- Joined
- Oct 15, 2018
7.62 NATO is absolutely a fine round and it does have the advantage of retaining lethality at a longer range. The ammo is heavier and the recoil is stronger, but with sufficient training the loss in effective shots on target in a fixed period of time can be mitigated somewhat. You may also want to invest more thought into the gas system, muzzle device, buffer (if you go with an AR platform), and bolt carrier group as those will directly effect the felt recoil. The tradeoff with a recoil-lowering muzzle device is a more powerful muzzle blast which can be loud/disorientating and will kick up dust/prevent concealment of the firing position.It's a tossup between 5.56 and 7.62 at this point. I've read your post but I am still leaning 7.62 because it has these M855A1 you can find just falling off the back of trucks which will absolutely punch a hole through a deranged pooner shooter. I am aware with 7.62 I will need to do some sort of strength training to actually manage.
At the end of the day it will work and training will be the most important factor. I'd bet on a steely-eyed man with an M1 Garand over a zoomer with a $4,500 AR build every time, as much fun as it is to treat choosing your kit like an optimization problem to "solve". The trap a lot of civilians get into is sticking to the optimisation problem even after they already bought a gun, so instead of enjoying and training with the weapon they have, they convince themselves to keep buying gear that they then don't use. If you just pick a reliably functional rifle and shoot it regularly you'll be ahead of 95% of armed U.S. citizens