New gun buyer seeking single weapon for for plinking + home defense + hunting small game.
Thinking along the lines of Colt .22 M4 Rimfire.
Thoughts or suggestions?
How do you define "small game?" I will assume by "small game" you mean rabbits and similar sized animals.
To fulfill all three roles in one weapon is pretty tricky. Consider what you are demanding from the weapon and it becomes clear how large of a challenge you are proposing.
You are looking for a weapon that will be effective on a 150-200 pound human while at the same time being effective on a 1-4 pound animal without damaging it too much to eat. You also want something cheap to shoot for plinking. It is kind of like asking what kind of hammer you should get for doing everything from driving finishing nails, to framing, to pounding posts. You are going to have to select the most critical application for yourself then compromise on the others.
No doubt 22 long rifle is cheapest. It is also effective on small game at a reasonable range. Can it kill a human? Yes. Three of my family members were executed with a single shot, bolt-action 22 rifle. However, it isn't ideal, especially in a home defense scenario. It is underpowered for taking on large animals such as humans even if it is theoretically plausible.
You can go bigger, to an ideal home defense caliber, but you will have to compromise on the cost and you will do too much damage on the small game.
If I were going to select a single gun for all of this, it would be a AR style .223 centerfire. You can select loads that will do minimal damage to small game (Light, full metal jacket and avoid the "varmint" loads). You can select loads that are more appropriate for human sized targets (understanding that this is such a low-power caliber that it is banned for deer hunting in multiple jurisdictions). You can buy "cheap" plinking ammo for it (understanding that this is still 3-5 times the cost of 22LR).
You can do the caliber conversion thing, but pay close attention to the total cost and the reliability. I don't like running cheap 22 loads through a weapon that I am going to rely on for self defense either. Personally I would just buy a second, cosmetically and functionally similar, weapon in 22LR.
All that being said, you could do a lot worse than a AR style semi-auto 22LR for your first gun. The best one on the market right now is the
Smith and Wesson M&P 15-22 IMHO. It is the closest functional replica of a full size AR. If you learn on it, that training will be directly transferrable to a full-size AR. Arguably a bolt action would be marginally safer though.
I don't think a handgun is the best first gun, and fulfilling the three criteria with a handgun is even trickier.
- pod
