Carrying multiple weapons

My characters are going to be travelling through hostile territory and need to be loaded for bear. Their society was at a roughly 1930's-40's technology level about 150 years ago, but was cut off from most of its infrastructure, people and resources. As such, they've got firearms with them, but the weapons and their ammunition are rare, unreliable, and valuable. As such, the rifles in their possession cannot be the end-all of their defenses, and will have to be rationed to meet major threats. Lower tech backup weapons like swords, spears, and axes are required to fill the void. Bayonets are an option, but some members of the group have cultural/personal preferences for swords and to me a bayonet seems to me a poor man's spear, so I'm inclined to think that many will attempt to carry a dedicated melee weapon in addition to a firearm, especially since they probably won't be allowed to openly carry guns when they get to their decidely more urban destination.

My question, then, is what is the most practical way to be carrying firearms AND large melee weapons simultaneously, without the weapons getting in your way, yet still allowing either to be brought to bear quickly? My initial thoughts were to sling the rifle over the shoulder with a strap and keep a sword at the hip, but that seems like you could tangle yourself up in one weapon or the other, and there wouldn't be a way to store the gun with a sword draw... you'd have to drop it on the ground, which seems like a bad idea when firearms are rare and valuable! Would there be a specific scabbard type one might employ to keep things under control? Am I being completely unreasonable to suggest that anything more than a gun with bayonet might be necessary?

As an aside, the sword type I'm thinking will be prevalent here is inspired by the Chinese Jian, though possibly a little longer and heavier. I don't know how much that would influence the scabbard type required. The group size is also quite small, with four adults tending a few wagons and the necessary draft animals to pull them.

@ Chase:
That's very helpful, especially the bit about the rifle sling! I'd forgotten about the biathletes.

@ Sarpedon:
Well, to be fair, I did say that the swords were probably larger than the Jian! I was more speaking in terms of style and aesthetics (I'm probably a little too partial to how the jian looks!). Size wise, they're supposed to be war swords only a bit smaller than a european longsword. Still, you're absolutely right, not the first choice where large land predators are involved, and my story has land predators a hell of a lot nastier than bears. That's why the guns and their precious ammunition have prioritized use. You don't want to be out of bullets when something really mean rolls around. Swords might be more effective, however, against the stone age nomads that regularily attack caravans in the area.

In the end though, even if the effectiveness versus the specific threats isn't ideal, some of the people in this setting are going to be carrying swords for cultural reasons, so they might as well be prepared to use them. This is somewhat analagous to the Sikh wearing a kirpan, which used to be a full length sword back in the day if I recall correctly.

@ Shattuck: 30 pounds is far more than they'd need on their person. An 8-9 pound rifle plus a relatively small amount of ammunition, and a sword isn't going to be more than 3 pounds on the heavy side. Most of their other supplies can be left on the wagon, since they aren't travelling cross country. Weapons, however, must be close at hand.

An SKS style rifle is a good choice, and I'd expect to have a few weapons of that sort of design in the setting, but it'd be on the high end of things. Due to the permanent and critical loss of infrastructure and resources in this setting, the production of smokeless powder is incredibly difficult. In large part, they've regressed to use simpler black powder when making their firearms cartridges. Unfortunately, that makes most semi-auto weapons very impractical, since the residue from firing would quickly gum up the works. Though, a revolver would remain viable, now that you mention it.

Now THAT'S interesting! I'm going to have to look into that. For the few producers of smokeless powder in my story, that would definitly be something they'd look into to stretch their product out further.

[edit] A cursory search found me information on the M38, but I wasn't able to find any mention of the mixed powder ammunition. Was this a weapon designed for smokeless powder, but ended up robust enough to withstand a mixture?

Also, what kind of effect would that mixture have? I'm presuming that muzzle velocity would drop and you'd get a buildup of caustic residue, though not to the extent of a fully blackpowder round.

Crossbows and even bows might be used by those looking for a cheap ranged weapons. Shouldn't be too hard to find visual references for box and crossbow sheaths, right?

Air rifles are an interesting possibility, though I wonder how difficult they'd be to build and maintain with very limited infrastructure. At least with firearms, you've got a few pre-cataclysm munitions and weapon factories to work from... would you be able to build such a weapon using the tools available to the average gunsmith?

Oy. That could be a problem, then, because if weapons as effective as that would be redeveloped in the 150 year timeframe I've got, that could pretty much kill any rationale for low-tech weaponry at all. Such weapons wouldn't have a problem with ammunition scarcity, so they could be used with impunity.

What factors could I use to limit their introduction without heavily downgrading resources and infrastructure even further? I'm fine with a few of them showing up, but if they're anywhere near as simple and effective as the one in that video then there's a real danger of them being too widespread for my purposes.

If you were interested in maintaining freedom of movement, what options would you consider to manage a larger weapon?

Crap, now I've got to resist the urge to stick 50. cal tripods on top of donkeys.

By larger weapon, I specifically meant large melee weapons like a longsword. Aside from mounting one on your back, would there be specific methods of carrying on on your hip/waist that you'd want to consider/avoid?

Assuming a longsword sized weapon, would a hip or waist mounted sheath become problematic?