To add to this, another great example is the Hall Street shootout in Dallas back in the 60s. Bad guy went on a rampage in his neighborhood with a 20ga Stevens pump gun loaded with birdshot. He shot 7 people if memory serves, most in the face, and the only one he killed was the one that he basically muzzle contacted in the torso.Originally Posted by TCinVA
Matt Haught
SYMTAC Consulting LLC
https://sym-tac.com
Regardless, the weapon and limbs end up covering the upper torso. Either gutshots or headshots or you'll likely strike them hands/arms/weapon, basically. Pretty much everyone I have dealt with who shot it out with the cops got a wound to the upper extremities.
If Doc said it, then I preach it. I understand why number 6, 7.5, 8, and 9 shot are ineffective but do wonder if old duck and turkey loads like number 2 and number 4 might do the trick inside a house.
Of the three times I've done simunition training, I was shot in the hands twice.
Even the larger birdshot has a hard time penetrating deeply enough to meet the 12” fbi minimum.
Lead BB shot is about the smallest size that will get a majority of the pellets that deep in gel.
A case can be made for lead BB at super close range and reduced penetration of walls but any of the buckshot will be far more reliable at incapacitation.
It’s basically impossible to find any lead bb loads that don’t have heavy recoil too. Low recoil buckshot is the way to go.
I've been shot in the hand. I also lent my 642 to another role player and it came back with the front of the cylinder plastered with red goo.
The thought of 3" magnum turkey loads comes up from time to time but it still comes down to the weight of the projectiles. Once shot pellets hit flesh they rapidly lose energy and that stops adequate penetration. #4 buckshot is often extolled as an option for home defense because it shoots lots of pellets, but those smaller pellets exhibit shallow penetration because they just don't carry energy well enough to penetrate deep. If you are at relatively close range shooting at an unobstructed critter on all 4's, it tends to work out fairly well but still shows pretty shallow penetration compared to 00 when you open the critter up.
All shot loads exhibit shallow penetration in FBI protocol testing.
People on the internet get confused because they don't realize that gel testing is not a 1:1 for penetration in flesh, and always picture a straight on shot with no other bits of anatomy in the way. They see a gel shot with 4" of penetration and reason that there's about 4" of penetration from the sternum to the heart of a person so good enough...when in reality in real flesh that translates to just about enough penetration to get through the skin and into the muscle layer of the chest and that's about it. In class I use a picture of one such event to illustrate the point. It looks horrific until you look closely and see that apart from seeing bloody flesh, nothing important was hit...which is how the home invader in question managed to take himself to the hospital after being shot through an interior door with a full pattern of birdshot at a few feet.
I have posted video of the active shooter situation above in every single "bIrDSh0tZ AwEsuM!!#!" argument I see on social media and it penetrates as poorly as birdshot did on that oblivious coed.
Just as an example of some of the absolute fucking retardery there is on this, here's some responses to an article on facebook telling people shot is a poor defensive munition:
What you don't see there is commentary from a genius who invoked Ed Mireles's statement that buckshot is useless so he only carried slugs in his shotgun after Miami...except I've never seen a citation for Ed actually saying that. I have Ed's book, I've attended Ed's seminar, and I've had the chance to sit down and talk with him and beyond that I've read everything I could find on the incident for years and this is the first time I heard anything like that. When asked for a citation he deleted his comment and disappeared.
Most of the others yakking in that thread are clearly reaching as far up their own ass as possible to yank out some authoritative claptrap that has likely only ever been validated by some ridiculous youtube video.
Meanwhile in the real world, a violent criminal insisted on borrowing some tools from a neighbor and threatened them with a gun when they didn't comply. The home owner managed to grab a shotgun and put a load of birdshot in the bad guy's face:
...only to have the bad guy empty his pistol putting both the homeowner and his wife in the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds.
And then the very same dipshits who have been arguing "YOU DON'T AIM A SHOTGUN!" blame that failure of birdshot at just outside contact distance on the poor bastard who believed their advice not having "aimed" properly.
I'm glad the criminal that Mr. Cope shot ran away screaming that his arm had been shot off, but in reality it had not been shot off and a bad guy who can run away screaming like a lil' bitch can also press an attack. And his buddies can join the attack. Mr. Cope was fortunate that he ran into the percentage of criminals who are not going to press an attack past being shot anywhere with anything.
When it reaches the point where I'm pressing the trigger on a shotgun, I'm not trying to convince the person on the other end of my sights of anything. I'm not trying to alter their decision making process. I'm not trying to negotiate. I'm trying to render them physically incapable of continuing to press an assault. Shot loads and poorly performing buckshot have a piss-poor track record of accomplishing that.
And the whole reason we're supposedly resorting to a shot load is because of worries about "overpenetration", and yet when one suggests that, hey, get a buckshot load that patterns properly and learn how to fucking shoot it the simian poo-flinging response is all one gets. Because these motherfuckers will believe ANY sort of voodoo you can sell that doesn't require them to actually do any fucking work.
At contact distance to 2 or 3 steps away, a full load of birdshot can damn near amputate an appendage:
Beyond that distance its ability to penetrate to the vitals of a human being decline significantly. Extremely vulnerable organs like the eyes can be completely destroyed, some nerve clusters can be reached, and with the heavier shot loads the bad guy might end up in quite dire straits later on. But that's not what we're trying to accomplish with a defensive shot. What happens to him after he shoots me and the wife multiple times with a handgun is kind of irrelevant in the context of self defense.
3/15/2016
Some stuff from my notes.
Page 12 of my copy of Massad Ayoob's StressFire II mentions NYPD Stakeout Squad incident where Heroin addict took two rounds (not pellets) of OO buckshot to torso and was still moving on his feet towards exit with gun, 38 wadcutter in hip immobilized him.
Both "Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights" by Jim Cirillo and "Jim Cirillo's Tales of the Stakeout Squad" by Paul Kirchner have fair bit about shotgun use.
I don't have specific citations I can find at the moment, but recall in more than one shooting of the Stakeout Squad officers would run 12 gauge dry drop it and transition to handgun.
Pretty sure in one or both of those books there was a shooting described with two badguys where both Cirillo & Allard ran their 12 gauges dry and Allard transitioned to his 1911
Also sure somewhere in Cirillo's book they mentioned something like after number of shootings they noticed buckshot was inconsistent, which I suspect was related to poor pattern density/saturation you get from 9 pellets of buck vs 100's of birdshot (ie you can aim right at heart and not put a buckshot pellet in it), so they tended to favor slugs.
Though they seemed to still use buckshot when they felt it was the better choice.
I'd also note that Stakeout Squad emphasized marksmanship and shooting skills.
Also had coworker who's brother attempted suicide with birdshot loaded shotgun to torso and survived, never got lot of details about that because it was very traumatic experience for the coworker and his family.
My opinions based on my experiences:
You are going to have whats in on gun. I carry 5 in the tube cruiser ready with 4 more sidesaddle and two slugs on a stock sleeve. Have a light on end of it, In bedroom closet. My handgun on nightstand next to flashlight.
Buck shot not bird shot. Pattern yours out to 25 yards for your shotgun. I prefer Federal Flight Control but am also happy with standard Federal tactical 00
Have a light on your HD weapon and know how to use it. You may not always be able to "turn the lights on" example: power outage, or in the case of someone I know they cut his breaker box padlock and turned his main breaker off before the attempted burglary. Here in AZ most newer homes have the panel outside. He ended up having to engage three of them with his AR in no light situation with no weapon light. Successful, but he made some changes shortly thereafter.
I have only had one situation when living rural, now I live suburban/rural. In that one situation, I followed the sound of dogs pinning one on the back porch while the other was clearing the fence 30 yards away and running for his life into the desert. So I left the home. But I had kids in the house so I need to secure them first. Know your firing lanes if you have kids in house.
Wife grabbed them took them to room with glock and I went to see what the dogs had pinned in a corner of porch with shotgun otherwise now that they are grown and out, barricade, have shotgun, call 911 let them know exactly where I am at and that I am armed, stay on line with them so they can let me know when officers are at door and shoot anything trying to kick the door down before then. I figure if they get by the dogs then they are serious enough to shoot.
Did not have to fire a signle shot but in truth the dogs did a lot of the work. I have taken two low light and one shotgun course to get the basics from professionals and I desert train low light. I took gunsite courses back in the day with dad ( retired PD) when the colonel was still alive. It was great father son bonding time.
I still have his old 60's police high standard riot gun even though I use the shockwave now, but DAT ACTION. I can rack it with one hand, it's smooth as butter.
The shotgun is my favorite home defense gun.
Anyway, that is my completely amateur opinion on home defense shotguns.
It's interesting to read the variety of people's possible uses for a shotgun particularly those gearing for "inside the house use" say barricaded in a room.
I've grabbed & gone outside with a 12 gauge hundreds of times over the years. When the dogs talk, I listen
Usually it's small predators (mostly coyotes), sometimes it's a neighbors bull, once it was 3 youths, sometimes javelina, bobcats, lost hippies, every few years groups of feral dogs, or city people letting their dogs run free when they stop. There's about a zero percent chance of me using a 12 ga. inside the house, I've used one many times outside so my world revolves around that. I hike with one strapped to my ruck, based out of my house so weight is not an issue, I load extra weight in my ruck if it's too light.
OP would probably consider me absurd or Gecko 45 like, but ammo is my friend in my circumstances.
The only time I've called the cops was the 3 junior hoodlums and 2 deputies arrived well over an hour later, I think it was 1:45. So we're pretty much left to our own devices.
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