Depends on your situation. My work is a 30 minute walk to home, I don't bother keeping a rifle and ammo in the car.
If I was working across town (decent sized city) I'd want a rifle and 4-6 magazines. I think most confrontations are going to be defused by you having a rifle and appearing to be confident in using it, making the actual expenditure of ammo relatively rare. Robbers prefer victims that aren't armed, and especially those that don't have a weapon that outclasses theirs in both wounding potential and ability to actually hit. Why mess with you when they can pillage someone who can't fight back effectively? They might get hurt.
BSW
If the idea is to be safe the one fight that is 100% safe is the one you don't fight on.
So perhaps a decent amount of time should be spent in thinking about routes and tactics to avoid confrontation.
But if confrontation is unavoidable then the most important weapon here is information and proper tactics. Information comes from
observation and being in communication with others or getting reliable information from others.
Perhaps with some careful planning others can coordinate like groups who volunteer in times of crisis.
After all the whole idea behind prepping is to do this in advance, not just prepping equipment but organization, protocols and tactics.
When the hurricane is on the radar is often too late to prepare and achieve much effectively. One should instead flee or hide to a safe place.
Intelligence will allow you to coordinate perimeters and also put distance between threats and your position. Distance is one of the best forms of protection found in many places.
But if all that is not possible and we cannot avoid violence no matter how hard we try then the key is speed and lethal / brutal force.
Small arms will not work against any organized military or one will die for nothing but perhaps in a situation WORL, might be necessary as soon one understands
who one is fighting with and how to be somewhat effective, yet again the importance of intelligence.
I would say one should think about a weapons system one can be faster with and get a high hit ratio shooting in any situations. This is
more important than the caliber itself. Maybe that is the 5.56 or maybe that is the 5.7 that allows for more firepower with the same weight.
Most thugs will not expose much meat after seeing others who know how to use a firearm effectively and fast.
3 or 4 magazines will not last long but also more is serious gear. We can count fights they are over in seconds but if they go over a couple of minutes
then one needs more magazines. Perhaps this is where a smaller casing will have an edge but then again if we expect o use distance we want
a caliber that can be effective at a distance. I think the 5.56 or 6.8 is a wise choice in general. still will not discard smaller cartriges specially
if they can be in smaller and lighter magazines or twice the capacity in the same size.
I suggest if you have to do lets say 20 miles on foot between lets say work and your house outside town then fill out a backup that you can carry
and do that route. If that was easy then increase the weight if you feel you might need more equipment and if that was hard then try to decrease it.
After you consider what you need in the bag including some water, food, clothing, lights and other essentials this might tell you how much more
you can afford in terms of personal protection and a weapons system. If you carry a pistol also bring it with you.
In the end if one is going to do this they better start walking because being fit is going to be a big part of making it back home or not.
I know a lot of preppers who cannot walk 20 or 30 miles yet they are talking about going downstate to the hunting cabin. Just wait until
you don't have a car or cannot use it and you start walking. Internet miles are easy I guess.
BTW I cannot do the things I did when I was 20. Those will certainly kill me today but I do walk as much as I can. I think that is the only
great thing that I might take longer but I feel I could walk for a month if I had to.
