However, a hunting rifle like the 742 Remington isn't necessarily going to have the tolerances to allow sustained firing that a proper AR-15 pattern rifle will

However, a hunting rifle like the 742 Remington isn't necessarily going to have the tolerances to allow sustained firing that a proper AR-15 pattern rifle will allow (I'm sure many of them made for civilians cargo cult that detail). On the other hand, a lot of this is scenario dependent. Bruce Clayton advised using the metric of "how many firefights do you think you can survive?" as a guide for how much ammo to store. I myself, if I expect a scenario to be survivable and am by myself, prefer something like a bolt action Scout rifle in .308/7.62 NATO used in shoot once and scoot mode. My evil black rifle in 5.56 NATO (which I'll note requires something better than FMJ ammo to be effective) is reserved for situations where I want to make the best account of myself and/or are with other people in a mutually defending scenario.