News

Don’t Overlook the Shotgun for Home Defense

This article is not for the gun gurus in the audience. If you purchase a firearm and sit down with Bob Lee Swagger-like patience and run 10,000 rounds through it – taking notes after every shot – you’re probably not going to get much out of this article. Let’s get that out right up front!

But, if you’re like a huge number of gun owners who have done your patriotic duty, purchased one or more guns, learned how to use them and stuffed them in the closet “just in case” – this article is for you. And we’re here to suggest that you give the shotgun some love when it comes to your home defense plans. Here’s why.

First, handguns are great. Everybody loves and appreciates them. They’re used hundreds of thousands of times every year in defensive gun situations, from road rage incidents to home invasions to store robberies. We never hear about most of these incidents because they’re resolved without a shot being fired. It’s the incidents where a shot has to be fired that should concern you. Be honest when assessing your skills.

The reality is that shooting is not like riding a bike. Unless you’re doing it all the time, it’s a skill that you lose – quickly. Have you gained or lost 10 pounds since the last time when you fired the gun? If you have, your aim may have changed because your blood pressure has changed. That’s how easy it is for things to get “off” when it comes to handling a gun.

It’s really difficult to be a crack shot in a stressful situation with a handgun. Just ask the experts at the Los Angeles Police Department, which killed two hostages in two different incidents in July.

Another factor to consider is that handguns are not the deadly murder machines that Hollywood and the mainstream media would like you to believe. They’re deadly if you nick a major artery or puncture a major organ, such as the heart or a lung, or if you hit the perp in the head and the round doesn’t glance off their skull.

Trauma surgeons in Seattle have found that as long a gunshot victim who was shot with a pistol is within 30 minutes of a good trauma center, their survivability rate goes up to almost 100%. That’s a combination of modern medicine and the fact that pistol rounds do crushing damage instead of cavitation damage (look them up).

Unless your state allows you to use hollow point rounds for home defense, you’re more likely to wound a home intruder and make him angry than you are to kill him. Plus, anti-gun prosecutors love it when homeowners use hollow points, even if they’re legal in your home state.

Next, using a rifle against a home intruder has a lot of negatives as well. Are there instances where people have used their AR-15 against an intruder? Sure. God bless ‘em. But unless you’re in a rural area and your nearest neighbor lives ten miles away, you’re setting yourself up for major liability for stray rounds. If you miss with a pistol, you might mess up your walls or your furniture; if you miss with a rifle, you may mess up your neighbor or a family member. Why put yourself through that type of potential risk?

That’s why you should seriously give the shotgun some home defense love. It has all the benefits of a close-quarters defensive gun with major stopping power, without the drawbacks that a handgun or rifle will bring to a gunfight inside your house. You don’t have to worry as much about what’s behind your target (although you always should), and you don’t have to be a former Navy SEAL who spends the Marine Corps’ ammo budget on your annual training for pinpoint accuracy.

There are also a host of legal reasons in favor of using a shotgun for home defense. Shotguns don’t have the flashy stigma of a semiautomatic rifle or a pistol loaded with hollow points. If you’re in a gun un-friendly state, a prosecutor is going to do everything he can to try to establish murderous intent on your part if you have to shoot a perpetrator. If you used an AR-15, you “recklessly endangered” your neighbors. If you used a pistol loaded with hollow-points, or a Glock with the new sweet 24-round magazine, you may have been just yearning to murder that poor little intruder. But if you used your duck-hunting shotgun – recommended by Joe Biden – it just doesn’t have the same appearance to a prosecutor (never mind the fact that the perp can only be identified through his fingerprints).

So, for all of you rookies out there who are carrying on the American tradition of gun ownership (like most of us), give the shotgun some love!

~ American Gun News


Most Popular

These content links are provided by Content.ad. Both Content.ad and the web site upon which the links are displayed may receive compensation when readers click on these links. Some of the content you are redirected to may be sponsored content. View our privacy policy here.

To learn how you can use Content.ad to drive visitors to your content or add this service to your site, please contact us at [email protected].

Family-Friendly Content

Website owners select the type of content that appears in our units. However, if you would like to ensure that Content.ad always displays family-friendly content on this device, regardless of what site you are on, check the option below. Learn More



Most Popular
Sponsored Content

These content links are provided by Content.ad. Both Content.ad and the web site upon which the links are displayed may receive compensation when readers click on these links. Some of the content you are redirected to may be sponsored content. View our privacy policy here.

To learn how you can use Content.ad to drive visitors to your content or add this service to your site, please contact us at [email protected].

Family-Friendly Content

Website owners select the type of content that appears in our units. However, if you would like to ensure that Content.ad always displays family-friendly content on this device, regardless of what site you are on, check the option below. Learn More

2 Responses

  1. But don’t buy into the mistaken beliefs that shot spreads a lot in short distances or that you don’t need to practice with a shotgun. Trauma surgeons are just as adept at removing buckshot as they are at removing FMJ. But the sound of a round being racked into a 12 gauge will usually discourage an intruder who is not high.

  2. Not certain what tests you’ve studied, but .223/5.56 rounds over penetrate less than pistol cal. rounds through typical dwelling structures! Ditto for the .33 cal. balls of 00 shotgun rounds. Typical 55gr. AR bullets will lodge in second or third wall if they miss the studs and will be in multiple fragments not single mass. If you choose to use a scatter gun #4buck is a good compromise between penetration in your target and over penetration/lethality for misses.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *