction of 1 inch. You have heard of a ‘45’, which translates into a round that is 0.45 on an inch wide, often written as ‘.45’ or out of laziness the decimal is also dropped off as written as ‘45’. Sometimes caliber is measured in mm like the famous 9m round. Some other common calibers are the .22, the .223 (of the M16 fame), .308, 7.62 .357 and on and on. The other descriptor for bullets is the length, and you see ‘7.62x51’. Please note that the .22 caliber is often thought of as a small little bullet is 0.003 of an inch skinnier than the .223 which is also equal to 5.56 mm. Thus the famous M16 and its many variants (often referred to as assault rifles) shoot a bullet a smidge wider than a .22. The difference is the .223/5.56 round has more gunpowder and the bullet travels much faster. Kinetic energy = mass X velocity squared.
The .223 and 5.56 rounds are very similar and can be shot interchangeably with the following warning. The rounds are not equivalent. The military version (5.56 mm) develops higher pressures in the rifle when fired and should not be shot in a rifle that is solely chambered for a .223 as the higher pressure can cause damage to rifle and things near it like your face when fired. A .223 can be safely fired in a rifle chambered for a 5.56 round.
To make it more confusing, the civilian .308 is of the same diameter as the military 7.62X51 but in this case, the civilian round develops more pressure than the military round. Again, make sure you don’t shoot a .308 in a rifle that is made just for the 7.62X51. However, most 7.62 rifles can accept either.
Magazine. Often referred to as a ‘clip’ but is wrong and will earn scowls if used. A magazine holds rounds and comes in various capacities for the same weapon, that is, you can buy a magazine that can hold 4, 10 or 30 rounds for many rifles. “High capacity’ magazines are a fallacy purported by those who fear firearms. More correct is ‘full capacity’ magazines. If you are ‘allowed’ to defend yourself, how many rounds should the government allow you to use?
Speed loaders: Little gizmos that hold rounds in a circle to allow fast reloading of revolvers.
Bolt-action (rifle): You need to pull back the bolt of the rifle after each shot to reload another bullet. Sometimes you have to manually reload the round, sometimes there is a magazine that feeds another round. The key here is that you have pull the bolt back and then forward to get another round ready to shoot. Very manual.
Semiautomatic: Each time you pull the trigger, the weapon shoots once and puts another round in the barrel ready to shoot again (requires another pull of the trigger).
Automatic: Once you pull the trigger, the weapon shoots bullet after bullet until you let go of the trigger or the magazine runs out of rounds.
Rifling: Grooves cut into the interior surface of a weapon’s barrel which makes the bullet spin along its axis when fired to greatly increase accuracy. Rifling can be “1:10’ or “1:12” or whatever, with 10 revolutions to the foot or 12 revolutions to the foot. This becomes important when selecting the weight of the bullet (more later)
Pistols.
It’s been said that pistols are great for buying you time to get to your rifle. The really nice thing about pistols is that they easily stay with you. Fine indeed. A pistol on your hip beats a rifle leaning against the wall 15 feet away.
There are basically two flavors of pistol. Revolvers (aka ‘wheel guns’) and semiautomatic pistols. There are automatic pistols out there but let’s forget about them.
Revolvers are great until you need to reload. They have an edge in reliability over semi-autos, but less and less as semiautos have become increasingly reliable. Revolvers can be left alone for longer periods of time and still shoot well, where there could be some doubt leaving a semiautomatic for a long period and expect it to perform well because of the increased complexity of a semiauto.
I know little about revolvers beyond this; I don’t own a revolver and have little interest in them. If you really want to learn about revolvers, I’m not the guy to read. Thank God for Google. One nifty revolver is the newish “The Judge” made by Taurus (http://www.taurus-judge.com/). It’s a large revolver that can shoot either small shot gun shells or large bullets. Shooting buckshot in an urban setting is safer in that it is nearly impossible for it to penetrate the sheetrock wall and injure someone on the other side. Also shooting buckshot means spot-on aiming is less of a concern. The kick when shooting the shotgun shells is surprisingly light and should be easily controlled by people of smaller stature.
As far as reliability goes, there seems to be an inverse relationship between reliability and accuracy, most notable at the extremes. Super accurate target pistols or rifles need to be babied every which way, thoroughly cleaned after relatively few shots through them. To get accurate, there is less and less play in the parts which means smaller and smaller pieces of crud can mess things up. Increased reliability often means looser tolerances which is not good for accuracy. The AK 47 is famous for both its reliability (an Israeli soldier once told me ‘you can piss on it then throw it in the sand and it will still fire’; I told him that he did not have to demonstrate much to his disappointment). Most rifles and pistols today do a great job of being accurate without being finicky and reliable with being inaccurate. Again, this is more of a problem at extremes.
Semiauto’s are great. They are accurate, generally hold more rounds in the magazine than a revolver and are a heck of a lot easier to reload (pop out the empty magazine and slide in a loaded magazine, can be done in about 1 second with practice. One second is a long time in a gun fight.)
The two basic flavors of semiautos are the Glock frame and the 1911 frame. Neither frame is perfect and you have to figure which tradeoffs work for you.
Glocks are well known for their reliability, accuracy and price. They are quickly and easily disassembled into about 3 main pieces and no small widgets to lose. Glocks are also famous for their reliability and don’t require frequent cleaning. That said, I still clean mine after each trip to the range.
1911 frames are also reliable and accurate but have more pieces than a Glock and more pieces means there are more things that can go wrong. Disassembling a 1911 is more difficult and hence more time consuming compared to a Glock. Small pieces are more likely to get lost. That said, they are the gold standard, and have lots of strong points.
The Glock is interesting because of its safety mechanism. It’s a little bar that protrudes up from the middle of the trigger. The protrusion needs to be depressed for the gun to go bang. Basically, pull the trigger and it goes bang because your finger pushes the bar down because the bar is in the middle of the trigger. This is great in a high stress situation where you may forget to disengage a safety if you were using a 1911 frame. Not so great in low stress situations where you are searching for your pistol in a range bag. If there is a round in the barrel, it will shoot if the trigger/safety bar is depressed whether or not there is a magazine in the handle or not. With a Glock, the biggest safety feature resides in your brain. Because that little bar is the only thing holding back a bullet, I no longer carry my Glock with a round in the chamber. In an emergency situation, I better remember to pull back the slide and chamber a round. I am leaning to getting a 1911 frame so I can carry “cocked and locked”. See below.
1911’s have more safety features which very between manufactures and models. Some will not fire unless the magazine is in place. There are good and bad points about this. Some have a safety feature in the handle which gets depressed as you grip the weapon. Again, like everything else, there are pros and cons to this (eg what if your hand is injured and you cannot grasp the handle completely – the pistol might not fire). And there is the basic ‘safety/decocking’ lever activated by your thumb. In this fashion, you can carry the pistol with a round in the chamber and the hammer in a cocked position but with the safety/decocking’ lever on safe. To fire, your thumb pushes the lever to the ‘fire’ position and you're ready to go. In my opinion, that is safer than walking around with a round in the chamber of a Glock. There are plenty of people that feel otherwise, and if you are one of them, please don’t flame me, this is just my opinion.
So let’s say you’ve decided on getting a Glock semiautomatic pistol as your sidearm. What caliber? There are huge argument about this, causing divorces, feuds (it’s the real reason behind the Hatfield-McCoy feuds), and the like. I do not think a 22 pistol is a good choice unless that is all you can safely shoot. However, getting a .22 pistol for learning purposes is great. The rounds are cheap so you will shoot a lot, the recoil and noise is quite manageable and will make the development of bad habits like flinching less likely and the development of good habits more likely. And once you ‘graduate’ to a larger caliber meant to defend yourself, you can turn somebody else on to pistol shooting using your .22.
The best answer I think is to carry the biggest caliber that you can manage. Sometimes a full sized.45 caliber pistol is too difficult to carry in a concealed fashion because you live in Miami and its 100 degrees outside and it doesn’t fit in your speedo. A sports coat is out of the question! Or you are of a smaller stature and your wrist is overpowered by the recoil of a .45. See if a .40 works, if that’s still too big, a 9mm and so on. Dang, maybe you’re a big person and can handle a .50 caliber pistol.
Whether or not you want the option to get a concealed weapon permit is up to you. I suggest it if only to make trips back and forth to the shooting range easier to accomplish legally even if you do not carry your sidearm on a daily basis. I also think the more ‘normal’ people carry a sidearm, the better. Each time a nice normal person decides to carry, that makes the per centage of kooks carrying a sidearm drop a little bit. Also as “PR”, as a nice normal gal who carries a pistol, maybe your example empowers a friend to do the same. You may save someone’s life indirectly, but I digress.
Get trained. This can be as simple as a friend showing you the basics, the gunshop’s class or classes, or going to a ‘combat pistol class’. Depends on what you like. But remember, you are learning to shoot to protect yourself, this means you are learning to shoot individuals intending to maim or kill you and yours. The army learned that the transition from shooting bulls-eye type targets to enemy soldiers was more difficult than if silhouette-type targets were used. On the battlefield, the enemy in the distance looks like a silhouette, not a dayglow dot with circles around it. Train like you fight. Use silhouette targets as often as you can.
RIFLES:Oy, what a topic. The Hatfields-McCoy feud was made even worse discussing self defense rifles. Here is my take.
First, you will need two. Just as you have different knives for different purposes in your kitchen, you will need two basic types of rifles, each with its own niche. And if you have a sushi knife, a bread knife, a carving knife, and a bunch steak knives and the like without being a ‘knife-nut’, owning two rifles doesn’t make you a rifle nut. It makes you prepared.
Shotgun.
You may need a shotgun for its ability to hit a close target without much in the way of aiming. You will want it a bit on the short side to be able to maneuver it hallways and through doors if necessary. There is an inverse relationship between barrel length and range. You're not going to be shooting ducks with it, so keep it short. I would also suggest a semiauto shotgun which has the capability to keep at least 5 rounds in its magazine. A sling is a must for weapon retention. A sling will keep the shotgun with you if you trip or if someone tries to grab it. Some have external magazines which are great if you need to reload, just switch out the empty mag for a fully loaded one. It will be a bad thing if you need to reload that rapidly.
Rifle.
I’m cringing as a type this. The other rifle you will need is a semiautomatic rifle, erroneously referred to as “assault rifles” (assault rifles are fully automatic – that is, it’s a machine gun). The ‘Evil Black Rifle’ (EBR) is perfect for self defense and there are many many variations on this type of weapon for that very reason.
Here’s the part I fear to type, for just as there is no perfect caliber in pistols, the same is true for rifles. I am suggesting a .308/7.62X51 rifle, if you can handle the greater weight of that type of rifle as well as greater recoil. Briefly, a 308 round will go through a car door like tissue paper where the more common .223/5.56 round will have trouble. If the aggressor is taking cover behind the 7” trunk of the oak tree in your front yard, the .308 will punch through it, the 5.56 wont. I know many of the arguments in favor the 5.56 but if the aggressor has taken cover, I will stand a better chance of surviving by shooting through the barricade.
Do not start with a .308! You do not learn to drive in a Ferrari! I would suggest that like pistols, you start with a .22 caliber rifle in an ‘EBR’ type of frame. Cheap ammo, minimal kick, minimal noise and you will be less likely to develop bad habits. Also, if the shit really turns bad, a .22 rifle leaves a lot more meat on a squirrel than a .308 or .223!
What the lawmakers don’t understand (maybe they do and fear civilians with effective weapons) is that what they call ‘assault’ features on a rifle actually make the weapon safer. The infamous pistol grip makes your grip more secure. A front vertical grip also makes your grip more secure. And adjustable stock makes for a better fit, kind of like the adjustable front seat of you car. Loading via an external magazine marginally adds some safety because it’s a bit easier to determine if the rifle is loaded. Yes, there can a round in the chamber while the magazine is on the floor. But it is easier to clear one round, rather than a hunting rifle which holds several rounds in an internal magazine… you may clear 3 rounds leaving a fourth. I digress again.
Once you are comfortable and accurate with your 22 rifle, its time to move up.
If you are in an urban/suburban neighborhood, any discussion of rounds that shoot more than 800 yards is kind of silly. A .308 can accurately shoot 800 yards if the shooter is up to it; the first time I shot a .308 I went from one hundred yards to 300 yards in one afternoon. I was not able to shoot my 5.56 accurately at 300 yards despite far more practice. I traded the 5.56 the first opportunity I had. There are many good arguments and good counter arguments between the two calibers. There is no ‘right’ answer for everyone; there may be a right answer for you.
In any event, lets keep the argument brief. Read other sources, and if you read Boston’s Gun Bible, you will see I agree with his opinions.
Again, back to my cheesy scenario. This time, 2days later, some of the now hungrier and thirstier mob have gotten a few .223/5.56 rifles and are taking shots at you 70 - 100 yards away behind cover of a minivan, a stone fence and a dumpster. Relief trucks have yet to arrive and you haven’t seen a cop since the whole thing began. Out of range for the shotgun, probably the pistol, leaving the .308 and .223/5.56. Simply put, the 5.56 will bounce off the car, the stone fence and the metal dumpster. The .308 will penetrate the car’s metal, may penetrate the stone fence (!) and will penetrate the metal dumpster. End of fight. OK, if you are accurate enough while someone is shooting you, grab your .22 rifle and put a bullet though an eye. It’s easy enough to punch a hole in the middle of 2 inch dayglow orange disc printed on some paper at 100 yards at a rifle range, but generally people are not going to cooperate by holding perfectly still, and –oh yeah- thy’ll be shooting at you. You will be aiming for ‘center of mass’.
Maybe a better response would be to throw some water bottles and MRE’s towards them and hope they take what they want while you run away from your home with your family in tow. Your call. We are just trying to help you defend yourself when you make the decision that verbal discourse is over.
My bare bone suggestions are:
Pistol: One for every adult, in the same caliber if possible. Caliber needs to be either .40 or .45. Get one of the ‘better’ brands. Might as well buy more magazines than you think you need, especially if you can get full capacity mags as they may impossible to get in a few years. Learn to shot the damn thing accurately and safely! Spend some money on ammo and become comfortable shooting.
Shotgun: I don’t have enough experience with shotguns to make suggestions. Visit some other sites. See http://www.frfrogspad.com/shotgun.htm, it doesn’t discuss specific shotguns but gives a very good overview of them. You can’t go wrong with a Remington 870 (http://www.remington.com/products/firearms/shotguns/model-870/model-870-express-tactical.aspx) or a Mossberg shotgun (http://www.mossberg.com/)
Rifle: Start with a 22 LR, probably get a Ruger 10/22 but get it “dressed” like an EBR. Then either get a .308/7.62X51 or a 5.56/.223 rifle, one for each person in you group that can handle a rifle. Larger folks should get the .308, smaller framed folks the 5.56. Or many just stick with the 5.56 (so all in the group shares the same ammo, if not rifle model). Again, learn to shoot them accurately and safely. Minimally, attend an Appleseed Shoot (http://www.appleseedinfo.org/) to learn the basics. Women and youths (under 18 I think) train for free. The cost for men for 2 days of shooting is under $100.00.
And as an aside, FNH (Fabrique National Herstal) makes a lot of the weapons used by our military. They have an interesting combo that you may like and well suited for urban areas. They made a new round, a 5.7X28. The round fits both in one of their pistols and their PS90 carbine which they dubbed as a PDW (Personal Defense Weapon). The rifle looked sooooo cool that I splurged and got one. It shoots very, very accurately under 100 yards, which is the purpose it was meant for. It is not for shooting 300 yards. It’s very small and smooth… nothing sticks out like a magazine to get caught on stuff if you need to move through debris or climb a stone wall. Go google it or see http://www.fnhusa.com/mil/products/firearms/family.asp?fid=FNF009&gid=FNG006 for a glossy news release. The magazine can hold 50 rounds (and you can have them if you live in State that allows full capacity magazines otherwise you need to stick with 10 round or 30 round magazines). The rifle has minimal kick to it. Its overall length is very short, but it has a 16 inch barrel for accuracy. Many rifles that have a shorter barrel – and hence less accurate – still have a longer overall length. Some very cool engineering going on. If you pair the rifle and the pistol, you logistics got a whole lot easier – you only need one type of round for your pistol and rifle. The rifle, again, is only suitable for the purpose it was made – urban setting. Hmmm, and where do you live? Mine has an EOTech sight on top and the magazine can hold 50 rounds. I have 5 mags, which means with one mag in the rifle, and the remaining 4 stored with me, I have 250 rounds to protect myself in a very small but accurate package. Overall length is a smidge over 26 inches. It can go in and out of my car easily with me (most other rifles with a 16 inch barrel are much longer and bulkier). In a pinch, I can carry it under a coat. It fits within my GOOD (Get Out OF Dodge) bag. More on GOOD bags and BOB (Bug Out Bags) later. It is almost small and light enough to replace a pistol.
In any event, F&N is a great company, known for building reliable weapons and very good customer service. You will be paying for the quality. If you opt for this combo, skip purchasing the 22 rifle as the PS90 is just sweet to shoot and maybe more fun given its unique shape. A drawback is that it is not in the standard frame of AR’s. With an ‘AR clone’ in a 22 caliber, the next rifle you get (hopefully in .308) will be very similar in function. That is, you load the magazine exactly the same, the rifle comes apart in the exact same fashion (just bigger) and the like. I do not have theFiveseveN pistol (uses the same ammunition so the cache of 5.7 rounds can be used either for the pistol or the rifle which is pretty unique and makes logistics a bit easier) yet, nor any accurate reports on its stopping power. You may want to check out http://fnforum.net/ and read about the pair there. Remember, these are folks that just plunked down some serious money for their weapon and may be a bit opinionated.
We will be happy to try to answer specific questions you have.
If you prefer the 5.56 round or AKs, fine; I am not going to argue over it! Those are both tried and true weapons and rounds. Use them well.
