4 ms·

I very strongly disagree. I believe a shotgun is very much the best home defense weapon. Most people are poor shots with a handgun, especially if woken up in t

by jqm 12y ago

I very strongly disagree. I believe a shotgun is very much the best home defense weapon. Most people are poor shots with a handgun, especially if woken up in the middle of the night. A shotgun is a point in the general direction and shoot kind of thing. It also has a lot more stopping power than a handgun. Also, with a shotgun, you can use larger gauge bird shot or something like #4 buck shot and it is less likely to penetrate walls and hurt someone you didn't intend. A 12 gauge pump shotgun is also an intimidating looking and sounding weapon. Much more so than something like a 9mm handgun. Finally, the laws regarding shotguns for many area of the US are likely to be much less restrictive than on handguns. I understand your comment about the unwieldiness of shotguns, but in my particular case, my shotgun has double pistol grips and no stock. I would be much less concerned about loosing control of it than I would a pistol. I have a top mounted light that triggers when the front pistol grip is grasped. It is (almost) as short as the law allows... the entire weapon is just over 2 feet long (28 inches to be exact). I hope I never have to use it in defense or worse yet, shoot to kill someone. For this reason I have 5 shells in the chamber. The first two are birdshot... deadly at close range, less likely to be so at a further range. Then I have two rounds of #4 buck, then a slug. I have 5 more rounds of #4 buck in holders at the top. I've considered having the first two rounds rubber like the police use.

hga 12y ago
A shotgun is a point in the general direction and shoot kind of thing. Now, I have to admit I haven't patterned any shotgun at close range, but everything I've read and seen says at home defense ranges you have to aim them with almost as much care as a rifle, the pattern expands rather slowly, even with cylinder choke (no choke). And I know from too much wingshooting that at range you have to be pretty precise as well. A quick check with Google came up with http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-3-the-shotgun-meets-the-box-o-truth/ http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-3-the-shotgun-me... which doesn't fill me with confidence in the lack of interior house construction penetration of #4 buck. Note, per the above, that the pattern at 12 feet was 3.5 inches, which matches pretty well the 1 inch spread/yard metric I first read about in Patriot Games. And #4 buckshot is not a good perpetrator; if you're a Facklerite you want 16 inches (in case you have to shoot thought an arm to reach the vitals). Birdshot is obviously much more iffy. As for intimidation, well, some people don't intimidate worth a damn, although I agree a Europellet dispenser is not a good choice unless their are other constraints; me, I stick with .45 ACP in M1911s (primarily because the gun has fit my hands like a glove since I was a teen). It's true, in some areas of the US a shotgun is your best option because of restrictions on handgun ownership, but this is not true for the vast majority of the country, land and people. Like, outside of Hawaii? and several of the Northeast states. No stock == not very accurate in most people's hands, negating the aiming advantages there while indeed mitigating to some degree the issues if it gets up close and personal. Me, I keep my police configuration with full length stock 870 in my safe, loaded with #1 buckshot, which all things being equal is 40% better than #00 (lots more pellets with sufficient penetration). I bought it while living in Massachusetts, one of those states where getting a handgun is difficult to impossible in the more urban areas, now I've got it mostly in case I need a literal riot gun. And if, like in most of the nation (although absent a saving throw with the Supremes it looks doomed in California), you can carry concealed, there's a lot to be said for learning well only one type of gun, i.e. not just a particular semi-auto handgun model, but ones in a family that are more and less suited for carry and home defense, that have the same controls, ergonomics, etc. E.g. there's lots of models to choose from in the Glock family.
- jqm 12y ago
  Interesting article. I would note a couple of points though... 1)Notice the drywall collapsing? That's what is going to happen to a person getting shot at close range with a 12 gauge.. even with birdshot. It would be something like getting smacked with a sledgehammer. I'm less interested in penetrating vitals than flat out knocking the person down. A person who's arm, or even lungs are penetrated cleanly by a high caliber round might still be functional for a bit... functional enough to shoot back. 2)Even though the #4 buck did penetrate multiple layers of drywall in this guys test, what is the lethality after 2 or 3 layers? You say yourself that #4 buck is less likely to penetrate vitals in the first place. Your 45 on the other hand will likely easily penetrate multiple layers of drywall, then completely penetrate the person on the other side. Anyway, different strokes and all that. A firearm is a good home defense weapon in general. Always nice to meet another person who doesn't feel owning a firearm makes one a Neanderthal of some kind. Where I live, I wouldn't be without one in the home. I sleep much better at night and feel I could protect my girlfriend and our belongings against invasion. I also have a number of other firearms including military type rifles, hunting rifles and some handguns, but the shotgun is the one I keep in bedroom for defense.
  - hga 12y ago
    As someone who follows Dr. Martin Fackler on interior ballistics, I believe that at worst case the incapacitating mechanism has to be sufficient blood loss. That is, for a subset of perpetrators, simply being shot is not sufficient (I gather as many as half will desist when that happens), and you can't count on being lucky enough to make a disabling CNS hit (spinal cord or brain). If so, you need penetration to the vitals causing a lot of blood loss ... and you need to stay alive until that takes effect. The debacle of the FBI Miami shootout is perhaps the most notorious example of all this, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout I don't believe the kinetics you're posting will work on a human. F = mv^2, force = mass * velocity squared, so velocity is a big factor (although much less so on the target unless it usefully dumps energy before exiting). The recoil you feel will be significantly greater than the impact the target gets unless at contact range, because in addition to the lead, higher velocity gasses exit the muzzle (although a muzzle brake will mitigate that at a cost of visual and aural ergonomics, see Obama's famous shooting picture). The target is only going to get the impact of the lead. The only mitigating factor is that the recoil you feel is spread across what's initially a larger area, although it won't take many yards for the areas to be equal, following the ~1 inch spread/yard of distance rule of thumb. And you're welcome. I grew up hunting and shooting, and after going to college in fact got my first guns after getting a girlfriend to protect in the Boston area, which was and still is pretty high crime.

by jqm 12y ago

hga 12y ago

A shotgun is a point in the general direction and shoot kind of thing. Now, I have to admit I haven't patterned any shotgun at close range, but everything I've read and seen says at home defense ranges you have to aim them with almost as much care as a rifle, the pattern expands rather slowly, even with cylinder choke (no choke). And I know from too much wingshooting that at range you have to be pretty precise as well. A quick check with Google came up with http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-3-the-shotgun-meets-the-box-o-truth/ http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-3-the-shotgun-me... which doesn't fill me with confidence in the lack of interior house construction penetration of #4 buck. Note, per the above, that the pattern at 12 feet was 3.5 inches, which matches pretty well the 1 inch spread/yard metric I first read about in Patriot Games. And #4 buckshot is not a good perpetrator; if you're a Facklerite you want 16 inches (in case you have to shoot thought an arm to reach the vitals). Birdshot is obviously much more iffy. As for intimidation, well, some people don't intimidate worth a damn, although I agree a Europellet dispenser is not a good choice unless their are other constraints; me, I stick with .45 ACP in M1911s (primarily because the gun has fit my hands like a glove since I was a teen). It's true, in some areas of the US a shotgun is your best option because of restrictions on handgun ownership, but this is not true for the vast majority of the country, land and people. Like, outside of Hawaii? and several of the Northeast states. No stock == not very accurate in most people's hands, negating the aiming advantages there while indeed mitigating to some degree the issues if it gets up close and personal. Me, I keep my police configuration with full length stock 870 in my safe, loaded with #1 buckshot, which all things being equal is 40% better than #00 (lots more pellets with sufficient penetration). I bought it while living in Massachusetts, one of those states where getting a handgun is difficult to impossible in the more urban areas, now I've got it mostly in case I need a literal riot gun. And if, like in most of the nation (although absent a saving throw with the Supremes it looks doomed in California), you can carry concealed, there's a lot to be said for learning well only one type of gun, i.e. not just a particular semi-auto handgun model, but ones in a family that are more and less suited for carry and home defense, that have the same controls, ergonomics, etc. E.g. there's lots of models to choose from in the Glock family.

jqm 12y ago
Interesting article. I would note a couple of points though... 1)Notice the drywall collapsing? That's what is going to happen to a person getting shot at close range with a 12 gauge.. even with birdshot. It would be something like getting smacked with a sledgehammer. I'm less interested in penetrating vitals than flat out knocking the person down. A person who's arm, or even lungs are penetrated cleanly by a high caliber round might still be functional for a bit... functional enough to shoot back. 2)Even though the #4 buck did penetrate multiple layers of drywall in this guys test, what is the lethality after 2 or 3 layers? You say yourself that #4 buck is less likely to penetrate vitals in the first place. Your 45 on the other hand will likely easily penetrate multiple layers of drywall, then completely penetrate the person on the other side. Anyway, different strokes and all that. A firearm is a good home defense weapon in general. Always nice to meet another person who doesn't feel owning a firearm makes one a Neanderthal of some kind. Where I live, I wouldn't be without one in the home. I sleep much better at night and feel I could protect my girlfriend and our belongings against invasion. I also have a number of other firearms including military type rifles, hunting rifles and some handguns, but the shotgun is the one I keep in bedroom for defense.
- hga 12y ago
  As someone who follows Dr. Martin Fackler on interior ballistics, I believe that at worst case the incapacitating mechanism has to be sufficient blood loss. That is, for a subset of perpetrators, simply being shot is not sufficient (I gather as many as half will desist when that happens), and you can't count on being lucky enough to make a disabling CNS hit (spinal cord or brain). If so, you need penetration to the vitals causing a lot of blood loss ... and you need to stay alive until that takes effect. The debacle of the FBI Miami shootout is perhaps the most notorious example of all this, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout I don't believe the kinetics you're posting will work on a human. F = mv^2, force = mass * velocity squared, so velocity is a big factor (although much less so on the target unless it usefully dumps energy before exiting). The recoil you feel will be significantly greater than the impact the target gets unless at contact range, because in addition to the lead, higher velocity gasses exit the muzzle (although a muzzle brake will mitigate that at a cost of visual and aural ergonomics, see Obama's famous shooting picture). The target is only going to get the impact of the lead. The only mitigating factor is that the recoil you feel is spread across what's initially a larger area, although it won't take many yards for the areas to be equal, following the ~1 inch spread/yard of distance rule of thumb. And you're welcome. I grew up hunting and shooting, and after going to college in fact got my first guns after getting a girlfriend to protect in the Boston area, which was and still is pretty high crime.