[ethbr0]

I mean, it's a bit difficult to compare and contrast various bullets without talking about stopping power and wound channels.

You could use euphemisms or be more technical, but in the end you're comparing a thing made to transfer kinetic force and create a hole, on its ability to do those things.

And yes IMHO, a pump action 12ga birdshot reduced-recoil load w/ a standard slug at the end of the magazine is hard to argue against if we're honestly talking home defense load.

[ggreer]

I strongly discourage shotguns for home defense. Shotguns have high recoil, making them a poor choice for inexperienced shooters. Spread is minimal at typical room distances so you need to be just as accurate as with a rifle or handgun. Most importantly, people tend to short stroke them in panic situations. If you want a long gun for home defense, a semi-automatic rifle is a much better choice.

That said, you probably want to be able to aim a gun while potentially having a free hand to use a phone, open doors, turn on lights, grab loved ones, etc. A handgun allows you to do all of those things and have higher magazine capacities than a shotgun.

[akerl_]

Eh, shotgun recoil is amazingly variable based on the weight of the firearm and the choice of ammunition.

I’d swear by my Mossberg 590, which has enough heft that decades-younger-akerl could easily manage the recoil.

I feel like you’re also underselling spread. You’re not going to be peppering an entire doorway from 5 feet away, but precision is much less relevant than with a handgun or rifle.

That said, if anybody reads the above comment and decides a rifle is their home defense weapon of choice, I’d strongly advice taking similar care to select the caliber and build. A .22 gives you no recoil but very little kinetic energy to work with. By contrast, anything in a more typical rifle caliber (.223 and up, essentially) and you’re running a pretty serious risk to anything that happens to be behind your target. If you’ve decided a rifle is the form factor you want, there’s any number of modern carbines chambered in typically-pistol calibers like 9mm / 40 S&W / 45, which in a carbine will have neglible recoil and mesh much better with a home defense situation.

[lifeisstillgood]

Ok so UK resident here. Oddly able to own a shotgun (not pump). what is a standard slug? I presumed birdshot would mean the "slug" (big metal thing fired out end of gun) would be replaced by the "birdshot" (tiny metal balls designed to spread and so make hitting bird (plus lots of other things) easier.?

Sidenote: It's unlikely in US as there seems to be a political objection to collating gun stats but are there any stats on threat models in "home defence"? I presume the main one is armed burglary but am interested in how often, where gun is kept vs where it was needed etc etc

[alricb]

Normal shotgun rounds are filled with a number of pellets; the smaller the pellet, the more you can fit. Birdshot: small pellets in large number, Buckshot: large-ish pellets in small number. A slug is a massive (18.5 mm diameter for 12 gauge) single projectile used in a shotgun shell.

[lifeisstillgood]

I got that - I just did not understand the implied "birdshot and slug at the same time"

[robbedpeter]

Every time a firearm is used in a situation involving police, such as home defense, the data is recorded. It's not always shared, though. Gun use in defensive situations seems to happen about a tenth to an eighth as often as criminal use. This includes gang related shootings, which account for 15% of the total, and there are issues with ascribing intent and motive, so the data has a lot of confounding factors. It's so bad that it's nigh on impossible to make any useful conclusions.

The best bet in self defense is to find a competent professional trainer. Someone with long military or law enforcement experience that isn't an asshole. If you're really into it you can get the same training that Keanu Reeves got and turn yourself into John Wick. That's a hell of a party trick.

[NoImmatureAdHom]

>>Gun use in defensive situations seems to happen about a tenth to an eighth as often as criminal use.

I think you mean instances where a shot is actually fired? I believe there are 40-50,000 self-defense uses per year in the U.S., a nation of ~330,000,000, though that does not necessarily mean a shot was fired [0]

0: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf p. 12

[lifeisstillgood]

>>> the data is recorded. It's not always shared, though.

But that not sharing is the whole politics problem, abs makes any attempt at sensible discussion impossible. You have just rolled off some stats ... but knowing there is missing data. Is that missing data important? Does it exclude rural areas so we have mostly urban stats so can only decide on urban problems?

[robbedpeter]

Exactly - the margin of error for any of these stats could be 99% or 1% and we just don't have a good way to parse it. A lot is self report surveys, or dodgy guesstimates from activists from either side, so yeah - sensible discussion is difficult. I find it useful to look at it from a min max perspective - given an extreme from either end, what is reasonable in protecting safety, liberty, and other interests, and what would a proactive vs reactive policy look like, and so on.

If situation A,B,C...Z, what does the range of appropriate policies look like, and how can you translate that to different regions, cultures, population densities. One size doesn't fit all, but maybe there's a broad, dynamic way to work with these things that is really boring and sensible that won't leave people feeling their rights or safety are being trampled.

[smiley1437]

I couldn't believe what a shotgun blank could do:

https://youtu.be/elpAaZs_U9k?t=200

(TL;DW - blast a hole in a metal plate, explode a pineapple from a few feet)

[drewm1980]

What's the slug for?

[akerl_]

There’s a decent cargo cult following for some level of magazine/tube-based escalation of force, where you have some sort of lower-impact ammunition loaded first, followed by higher-impact ammunition. In this case, the pitch is for birdshot at the front, followed by a slug.

The issue is that in practice, once you pull out a gun you’ve fundamentally altered the state of the world between yourself and your assailant, and they have no way to know that you’ve stacked your magazine/tube like some kind of Dragon Ball Z power escalation where you’ll take 5 episodes to get to your Full Ultimate Potential.

In practice, you’re better off just making a choice between wanting lower or higher impact projectiles. Increasing complexity in a high-stress / fast-paced scenario isn’t a great plan.

[lamontcg]

Fucking around like that seems like a great way to kill someone when you don't have justification for it when you're just trying to scare them. Filling it with buckshot seems dramatically clearer as to what its purpose is for and under what circumstances it should be used.

[akerl_]

I think we’re agreeing? The entire premise of my comment is that trying to get clever with tube stacking injects more chaos and risk into an already chaotic and risky scenario.

EDIT: To clarify, in general I also agree with the point you seem to be making that guns are dangerous and trying to make them seem less so by loading so-called “less lethal” ammunition makes it easier for the user to forget that. But if somebody wants birdshot, they should at least just load the whole tube with birdshot and accept that their load has different ballistic properties than buckshot.

[lamontcg]

Yes, I'm reinforcing what you're saying.

[akerl_]

Gotcha. Apologies for being confused :D

[drewm1980]

What scenario are you expecting to happen, and how will your specific choice of shotgun rounds factor into that?

[akerl_]

If I’m loading a shotgun for for home defense: somebody has broken into my home.

As per my comment above, how I load my shotgun is mostly based around my willingness to inflict harm on somebody who has broken into my home. If I’m trying to limit impact, bird shot is lovely. If not, just load the whole tube with buck shot or slug or similar.

But trying to pre-plan an escalation of force via the shotgun tube ordering is a fools errand.

Police have an escalation of force via visibly different tools. A suspect can see the difference between a stick and a taser and a gun. And a cop can choose to draw any of these in any order. Stacking the tube locks you into a specific sequence that you have to remember and that your assailant can’t know.

[ethbr0]

Well, the implied assumption is that you probably don't want to kill someone breaking into your house. Though given the home defense crowd...? :/

Given that a shotgun must cycle through its magazine in order (although you could eject unfired rounds), the second assumption is that by the time subsequent rounds are fired, the situation has escalated.

E.g. If you bury a load of birdshot in a wall or someone's skin and they're still threatening you, you likely want to escalate (instead of repeating same). And from the counter-point, you probably don't want your initial choice to be killing someone vs not firing.

As Dick Cheney demonstrated, catching a shotgun shell of smaller pellets usually isn't lethal, as they individually don't have enough penetration to hit vital organs. Or, same, but in sheetrock.

On the other hand, as parent argued, it's adding complexity to an already stressful situation and does make a lot of assumptions about shooter and attacker intent.

[akerl_]

I have no intention of prowling my house like Mr Nobody chasing down invaders. To meet me and my shotgun, a burglar has to have broken into my home and also actively entered the room I’m in, after I’ve called 911 and shouted to them that I’ve done so and am armed. If they decide to still try to come see me, I’m not actively looking to kill them but I am optimizing for fastest incapacitation. I’m only qualified to make this decision for myself, but it’s about as much respect for life as seems possible in the circumstance.