Re: One rilfe to pick which one?
SHTF, rifle, maybe. Maybe not.
Very few of us have experinced the kind of unrest that can occur when rioting breaks out.
I grew up in Newark, NJ; living on Mt. Prospect Avenue in the North Ward there from 1958 until 1989. Rioting was well documented in July of 1967, but my own July of 1967 was spent in Qua Viet, RVN.
Less well known are the semi-riot unrests that broke out in succeding years, including the MLK Assasinaton riot, the Kawaida Towers unrest, and the Puerto Rican riots in the mid 1970's. While much of it was confined to the immediate vicinities of public housing projects, we lived only three or four blocks away from the Archbishop Walsh projects, and some of that overflowed and ran right past our front doors.
Several times, we neighbors would sit down on our front steps with 12ga shotguns cradled in our laps, waiting to see what occurred and demonstrating a determined presence and willingness to assure that what came along kept on going. And that's what happened. Disorganized groups of would-be looters would come by, take one look at the shotguns, and keep on going. No shots, no actual violence, just hotheads pushing their luck and seeking the path of least resistance, while homeowners did ther best to represent the most resistant path.
I think that appearances count, and for a potential miscreant, a quick gaze down the unlit railroad tunnel of a 12ga muzzle can be a religious experince. I.e., one good glimpse, and they get religion fast. Whatever it is they're planning to do, plans get altered to do it somewhere else, and pronto.
If pressed to the point where shots get fired, long range is not really a big part of the program. Buckshot and slug distances comprise most fo the likeliest arena.
I like the 20ga. It gets it done with less fuss, muss, and mayhem on the shooter's end of the transaction.
A dot scope and either an Improved Cylinder or Rifled choke tube will handle both, with more up close dispersion of the buck with the rifled tube, which may be counterintuitive but I still like the idea; and basic 5/8oz rifled slugs perform with a good bit more accuracy than I had expected out of the rifled tube.
The thing that many don't realize is that when it comes, you're gonna know some of the folks involved. Tony Imperiale, Don Payne, the Adubato brothers and several notable others were acquaintances and/or personal friends. Things are seldom as simple to sort through as one might expect.
Greg