My pump holds 7 in the tube. Now, I know that the chance of the average guy having to repel enough home invaders to run it out of ammo is very small. And you could mount a stock sleeve with 5 or 6 more shells, but it occurs to me that’s like a revolver and speed loader: chance of reloading in a close quarters shootout is negligible.
An M4 type is feeling like a better option.
yes, this is why the firearms gods have endowed us with SBRs
This has been pretty well accepted for the past several years.
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Yes. Bird guns do almost nothing better than an M4.
I don’t think you have much chance of hitting a reload with a M4 in a close quarters gunfight at HD distance. But then again, with 28-30 rounds I’d hope you didn’t have to.
We’ve been down this road before in this forum.
I don’t think you can give a blanket answer as to what is best for all situations.
I would say that if you are limiting yourself to one shoulder weapon the rifle is probably a better overall choice for most folks.
Enlarging on the can’t give a blanket answer thought, I have a suppressed SBR, a 20" 20 gauge loaded with slugs, and several pistols immediately accessible for home defense. If a scenario would present itself where I needed to move through my house, I would do it with a pistol.
One concern I have with the M4 is that if you need to take a close, has to be immediately incapacitating shot, sight offset may be an issue - if you need to take a hostage shot on someone holding your kid.
With the shotgun in the same situation, while sight offset isn’t a concern (we are bead people), pattern spread and the wad are. This is why I use Brennake slugs in the 20ga. I chose a 20ga because my wife prefers it over the 12ga.
That is me, based on my analysis and experiences. Others have different opinions, and that is okay, as long as they are making informed, considered choices for themselves.
In the house I would prefer the pistol. In the yard the rifle. I do have a SHTF shotgun but mostly for hunting. It is a 20" vent ribbed 870 with an 8 round tube and light. I wouldn’t feel naked if I had to use it for SD but it wouldn’t be my first choice.
Yep. This every time.
For yard work I use a suppressed .22. I throw a ghille suit over the, uh, mess and take the, uh, mess to the river for disposal after dark.
Seriously, if they are outside, unless they are raping one of my dogs, which wouldn’t be a good thing because between the two of them I have 170 pounds of land shark, I’m more of a call the police guy.
Of course, in a total societal breakdown scenario, all bets are off.
Why? an SBR isn’t really any longer than your arms extended out with a pistol, and it is less likely to penetrate through your walls as most handgun cartridges.
Personally:
-Easier 1 handed firing and manipulations, including wml activation. Support hand can fight attacker, move children, open/close door, operate phone. Easier to control and use in a clinch or while grappling. You might get by with an SBR, but almost definitely not a shotgun
-wife is more familiar with handgun than rifle and far less comfortable with a shotgun, and since my 1 sbr is filed as an individual owner, less potential fuss about her using the handgun if I’m not around.
-handgun can be more easily stored or concealed on person (small kids at home). While “grandpa’s” shotgun looks at home propped up in the corner, a properly set up HD shotgun does not.
-confident in skills, but many more reps with handgun vs rifle. Far fewer reps with the shottie, and fewer training opportunities.
-Not super concerned with overpenetration or ballistics due in part to architecture and ammo selection. Already a groggy idiot at 3 am. Accounting for offset would be tough enough; I don’t want to have to consider patterning.
This isn’t an endorsement for selecting a handgun over a rifle or shotgun, just the observations and assessments that I made that led me to make a handgun my home defense primary. Arguments can be made for a rifle or shotgun as well; just not an advantage to me in my situation. I tried hard to make a shotgun work in this role. It makes some sense, but the juice isn’t worth the squeeze for me.
I am not a shotgun guy for home defense or, at work, for clearing buildings which shares some similarities with HD. Many comments here reflect my thoughts why. Chameleox hits on some of the more salient ones in his post just above this.
Also mentioned earlier is the shotgun’s propensity for penetration. 00 and slugs consistently show extreme penetration in FBI tests. I am not one to fret about over-penetration; it is oft-discussed but very seldom found to be an issue. In fact, I can’t recall ever reading where it was a factor.
Shotguns are indispensible for shooting flying stuff out of the sky… If I didn’t enjoy shooting trap and hunting pheasants, then I wouldn’t have bothered to buy a shotgun at all.
Of course, now that I have a shotgun, it has an extended mag and a light. I don’t anticipate shooting bad guys with it but rather wayward skunks and raccoons — it’s packing #5 birdshot.
I guess one should strive to get to the point where one can shoot flying stuff out of the sky with an M4?
Nah, I just meant to reinforce what MarkM said: There’s not much point to shotguns except shooting small moving targets.
Example: It occurs to me that the solution to drones in prohibited areas is a shotgun firing birdshot.
Remember that fine motor skills deteriorate rapidly in a stressful encounter. Could you really hope to reload an empty shotgun if trying to repel home invaders?
As someone said, you hope you don’t have to reload a 30-round mag (or similar), but chances are the encounter will be over before you go empty.
I rely on my carry pistol for first line response at home. It becomes night stand pistol when I go to bed. The M4 in the closet would come out if I had time and we are either holed up in the master bedroom or having to deal with something outside. An 870 with shell holder and M1 Garand are also ready if total crap show unfolds.
When I was younger and hunted a lot with the Mossberg I know for a fact I could reload under extreme stress (not hunting) pretty damn fast as I was so familiar with it hunting so much. That was before fancy shell holders and such but in an instant I had three shells between my left hand fingers and one in my mouth and when empty loaded those without thinking. I never practiced anything like that but in duress I knew I wanted as much ammo as close to ready to load as possible.
Nowadays I rarely shoot either the 870 or Mossberg so while comfortable with a shotgun for self defense I would rather rely on my more used pistols and carbines. But if a shotgun was all that was available I wouldn’t fret.
No promises, but I shoot trap every couple months, so that’s a lot of practicing loading…
Remember, I get to practice loading EVERY single shell, so I easily practice “loading” 50-75 times per outing. I probably don’t reload my ARs that much in a busy year.
My “shorty” 21" M2 loads 9 shells, and my 28" M2 loads 12. As you just said: chances are that the encounter will be over before I go empty.
To be clear, I’m not advocating a shotgun over a carbine; I’m just saying that the speed to reload is not really that big a disadvantage…
The fastest reload for a shotgun is a pistol. At least that is how we always trained.
That’s been the conclusion for a while now by man, if not most. I think you’ll find majority of your BTD types choose an SBR or pistol these days for HD.
LOL. And you use your pistol to fight your way back to your rifle. It’s perfect.