Home defense: Bird shot, Buck shot or Slugs ?

[DaveC]

Klaus: Thanks for the observations from Deutschland. In the U.S., most defensive shotgun classes--typically based on police use, which is traditional here in Amerika --try to disabuse pupils from reliance on birdshot to immediately stop a lethal threat. Also, such classes tend to emphasize the need to "aim" a shotgun carefully rather than rely on the natural "point" useful for hunting fowl.

Kentactic: Bro, I guess I share your concerns--somewhat--but if Kalashnikov-weilding "bad guys" invading your house is a real source of concern I would recommend either moving to a different neighborhood, or strying to squelch any neighborhood rumors that your home is really a stash house loaded with drugs and money!

[Kentactic]

Klaus: Thanks for the observations from Deutschland. In the U.S., most defensive shotgun classes--typically based on police use, which is traditional here in Amerika --try to disabuse pupils from reliance on birdshot to immediately stop a lethal threat. Also, such classes tend to emphasize the need to "aim" a shotgun carefully rather than rely on the natural "point" useful for hunting fowl.

Kentactic: Bro, I guess I share your concerns--somewhat--but if Kalashnikov-weilding "bad guys" invading your house is a real source of concern I would recommend either moving to a different neighborhood, or strying to squelch any neighborhood rumors that your home is really a stash house loaded with drugs and money!

You make it sound like an AK is an unobtainable gun to your common bad guy. If you were doing home invasions wouldnt you want to have some good fire power? Why wouldnt a career criminal? The so called safe neighborhoods are just as much at risk. Bad guys have access to cars too.

[DaveC]

Fair enough. I will say that here in Texas, criminals do indeed tote Kalashnikovs every now and then, particularly those in gangs... The vast majority of residential burglaries here--and Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio all rate quite high... Houston is #1 in the U.S. and Dallas, if I'm not mistaken, is something like third--happen while the occupant is away because while nation-wide the rate of gun ownership may be something like 1/3rd of households... In Texas, as you might expect, the rate must be far, far higher.

Home invasions do occur every now and then too. I recently moved to a much more urban setting and switched from 00 buck to No.4 for the first time, which is what San Antonio police used to issue. Take care!

[bigjim]

I have always been a fan of 2 3/4" 00 buck, a long time ago I experimented with 3" 00 buck but I found the 3" shells don't feed as reliably as the shorter shells do (I have never had a 2 3/4" shell jam)

[Riverdon]

I keep mine loaded with 2 3/4 00 buck. Birdshot is for shooting birds. And I don't know how many times I have shot waterfowl with a 3 inch #2 magnum, heard the shot hit and watched them fly away.
I am posting a picture of a friend of mine who was accidently shot in the side of the face with a 2 3/4 load of #7's at 20 feet. This happened two years ago and Bob has undergone several surgeries to remove shot. No lasting damage. If this happened in a HD situation Bob would have been pissed!

[Synchronizor]

Ouch.

Still, nice to see the point reinforced. It seems like a lot of people overestimate the stopping ability of birdshot based on shooting random things at the range that have no correlation to flesh and bone.

[Synchronizor]

I came across a box of old targets while cleaning up today, and found these from a patterning session last year:

5 yards

Rem no8 birdshot 5yds.JPG (86.3 KiB) Viewed 6634 times

7 yards

Rem no8 birdshot 7yds.JPG (101.6 KiB) Viewed 6634 times

If you can't read the notes very well, these are Remington #8 target loads, 3 DE, 1200 FPS (nominal), 1&1/8 oz of shot; fired from my 18.5" cylinder-bore barrel at ranges of 5 & 7 yards. The rings on the targets are spaced 1" apart.

This is why I won't use birdshot for HD. For all the noise about birdshot being "effectively a slug at HD ranges", it spreads fast from your typical defensive chokes, and it doesn't take much for each one of those little pellets to be on their own. It would suck to get shot, no doubt about that, but this stuff is not a reliable way to stop someone fast.

[DaveC]

Thanks for the patterns, Synchronizor.

Has anyone tried out the #2 shot and #4 shot, or, for that matter, the "hevishot" BB loads?
Just curious.
At my old club some vandals decided to pepper the wooden "range rules list" with birdshot loads from a shotgun, possibly after they were kicked out for violating one of them. I can't say that the penetration was very encouraging from a defensive standpoint. Make mine buckshot...

[Synchronizor]

Has anyone tried out the #2 shot and #4 shot, or, for that matter, the "hevishot" BB loads?

I've actually been meaning to pattern some of the heavier birdshot. I'm stopping by the hardware store store today, which also sells firearms & ammo (winning combination, right?), so I'll see if there's anything along those lines for a decent price.

[Kentactic]

Go shoot a book with 00 buck and youll see anything less wont do. Round lead penetrates poorly in general.