12 shotgun tips for personal/home defense
- Thread starter cmshoot
- Start date
Nice read...
That's a good article, I'm adding it to my collection, thanks
cmshoot
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https://www.theoutdoorstrader.com/t...-about-shotguns-esp-for-home-defense.1727861/
cmshoot
.https://www.theoutdoorstrader.com/t...-about-shotguns-esp-for-home-defense.1727861/
I used to have a big long combat shotgun with an extended mag tube, heat shield, laser and tactical light, and butt cuff with some extra shells in it, and a sling.
I was thinking about adding a red dot sight to it, when I thought to myself "WHY? WHY DO I WANT TO MAKE A SHOTGUN INTO SOMETHING AS LONG AND HEAVY AS AN M-14?"
Today, I want my shotguns to be short and light. I think the ideal home defense shotgun would be a SBS with about a 12" barrel, although perhaps one of those 14" barreled "firearms" with an "arm stabilization brace" would be better. Shorter and easier to wield indoors.
I'm glad to see this Personal Defense World article talk about getting in the right zone for your gun / choke / ammo expected pattern. I like a wide pattern. Others seem to want as tight of a pattern as possible, to get all-center-mass-hits at the longest possible ranges. If your goal is to be ready for a 75-yard shot, why not just go with a pistol-caliber carbine or an AR or AK? Then you can reach out hundreds of yards, and have 4X the ammo capacity, and less recoil !!
I expect that if I ever had to use my shotgun in home defense, even outside my home in my yard or driveway, a typical distance for any shot would be 5 yards, and even a longest-shot realistic scenario would be 20 yards.
I think the perfect amount of pellet spread is about 8 inches, so I'd like to have a shotgun that patterns buckshot in an 8" group at 5 yards (the most common and expected distance), and I'm willing for that pattern to open up to 30" at the very-unlikely distance of 20 yards. 30 inch patterns won't keep all my hits in the torso of a bad guy, even a beefy weight-lifting felon, but most of them will be good hits, and those pellets on the edge of the pattern act as insurance to get me at least one or two pellets into the bad guy if my aim is off, or if he's moving, ducking and dodging.
Now, none of my shotguns spread their buckshot as much as I described above. It's been more like 3" of spread for every 5 yards to the target. So, I'll have to put up with softball-sized groups at 5 yards (really, no room for error in aiming or pointing), but at 20 yards the pattern should be just a little bit wider than ideal with a 12" pattern.
At 13 or 14 yards my cylinder-bore shotguns will be giving me what I consider the ideal pattern spread. That's my zone.
I was thinking about adding a red dot sight to it, when I thought to myself "WHY? WHY DO I WANT TO MAKE A SHOTGUN INTO SOMETHING AS LONG AND HEAVY AS AN M-14?"
Today, I want my shotguns to be short and light. I think the ideal home defense shotgun would be a SBS with about a 12" barrel, although perhaps one of those 14" barreled "firearms" with an "arm stabilization brace" would be better. Shorter and easier to wield indoors.
I'm glad to see this Personal Defense World article talk about getting in the right zone for your gun / choke / ammo expected pattern. I like a wide pattern. Others seem to want as tight of a pattern as possible, to get all-center-mass-hits at the longest possible ranges. If your goal is to be ready for a 75-yard shot, why not just go with a pistol-caliber carbine or an AR or AK? Then you can reach out hundreds of yards, and have 4X the ammo capacity, and less recoil !!
I expect that if I ever had to use my shotgun in home defense, even outside my home in my yard or driveway, a typical distance for any shot would be 5 yards, and even a longest-shot realistic scenario would be 20 yards.
I think the perfect amount of pellet spread is about 8 inches, so I'd like to have a shotgun that patterns buckshot in an 8" group at 5 yards (the most common and expected distance), and I'm willing for that pattern to open up to 30" at the very-unlikely distance of 20 yards. 30 inch patterns won't keep all my hits in the torso of a bad guy, even a beefy weight-lifting felon, but most of them will be good hits, and those pellets on the edge of the pattern act as insurance to get me at least one or two pellets into the bad guy if my aim is off, or if he's moving, ducking and dodging.
Now, none of my shotguns spread their buckshot as much as I described above. It's been more like 3" of spread for every 5 yards to the target. So, I'll have to put up with softball-sized groups at 5 yards (really, no room for error in aiming or pointing), but at 20 yards the pattern should be just a little bit wider than ideal with a 12" pattern.
At 13 or 14 yards my cylinder-bore shotguns will be giving me what I consider the ideal pattern spread. That's my zone.
P.S. I have long advocated that tactical shotguns and carbines should have shorter-than-normal butt stocks, so that the length of pull is about 1.5" shorter than what you'd want on a typical target rifle, deer hunting gun, or long range precision rifle.
I'm glad this article agrees.
I would add that I won't want a sticky rubberized butt pad. That can snag the cloth on your shirt or jacket and hang up when you go to shoulder the weapon in a hurry. I'll take a steel or hard plastic butt plate. Checkering or a knurled surface is OK; that's a lot less sticky than soft rubber or foam on the back end of a gun.
I'm glad this article agrees.
I would add that I won't want a sticky rubberized butt pad. That can snag the cloth on your shirt or jacket and hang up when you go to shoulder the weapon in a hurry. I'll take a steel or hard plastic butt plate. Checkering or a knurled surface is OK; that's a lot less sticky than soft rubber or foam on the back end of a gun.
I think the ideal sighting system on a home defense shotgun is not a red dot optic, but a set of open sights that have the tritium capsules for 15 years worth of glowing in the dark. I prefer open sights to a rear peep or ghost ring for speed and getting a "flash sight picture." Nobody that I know of makes the kind of rear sight I'd consider ideal. It would have a very wide, but shallow, rear notch. Maybe something like 8mm to 10 mm wide. The front sight (a straight post, but with protective ears on the sides of it) should also be big, with a glowing night-sight dot.
I'm a civilian, not a SWAT team member, not .MIL, nor a serious prepper or militia member. So I'm not considering how well my sighting system would work with a helmet and ballistic goggles, a full face mask, night vision goggles, a gas mask, etc. Tactical operators need to consider that; I don't.
I'm a civilian, not a SWAT team member, not .MIL, nor a serious prepper or militia member. So I'm not considering how well my sighting system would work with a helmet and ballistic goggles, a full face mask, night vision goggles, a gas mask, etc. Tactical operators need to consider that; I don't.
I wish I had! LOL!Bear44 wrote that ****.
How can anyone read this and still think a shotgun for HD is a good idea?
And it didn't even mention the unnecessarily heavy recoil.
