Re: Best Cypherpunk long gun

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 7:32 AM -0700 12/23/97, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
>Tim May wrote:
>> For defending the _perimeter_ of my property against Those Who Would
>> Trespass, I count on a Remington Model 700 "varmint" rifle, chambered in
>> .308 (or 7.62 NATO). It's a bolt-action, but the expected use is for
>> long-range (300 meters) use, aka "sniping." The usual high-power scope.
>> This rifle is capable of sub-MOA (minute of angle) groups, meaning less
>> than 1-inch groups at a hundred yards.
>
>Is there any version of Remington 700 (maybe PSS) that accepts
>detachable magazines?

Yes, the PSS comes with a 5-shot detachable magazine (or at least one is
available for it). And I understand that some gunsmiths can easily adapt
the PSS to talke M1A magazines (the M1A being the civilian-legal version of
the M-14, a semiauto in .308. of course).

The view of most snipers is "Why bother?" If the goal is "one shot, one
kill," make that first shot really, really count. Rapid-fire follow-ups
shots are inconsistent with the idea of sniping.

(If the rapid-fire comes as a freebie, it might be a no-brainer to choose
it over bolt-action. But it isn't a freebie, and semiautos cost a lot more
to equal the accuracy of a bolt-action. Plaster estimates a semi-auto also
takes about 5 times the effort to keep it at high accuracy. As I said
earlier, H & K's excellent PSG-1 is a fine semiauto sniping rifle, but it
costs $10K, retail. This compares to a Remington PSS for about $800,
retail, or a Remington Varmint Synthetic for $700, retail. (Or any number
of fine bolt actions from Winchester, Ruger, Sako, Steyr, etc.)

Also, extreme long-range sniping is increasingly done with .50 BMGs, or
.338 Lapua, or, at the lower end, .300 Winchester Magnums. In all cases,
shot recovery is limited more by the shooter reacquiring the sight picture
than by cycling the action, so a semi-auto is mostly a waste of resources.

--Tim May

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