The person who has fired a 22 target pistol extensively might be better off using it than they would trying to operate an unfamiliar rifle or shotgun under stress. I said unfamiliar because the term applies to weapons like an AR or 590 or 870 bought and then placed behind a door. I'm not implying that a .22 anything is sufficient or that using a handgun beats using a long gun. The fact that shotguns are passé as in no longer trendy does not negate their usefulness in home defense.
An anecdotal story should not be taken as general experience or a reasonable expectation. Often they are remembered not because they are/were the norm, but because they stood out as an exception to the rule. So, a couple of stories about the .22LR and it's appropriate use.
I grew up in Alaska and there were multiple examples of people killing moose and bear with a .22LR. Never a defensive situation, always a deliberate hunting situation. The hunter used a .22 because that was what he had, not because it was a superior choice to other calibers or rifles. I shouldn't say just hunter, one I remember was a teenager who was the worst sort. He just wanted to kill and shot a moose multiple times with a .22 rifle. The moose died of internal bleeding, but it wasn't hunting and personally, I thought he deserved the same fate as the moose. But another instance was a native who deliberately hunted a bear with a .22lr. He fired a single shot into the lung and waited. The bear wasn't startled by the sound of the shot and the bullet was just a sting. But after a couple of hours he keeled over and died. The important context was that it wasn't defensive use and it took a long time to die.
The other one that comes to mind was defensive use and death was immediate, and there are several lessons. The Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya was 1952-1960. At some point in that time, the Mau Mau were running around killing white ranchers and so the police/constabulary/army went out to the outlying ranches to gather up scattered families and bring them back to safety. In one instance, they headed to a ranch where they knew the house wife was normally alone during the day while her husband and sons were out working the ranch. As they constabulary approached the ranch house, they encountered dead Mau Mau, all with a single, small bullet hole in the forehead. They found the woman alive and well and evacuated her. And to borrow from Paul Harvey, the rest of the story, which is why this is important. The housewife, after doing her work would entertain herself with her Colt Woodsman .22 pistol by shooting at tree leaves around the house, shooting them off the branches. When the Mau Mau showed up, she had the skills to head shoot them when they became visible because she had so much practice shooting at small targets and having to estimate and compensate for the range.
Can and have a .22lr been used effectively? Yes, with a lot of practice and it was the only available option. Is it recommended? Not if you have better choices. Those two answers apply to just about everything. Practice, a lot, and use the best available option. So it helps to choose the best option first, and STILL practice.
I'm speaking on a terminal ballistics level. Absolutely no reason to willingly pick a service pistol over shotgun (or rifle).Originally Posted by Borderland
Even in tight quarters, the stock gives a physical advantage for control and accuracy.
Claude Werner undertook a study a few years ago - using the NRA's "The Armed Citizen" column to accumulate statistics.
Handguns were the dominant to of choice: https://tacticalprofessor.files.word...r-w-tables.pdf
However, as Mr. Werner noted in his Conclusions:
"2) Mindset of the potential victim was far more important than the type of weapon used. All the victims were willing to fight their opponents in order to survive. Although not common, in some cases bridge weapons, such as pens, were used to gain time to access the firearm."
Given what we have heard time and time again from those with extensive homicide investigation experience and those who have extensive experience in training defensive shooters - it is almost always the ability to access and subsequently the willingness to use the firearm that makes the difference.
That said, we can also see that the vast majority of incidents where there was deployment and firing of a shotgun results in a win for the deployer. To get an L in a shotgun-based gunfight it seems you have to not be able to deploy, not be willing to fire, or miss.
By contrast you can add, "Limited terminal efficacy." To the reasons you take an L in a gunfight when you fight with pistol or rifle. Is it likely? No. It's fourth on the list for a reason. But it's worth thinking about.
It has already been explained to you how incredibly retarded that statement is.
Nobody, and I mean not one single professional organization is going to advocate what you posted above. Shotguns, using proper ammunition drop bad guys decisively when used within their limits. Pistols, not so much.
You bet cha. Ever wonder why the Po Po have retention holsters? It isn't because they got the drop on an assailant.
I'm done here. Buy a shotgun if you feel compelled. I never said you shouldn't.
Last edited by Borderland; 09-25-2022 at 08:00 PM.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
Well, I do a lot of teaching in the Northern Virginia and Western PA area.
3/15/2016
I don't have to wonder.
This is another example of things people think they know, but don't really.
Retention holsters evolved as a result of officers being killed with their own weapons. Digging into exactly how those incidents went down, however, showed that those officers typically had their weapons out of the holster when they lost control of the weapon.
A retention holster accomplishes precisely zero in that sort of situation.
If we go back in time and look at incidents where officers were killed with their own weapons without having it in their hands, we see terrible equipment like the Audley Safety Holster in use. New York, for example, had lots of Audley holsters in use by police officers and they had a real tendency to eject handguns when there was a fight. Not coincidentally, NY had a very high rate of officers killed with their own weapons.
Of course, Audley wasn't the only popular holster gimmick out there that had a tendency to jettison a sidearm in a bad moment. There were a plethora of bad gimmicky holsters throughout policing in the US:
Misunderstanding the actual problem results in "solutions" that don't solve things.
So in an effort to cure a problem that was largely explained by bad holsters and having guns out of the holster at inappropriate times, the solution was a holster that officers struggle to draw a gun from in the first place...which just means they get the gun out of the holster even earlier because they have no confidence they can rapidly present the gun from the holster for real since it's not something they've been meaningfully trained to do and it's not something they've practiced. Because the actual issue wasn't properly understood, a silly "solution" got adopted.
Most instances of armed self defense are resolved merely by presenting a firearm of any sort. That is sufficient to convince the criminal actors to seek their entertainment elsewhere. But even so, we do not recommend people carry a derringer. I can find instances of home defense where a homeowner succeeded by bludgeoning a criminal with an unloaded weapon. That does not make doing so a winning strategy. Bad guys may break off an attack if you present a single shot Cricket. Then again they may press an attack until they're all dead. You have no idea which you're going to get until it's too late, so we assume the need to force the criminal asshole to stop whatever it is they are doing that's making you get a lethal weapon in your hands.
We spend time teaching people how to efficiently present a weapon and get anatomically useful hits because that's what it takes to force a violent criminal to stop trying to kill you or someone you care about. We teach a rapid succession of anatomically useful shots from pistols and rifles because lots of experience shooting people with handguns and rifles at close range has made it clear that getting the intended result of physiological incapacitation...meaning the bad guy is physically unable to continue trying to kill you or someone you care about...requires multiple applications.
Or you can shoot them once with a properly selected buckshot round and get the intended result.
And that's why people choose shotguns, and that's why it's pants-on-head levels of silly to insist that a pistol is better in close quarters. ECQC level scrums are thankfully fairly rare for typical civilian self defense and generally happen when someone goes and hunts for the bad guy in the structure and then literally runs into the bad guy in the effort. There are some fairly simple techniques that can be used to prevent a weapon grab with a long gun. They are especially potent with a shotgun because contact wounds with shotguns are sufficiently traumatic to essentially amputate whatever is in front of it. If you have any reasonable hold on the shotgun and it's close to your body you can get the muzzle on the other dude fairly easily. Even if the gun is oriented down, it takes relatively little strength to move the gun toward the other guy's calf or knee, and then press the trigger. And I guarantee he will find it much more difficult to continue the fight when his lower leg is essentially gone.
Reasoned discussion about the best defensive option for a particular situation is fine, but I'm completely over dealing with fudd-lore or tacti-bro bullshit on the defensive shotgun. Dipshit fudds think you don't have to aim them and you should load them with birdshot. Tacti-bro bullshit holds that rifles do everything better so just buy one of those. Neither are remotely close to being true and if someone comes into this forum and starts slinging that shit around, they're likely to get smacked upside the head with a curt explanation of reality.
Last edited by TCinVA; 09-26-2022 at 08:10 AM.
3/15/2016
Just for some irrelevant hilarity, when the discussion is about a Cricket, it isn't this one: https://meninblack.fandom.com/wiki/Noisy_Cricket
I think this a great discussion and influencing the way I think about the two long guns I have for home SD. Much to think about. Thanks for TCinVA's contribution!!
And you know slings are like retention holsters for long guns, right? Not only do they give you a place to store the weapon when you need to use your hands for something else, they help in retaining the weapon in your possession.
I had several instances using a shotgun/subgun/rifle on entries and searches when someone decided it was a good idea to put their hands on my long gun. Some were a little more enthusiastic than others, but none were to the level that I felt pulling the trigger was necessary and the situation couldn't be resolved with physical persuasion. A muzzle jab to the sternum (and to the forehead in one case) or buttstroke to the jaw is very effective in conveying to someone "This is mine!" and ending their desire to contest ownership.
At one point @ 20 years ago or so, I had a Yankee Hill Phantom flash hider (the one with the sharp tines on the end) on my entry 10.5" M16. The guy that took that jab probably still has an odd-looking circular scar in the center of his chest and a cool story to this day. (Shortly after, I removed it after skewering my own calf with it while dropping to a kneeling position with a handgun with the rifle slung...Doh!).
Long story short...I've found it much easier to retain a long gun during weapon-retention scenarios (both actual and training) than it is to retain a handgun.
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