It’s all relative. For me, my abilities with a handgun far outshine my abilities with a long gun.
It’s all relative. For me, my abilities with a handgun far outshine my abilities with a long gun.
Why worry about patterning and spread with a shotgun? Conventional gun store wisdom dictates that simply racking the action of a pump action is quite sufficient to scare away the baddies. [emoji38]
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Conversely, one can just get a .410 Judge, because that works in pretty much the exact same way as a full sized 12 gauge anyway- or so I've heard.
"You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
"I've owned a guitar for 31 years and that sure hasn't made me a musician, let alone an expert. It's made me a guy who owns a guitar."- BBI
I’d probably grab a rifle as well, and if not, one of the pistols. That said, my go-to right now is my carry pistol because it’s easier to access and I’d sort of prefer a suppressed AR pistol if I were going to use a rifle in the house. I don’t have the coin to drop on a suppressor right now.
Shotguns just don’t compute in my head for some reason—I can’t get the manual of arms straight, at least not to the intuitive level of my pistols and rifles. Of course that’s probably also because I only have 200 rounds or so of shotgun experience, all of it on semis, and half of it with the balky one I bought intending it for 3-gun and clays use. I’ve even tried manually cycling dummy rounds through and that seems to act differently than actually firing.
One of these days I’ll figure it out; it’s just frustrating because I’m usually really good and picking almost anything up and figuring out how it works and how to use it.
"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." - R. A. Heinlein
I was patterning my cylinder bore FP6 with a variety of loads at 22-25 yards recently and came to the conclusion that magnum loads in 00 buck bring nothing to the table at that distance over 8 to 9 pellet loads, and may be worse in #4 buck over a 2 3/4 load.
Any home defense shotgun article that doesn't state the necessity of patterning is crap.
REPETITION CREATES BELIEF
REPETITION BUILDS THE SEPARATE WORLDS WE LIVE AND DIE IN
NO EXCEPTIONS
The shotgun is neither magic wand, nor death ray. Having said that, my wife was an M.E. Investigator in Harris County, Texas, for 21 years, and is a believer in the effectiveness 12 gauge shotgun. (Most of Houston lies within Harris County.) While it is true that M.E. folks see dead bodies, blood spatter evidence is a science, that tells the tale of what happened after the projectile(s) struck. The shorter the blood trail, the more effective the hit. Elongated blood drops, on the ground, show the speed at which the shoot-ee was moving.
The M2 Benelli, with Comfort Tech stock, is my long gun, of choice; very natural, comfortable, and intuitive, for me. By comparison, my skill with the Remington 870 perishes much more quickly, and it is a much less-comfortable platform.
I have yet to become really comfortable with the AR15/M4 system. I would say that I have a “working knowledge” of the AR15/M4 system, and would much rather engage an adversary with something other than an AR15/M4. I find nothing intuitive about this weapon system, with the safety/selector lever being particularly non-intuitive, as the lever is vertical in semi mode; the lever being in-line with the enemy, or moved toward the enemy, is more intuitive, to me. I learned the Garand safety, the tang safety, and the Winchester Model 70 safety, plus, working with the hammer of a lever rifle, before learning to use the AR15/M4. Plus, with S&W/Beretta handguns, the weapon is on-safe when “the dingus is down,” so even my prior pistol training works against my ability to feel comfortable using the AR/M4 safety.
I have a BCM Lightweight Middy, from the time I almost re-booted my patrol rifle status, at work. I had actually carried a personally-owned Colt Govt Carbine, while still active in the patrol rifle program. I did not learn the AR/M4 system, until 2002, whereas I had learned other systems in the Eighties and Nineties. I have recently been trying to again re-boot my AR/M4 skills, with an AR pistol, .300 BLK, as it makes sense as a “rule-book” long-ish gun, while road tripping in states that do not allow loaded long guns, inside vehicles, but I am already questioning the wisdom of spending the money. Long-barreled .357 revolvers, and full-sized 1911 pistols, might remain my better mousetraps, on the road.
Of course, there is nothing particularly intuitive about a cross-bolt safety, but internalizing move-left-to-fire does have a similarity with unscrewing/loosening a threaded bolt/screw. (Left-Loose, with the similarly-sounding German “Los” actually being the command to “Fire.”)
Retar’d LE. Kinesthetic dufus.
Don’t tread on volcanos!
I totally agree about shotguns not being a good choice for beginners, and many others. Heavy recoil, difficult loading, and very difficult malfunction clearance all make shotguns a very poor choice for many people.
Handguns are hard to shoot well, but they are easy to shoot.
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
Shabbat shalom, motherf***ers! --Mordechai Jefferson Carver
I do not know/remember the Colt model number, but my “Colt AR15A2 Govt Carbine” was purchased new, in 2002, with PD letterhead. It had the LE/Govt-only warning, a pencil barrel, the evil, then-banned-for-mortals flash hider and collapsible stock, and the A2 upper receiver. I do not know when it was made, but it was a Colt product, and what the seller had available, at the time.
As my eyes aged, the front sight being so near my aiming eye made the front sight fuzzy, so I gradually grew to dislike this carbine, and sold it to a younger colleague. Working night shift meant a shotgun was the better long gun for patrol, and, PD policy dictating that the carbines/rifles remain cased, in the trunk, except in very limited circumstances, also made the shotgun the default long gun choice, to be kept up front, with me, and used at my discretion.
Toward the end of my career, optics on patrol carbines/rifles became OK, and, eventually, it became OK to keep the carbines/rifles in the racks, in the passenger compartment. I did end up with the BCM Lightweight Middy, somewhere along the way, but never got around to re-certifying to carry a patrol carbine/rifle. The Benelli M2 was sufficiently comforting; I never felt deprived.
Retar’d LE. Kinesthetic dufus.
Don’t tread on volcanos!