The Gunner's Blog

Interesting video that proves what many assume. Buckshot pellets are lethal far beyond the range at which the pattern is still holding together in a tight clump. See also:  https://shootery.blogspot.com/2013/09/riot-gun-part-1-what-ammo-is-best.html This information should both warn and reassure. It should warn you that the pellets are dangerous a long way downrange, making you very attentive to Rule Four , and it should reassure you that you are not altogether helpless if you must defend yourself with buckshot at a distance. Your pattern density will be appalling, truly hit and miss, but the pellets are dangerous if they hit. You can increase your effective pattern density with multiple shots at the target. That is a "spray and pray" tactic and not very good, but it does exist and is worth knowing about.  

Over the years my advocacy for the shotgun, contending that the shotgun is a generally better self-defense weapon than a rifle or a carbine, has filled a number of blog posts. Some of those posts go into detail about pattern size and density, danger radius, and assorted, related minutiae. This time I simply give the topic a once-over. I have not succeeded in convincing very many shooters that you really are better defended with a riot gun than with a modern type of rifle, for all the details I have offered. I don't know that the quick overview will do any better, but here goes. ----------------------------- I prefer a shotgun for my personal and home defense long gun. I consider it the best fight stopper at short range. Nearly all justifiable self-defense shootings are at short range. I do not think very much can be said against the effectiveness of 12 gauge buckshot loads. They are deficient in just one respect; they will not go through even the lightest body armor. They ...

This is a post I made on a gun discussion board; I have reposted it here. The question was whether birdshot was a good choice for self-defense. My answer has evolved from some years ago, when I  said that size T lead shot (.20 caliber; #4 buck is .24) could be ideal. I even said something positive about Federal Cartridge's attempt (since abandoned) to offer even smaller shot in a defense load. But I now conclude that #4 buck is the sensible lower limit of shot size for self-defense use, and it is a case where theory and practice bear one another out. #4 buck is already on the ragged edge where performance is starting to falter occasionally, in circumstances where the distance is a little bit far or there are heavy clothes or light obstructions involved, and that lines up closely with what you would expect if the military estimate of wounding energy were true, or else close to the mark. Thread :  Bird Shot for SD? View Single Post  Yesterday, 05:37 PM   ...

The shotgun "zones," A, B and C,  describing the shotgun's behavior at varying ranges, are not much emphasized in my practice sessions anymore, because it was always a clumsy teaching. It is easier to tell people that the farther away you are from your target, the more likely you are to pelt the downrange danger zone instead of putting pellets into your target. That is really all the zones have to teach us, and you can demonstrate the same lesson in a few minutes at the range. Here is how the matter was taught, and my critique. Zone A: Very short range. The pattern has hardly spread. All your pellets will hit the combat silhouette target, for they are hitting en masse. (Bad assumption. All your pellets can miss the target too--same reason. But, if you are reasonably proficient, it is quite likely that all of the shot charge hits--and the wad as well.) Zone B The pattern has spread out, but not so widely that you can't still put all your pellets on the target. ...

Click for article:  American Rifleman | Combat Shotguns of the Vietnam War : The above is a rerun of a 2002 article. It tells you about the guns the military bought and issued during the Vietnam conflict. The commonly used shotguns were pump guns, a mixed bag of Stevens, Winchester, Ithaca, and Remington. The long history of US combat shotguns underscores what I have claimed all along . There is no better personal weapon than a shotgun when the shooting is at short range. Compared to the select-fire rifle its hit probability is twice as good. Compared to the submachine gun, it is very nearly half again better. To me, this means that if my first choice defensive long gun is not a repeating shotgun of some sort, I am making a mistake and selling short my chances to offer the best defense I can. Nearly all justifiable self-defense shootings are at short range or very short range. Right tool for the job, and all that. . . "Winner and still champeen..." (NRA photo)

Skip shooting is bouncing your shotgun pattern off of a hard-surfaced wall or street. It is of possible use for engaging an assailant peeking around a corner, or for passing some shot underneath a car to hit him in the feet and ankles. You aim ahead of the point you want to hit and let the shot skim along the wall or street to the target. The most frequent use in the past was to discourage rioting mobs by shooting at the street in front of them, with the result of many random leg wounds. Skip shooting is not a technique that is now often used, or useful. It is part of the lore of shotguns, though, and it knowing about it might conceivably come in handy. This old FBI training video will give you a clearer idea than any text description of what is going on in ricochets off walls and roads. The relevant portions are from 3:36 to 6:35. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ERs7VyRMETg#t=216 In skip shooting you produce intentional ricochets by firing at...

Long experience by military forces everywhere shows that an ensconced defender has a 3:1 advantage over those coming against him. What is an ensconced defender? He has a good fighting position that protects him from the enemy's weapons, he knows the lay of the land and is ready and waiting when the enemy arrives. A soldier who digs a properly situated hole and gets in it becomes as powerful as three soldiers in the open. That is a very useful thing to know in thinking about your personal defense plans. Whenever possible, have a plan to take cover. Another number: The shotgun firing buckshot has twice the hit probability, within its limited range, of a select fire military rifle--a real assault rifle, not the neutered look-alikes the liberal media loves to fret and moan about.  What of the submachine gun? Here the shotgun scores nearly half again better. That is what our military concluded after studying the matter . The shotgun has the best hit probability of all the personal we...

In a previous post I mused about the old Russian unit of measurement called the arshin . It is a unit of length that is about equal to taking one step forward. I praised it as sensible. It is a unit anyone understands intuitively. It is easy and natural to estimate distances this way, and fairly accurate for short distances. Because the shotgun is used at short distances, and we want to figure things out fast, it makes sense if the shotgunner thinks of distance in terms of steps rather than yards or meters. If your shotgunning technique includes the use of distance guesstimations  to tell you when to think about switching to slugs, or switching to tight patterning shells such as FliteControl or VersaTite, or firing twice to double your pattern density on the target, then it is a touch faster to think in steps to the target. Here is a measurement converter: http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/EN/units-converter/length/47-75/yard-Russian_arshin/  You can use it to convert ...

This National Guard video, though dated, makes some essential points about combat use of the shotgun and includes a bit of history. The video is only a quick overview of the shotgun as a military weapon, and it does not go into the finer points. For one thing, it does not touch upon the very important question of reloading the shotgun. In all, though, it is a solid presentation of the how and why of the fighting shotgun. The contact information at the end of the film is outdated, by the way, so don't try to call.

Rule Four of the rules of gun safety tells us to be sure of our target and what is beyond it. The idea is to eliminate mistaken identity shootings and collateral damage downrange. It is an important rule; all of them are. But it needs to be applied intelligently. You've heard the mantra: You are responsible for each projectile that you send downrange. Every shotgun pellet has a lawyer attached. You must not use buckshot beyond the range at which all the pellets will stay on the target. Otherwise pellets will sail past the target and cause incidents downrange. There is a flaw in that reasoning. Most shots fired in anger miss , and this is true for all types of firearms, so there is always a downrange hazard cone in a gunfight. The frequent advice that you switch to shotgun slugs beyond very short range is questionable on that ground. A miss with a slug produces a highly significant downrange hazard, an ounce of speeding lead, and a slug has a long danger radius. It is still fl...

I regard a repeating shotgun--either pump or autoloader, it doesn't much matter--as the best personal defense firearm available. Most personal defense emergencies, and nearly all self defense shootings that are later ruled justifiable, happen at short range. The shotgun is the best short range gun, so that is the gun to have. So runs my reasoning; it seems an obvious matter to me, but if you have a counter-argument, let me know in the comments. The most evident difficulty is that the shotgun does not hold a whole lot of ammunition and its tube magazine must be reloaded with single shells, one at a time. That at least is what is most common. There are a few box magazine shotguns around and some speedloader gadgets for tube magazine guns. But in general, what people find most practical is a tube magazine and some sort of ammo carrier--a butt cuff, a side saddle, or a belt or a bandolier--that supplies you with single cartridges. This setup offers the minimum bulk of gun and gear, ...

Personally, I like a wide open pattern.The whole reason for preferring a shotgun over a rifle is its hit probability and I don't intend to compromise that. Is it better if your gun throws a broad, open pattern of shot or a small tight one? It isn't a simple question. The shotgun's hit probability, which is superior to any other small arm's at close range, owes to the spread of the shot. If you reduce the spread, you reduce the shotgun's advantage. Things get more complicated, though, when you consider that a pattern that is too wide increases the number of pellets sailing past the target, doing you no good. Since pattern size increases with distance, a loose pattern loses effectiveness rapidly with range as the pattern's density degrades. What to do, what to do? As a sort of baseline to the discussion, the riot gun for its first hundred years or so was almost always cylinder bored or Improved Cylinder choked, and threw open patterns, firing shells concoc...

My thinking is that #1 buckshot is the best choice most of the time, though #4 buck has a lot to recommend it some of the time. Today I'm launching a series that will be ongoing for some time. As I noted previously, my posts here will  be on a now-and-then basis. But I have a number of things to talk about on the topic of defensive shotgunning. Expect this to take a while. For years and years, the 12 gauge riot gun has been my preferred 'preparedness' weapon, for potential use during some sort of hypothetical societal crisis, such as a general breakdown of law and order, or perhaps a zombie apocalypse. It is also what I keep on hand for home defense. I like the shotgun for its outstanding hit probability at short range. Since nearly all lethal force encounters, apart from the battlefield setting, are at short range, I don't worry very much about the shotgun's uselessness at long range. I will be writing up a series of suggestions on how to use a riot gun ef...