Letter: Uncommon Calibers

HJL,

I have been thinking about survival of my community after a collapse. In the area of defense and caliber choices, I’m now leaning towards two “other” calibers. In an AR 15, the 6.5 Grendel, and AR 10, the 6.5 Creedmoor. Both out shoot the 5.56 and 7.62 respectively. My thinking in this is, if we are equipped, have the ammunition supplies we need, the reloading equipment and reloading supplies, and we can maintain an armory that will take us through most situations. Then any weapon that may fall into unfriendly hands has limited use against us. We have enough ammo for the long haul, but anyone else would have at best a few mags. I believe selling of ammo will be very limited and the argument for being able to “pick up” common calibers is the exact reason to not use them. – JP in Minnesota

HJL Responds: I would question if the benefits of moving to a non-standard caliber are worth it. How much weight are you placing on the concern of losing a firearm and is it realistically that large of a concern? While the odd cartridges perform better than the standard cartridges, is the performance advantage of moving to it worth the headache of never being able to find replacement parts for your firearms again? How much does the move to these calibers add to the cost of using and maintaining the firearms? Can you realistically store enough ammunition and spare parts for the foreseeable future? I’m having trouble seeing the benefits to a move like that.