Practical Home Defense

I think we may all be doing it wrong. Zombies have sold untold countless thousands of guns. The mental image of hordes of the undead staggering up the cul-de-sac touches something primal. One of my favorite T-shirts reads, “The Toughest Thing About Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse is Pretending Like I’m Not Excited!” There is a lamentable lot of truth there.

I am drawn to zombie guns, just like the rest of you. A nice tricked-out black rifle with a light, optic and laser designator is just the ticket for defending home and hearth against battalions of hungry ghouls. The particulars have sold a lot of guns and even more gun magazines. My family and I have been the beneficiaries.

If your antagonists are zombies, you can suspend the rules without guilt. The lot of your typical zombie is indeed already fairly sordid. Ganking one is, therefore, sort of like doing them a favor — a simple mercy. The rub is zombies are not technically real, and all this effort at crafting the ideal counter-zombie rifle might just be for naught.

Circumstances

Everybody’s situation is a bit different. After some substantial time in the Army living all over the world, I finally found myself fairly rabid to return to the Deep South to raise my family out in the boonies. There are some very nice stately old homes in my little Southern town, some of which date back to the 19th century. When rarely they come up for sale, they command astronomical prices. I wouldn’t take one if you gave it to me. If I can’t pee in my front yard without offending somebody, I don’t want to live there. I just like my space.

Living in rural Mississippi, my defensive firearm needs are going to be markedly different from those of my city-dwelling counterpart. To be honest, it’s what drives the unbridgeable divide in the gun control debate today. Folks in big cities cannot fathom a world wherein owning a black rifle is considered normal. By contrast, I can’t imagine a world where such stuff is not. Our worldviews are like oil and water.

After 15 years of living half an hour from the nearest community, I have yet to encounter even the first undead ghoul. However, I have in that time needed a gun for real on several occasions. It is simply that the practical applications for home-defense firearms do not necessarily synch well with our idealized vision for the things.

Threat Assessment

In some parts of the country, the threat is undeniably human. I spent seven years working in an urban hospital. In the inner city, folks hit, stab and shoot each other over the stupidest things all the time. It was quite the common occurrence to be serenaded by gunfire echoing across the ’hood as I was walking out to my Jeep after a long night in the ER. By contrast, way out in the rural spaces where I live today, folks are homogenously respectful, helpful and nice.

What we do have hereabouts we did not have in the inner city is scads of animals. Civilization is but a thin veneer, and our world is not so far removed from something fairly feral. This means critters, some more malevolent than others. Keeping the tools handy to deal with farm pests is part and parcel of wilderness living. Many of those tools will do double duty for home defense or hunting as well.

The path to this point has been evolutionary. When first we moved out to our little piece of heaven, my kids were small and forever outside. This meant the breathtaking population of venomous snakes needed to be kept at bay. With a modest lake for a backyard, the water moccasins bred like rats. The first year I killed 13. The second year was nine. Now I pop between two and five per annum. Early on, my standard defensive gun was a custom side-by-side cut-down 12-gauge pistol.

This novel weapon started out as a Baikal double-barrel 12-gauge coach gun. I did a BATF Form 1 on the gun and cut the barrels down to 9″. I then retired to the workshop and crafted a pistol grip in lieu of the stock. An evening with my wife’s sewing machine contrived a nice custom shoulder rig out of black canvas and seatbelt webbing.

Recoil when firing a 12-bore pistol one-handed is frankly brutal. At first, I handloaded my own low-recoil rounds with an inexpensive Lee Loader. When charged with standard copper-plated BBs, this lethal combination put paid to quite a few of the slithery monsters. Eventually I found in Aguila minishells markedly greater convenience and versatility. Federal 12-gauge Shorty rounds offer comparable performance. These adorable little loads offer ample downrange thump yet are easy on the wrists.

The second most common threat in our area of operations is wandering dogs. Our nearest neighbors are quite a ways off, but everybody in the rural South keeps dogs. Some folks maintain a more than ample crop. We found local male hounds not infrequently came poking around bestowing unwanted affections on our own local she-dog. I had no interest in hurting these animals, but I did want to shoo them along.

The answer to this quandary was once again to be found in my Lee shotgun loader. I charged a couple-dozen rounds with 6mm plastic airsoft shot and then marked the hulls prominently with a Sharpie marker. A quick dusting to the flanks with one of these custom counter-dog rounds sends the randy canines packing while damaging nothing more substantial than their pride.

Squirrels are adorable right up until they get into the attic and apply for homestead exemption on their taxes. Likewise, I held no animosity toward beavers until they maliciously murdered 27 of my wife’s dogwood trees. They didn’t even eat them. They just nibbled the bark at the base in a big circle and killed them all. These fresh new threats demanded a reevaluation of the arsenal.

The Apex Predator

Scatterguns have no peer for up close and personal engagements. However, many times, the snake, squirrel or beaver is a bit too far removed to be adequately addressed with a shotgun. I shot one ginormous water moccasin on two different occasions with my 12-gauge only to find him just out of range. The next time I saw him I swear he was wearing an eye patch, but the bitey bits were lamentably still intact. This necessitated a rethink to the whole defensive firearm equation.

This sticky quandary presented a most delicious challenge. Of course, I’m blessed to write for gun magazines, so that’s sort of my job. However, the end result surprised even me.

My current primary home-defense gun isn’t a tricked-out AR or a combat scattergun. The true grab-and-go iron is a variation on the humble .22 rifle my dad used to introduce me to the sport way back in the Dark Ages. It’s upgraded a bit to meet Information Age standards, but the basic chassis is still not so far removed.

The Primary Working Gun

My standard go-to home-defense gun is a sound suppressed TacSol X-Ring TSS Takedown .22 rifle mounted in a Magpul Backpacker stock. All up, this rig costs as much as a high-end black rifle. However, as rimfire utility guns go, it is at the top of the tactical heap. The TSS Takedown rifle has all the bells and whistles.

Based upon the storied Ruger 10/22 action, the TSS Takedown amps everything up a notch. The charging handle is easily reversible, and there’s a hole in the back of the receiver to admit a cleaning rod if needed. The magazine release is an extended lever easily manipulated with the firing hand. The integral scope mount is built like an armored fighting vehicle and an integral part of the receiver.

Lock the bolt to the rear, retract a lever and give the barrel assembly a twist to remove it. Flip it around and the front half snaps into the bottom of the stock for easy portage or storage. There is a flip-up cover on the back of the stock exposing a compartment that will hold three 10-round magazines.

The sound suppressor features interlocking titanium baffles, a nifty patented stainless steel split tube for ease of disassembly and a unique integral fiber optic front sight. More importantly, the can is unbelievably effective. Lots of suppressor manufacturers claim their products are hearing safe and then leave your ears ringing for a week after some proper range time. The TacSol TSS Takedown really is movie quiet. It also shoots straight enough to decapitate a water moccasin at 60 meters. Ask me how I know this.

Denouement

I do indeed keep a tricked-out black rifle within easy reach, just like the rest of us. However, in all the years I have maintained that gun, I have never once touched it for real. Like homeowners’ insurance, you don’t acquire such a nifty trinket in hopes of ever using it. It’s there just in case.

By contrast, I sling up my TacSol TSS Takedown .22 every time I strike out on a walk around the farm with my bride. That’s at least three or four times a week when the weather is nice. We don’t have much of a serial killer infestation out where I live, but we do have a veritable cornucopia of farm pests. My souped-up TSS Takedown sound-suppressed .22 rifle is just the ticket for those pesky vermin. 

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