Thanks again for all the advice. When I wrote it I realized it was kind of silly to have a detailed inventory of all the guns the family had, just the ones the main character and the shady family member were practicing with. But the advice was helpful for my imagination and I did have them have more long guns, like .22’s for shooting squirrels and such.
Thanks all.
Shooting “for the pot” (IE – eating) has always been the work of the smoothbore from Colonial times to today for really rural folks. Everyone thinks of the Kentucky rifle without thinking of how many of them were smoothbored or secondary firearms after the old “bread and butter” musket or trade-gun.
Handguns, even cheap ones, were next in line. Grampap Kopek always had a pistol and a box of shells because “one way or another my family ain’t gonna starve”. The rural implication was worse comes to worse some sort of armed crime was not out of the question. I still have his old I&J break-top and I would not be totally shocked if it shot more than the odd pig during the Depression. Some things I never asked Dad about and never would have; I just don’t want to know.
With my limited experience of a portion of rural Michigan, I can attest to the fact that 22 rifles seem to propagate like rabbits, with no one being sure where they came from. Don’t forget to mention the boxes of shells in just about any kitchen or bedroom drawer…
When we were living in Carson City we were about three straight-line* miles from a state prison. DesertRoomie’s mother expressed concern over this and I told her, “There’s never been an escape from the prison and even if there was, they’d have to cut through three ranches full of rifles before they got here. I’m not worried,”
*About seven by road which went down one side of a valley and returned on the other.
This is a decent selection. I would amend OP’s presumption of “a mediocre .22 rifle” though. .22s are not too expensive, and whether you’re shooting at paper or small game accuracy is especially important. If your aim is off by a couple inches at 100 meters with a deer, you’re still eating venison. If your bulls eye is 2 inches of with the .22 then your bunny or squirrel isn’t coming to dinner. And yeah, I seem to have ended up with 4, but I only remember buying one.
The 12 gauge is a good all-purpose thunderstick
I think DrDeth has been nosing around in my safe. That 30-06 is indeed a 30-30 Marlin lever action. Fantastic piece of work.
The only thing notable that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is pieces of various guns, or whole guns in enough disrepair that they can’t be safely shot.
If they’re just being accumulated, it’s entirely likely that things are wrong with various ones, and they’re still kept either ‘just in case’ or because someone’s eventually ‘gonna get round to fixin it’ and never does.
Common bits: loose barrels, extra wooden stocks, various clips and magazines that go with guns you don’t actually have, guns which have rusted-out barrels or are copper-fouled beyond salvation, jammed feeder tubes or a warped stock, a shotgun with blown barrels (perhaps subsequently illegally sawed-off) broken or mis-matched sights, random holsters or straps that again, don’t match what you actually have.
And you don’t have to list them, but having a good idea of what the individual guns are like, and what the ‘collection’ is like, always makes for better scene-crafting.
I’m not a gun guy (we don’t do guns in the UK) but would an antique gun - flintlock or matchlock - be out of place?
Of course, there is that scene from Hot Fuzz. 
You know, the one where they find the shed full of everything.
Don’t have much to add to the above, but did want to reiterate this point. We had a few '03 Springfield bolt-action '06 rifles in my grandparent’s house, in various states of repair/rust. Granddad picked up an M-1 carbine at some point, to go with the two-three shotguns of various types. And states of repair; the double barrel I got stuck with when we went hunting was a miserably rusted out piece of shit that kicked like a mule. But the safety did work.
Oddly, no handguns that I’m aware of until his son went off to be a cop. They could have kept them away from us grandkids, of course, though they certainly didn’t take great pains to do so for the long guns.
Anyway, I’d think war surplus firearms, being cheap, would make up part of the typical rural family gun accumulation.
I grew up in rural PA in the 1970s, and am familiar with Southern Maryland* (I assume you mean Calvert, St. Mary’s or Charles County?). Between my dad, my brother and I we had Remington .30-06 rifles for deer; 12 gauge Winchester shotguns for squirrels, bunnies and pheasants; an old Remington .22 rifle and a .22 pistol my dad brought back from WWII (I don’t recall the brand). Friends and relatives had similar guns, with a lot of hunters using .30-30 Winchester lever action rifles instead of .30-06 bolt action. But I’d wager that .30-06 and .30-30 were by far the most popular calibers for most people.
The dominant brands were Remington and Winchester, with some Browning and Ithaca shotguns. Store brand guns like Sears and Western Auto (made by gun manufacturers but stamped with the store brand names) would have been common for non-wealthy people, too.
As mentioned, handguns were not nearly as popular as they are now, but a S&W or Ruger .38 revolver would have been reasonable, in addition to .22 revolvers.
*You are not referring to the Eastern Shore as Southern Maryland, are you? If so, then rifles are/were probably much less common. I believe they only use shotguns for deer there
Oh, and though it was mentioned up-thread, “war surplus” can include war trophies, like Arisaka rifles (often re-chambered in more easily obtainable cartridges, like .257 Roberts), Mauser rifles, and the Luger/P-38s mentioned earlier.