Shotgun loading techniques

[Flyboytim]

You make a point, but I think it's a narrow point. I don't think anyone disagrees that a round in the chamber as soon as possible is primary, and you won't continue to load the magazine if there is an immediate threat. The time to put one round in the chamber from a side saddle or match saver can be faster (skill) than reloading a long gun with a detachable magazine. But this is where the narrowness of the point becomes apparent.

Will a single round end the fight? You might miss, he might wear armor or there is a barrier, there is more than one opponent. That's why military rifles progressed from single shots, to tube magazines, to internal magazines (single column or double), to stripper clips, to detachable magazines. A full magazine is more important in a military or police scenario, but it's still valid in self defense I think. That said, there are some videos out there of skilled individuals shooting very rapidly when single loading the chamber from the side saddle multiple times. Emphasis on "skilled".

Your point about the narrowness of my point is spot on, pun intended. 😜
My intention is not to bash the AR as a defensive tool, or to mimimize the advantage of a full magazine in any segment of an armed encounter. I’m merely addressing a common complaint about the shotgun as being slow to reload compared to a detachable mag fed rifle. The assumption is that the term, “reload”, refers to fully reloaded in many of these accusations surrounding the inferiority of tube fed firearms compared with mag fed. Is fully reloaded to maximum capacity the ONLY definition of “reloaded”? We can agree that being fully reloaded is more desirable than partially reloaded. We can also agree that having only one round loaded when facing an assailant puts the defender in a tenuous position. Yet that position has the defender still capable of putting up a defense, correct?

A scenario in which a 30 round mag has been expended, 30 projectiles have been loosed. Where 7 rounds of 8 pellet buckshot have been loosed, 56 projectiles went flying. Plus, the assumption is that a second 30 round magazine is available. The infantryman hopefully has extra mags on his person, but does the home defender? Only the coupled magazine option would enable a mag change in my mind, in that HD situation. And two 30 round mags on the typical AR platform would come with downsides in weight and protuberances.

I guess my narrow point is that to make the shotgun “loaded”, requires less time than making a mag fed rifle “loaded”, using the same narrow definition of loaded, but I haven’t seen a comparison video. I have seen this video though, one of your examples of “skilled”:
https://youtu.be/YhyJlU82fPE
And a bit easier on the male set of eyes:
https://youtu.be/xbCjcEO9z1A

[P.E. Kelley]

Shotgun-Loading-Techniques.pdf