Safe At Home

 

If you’re a gun owner, there will come a time when you’ll hear someone tell you that “You don’t need a pistol or an ‘assault rifle,’ just get yourself a shotgun for home defense.” Chances are the person offering that advice won’t be the current Vice President of the United States, but nevertheless, a shotgun or a rifle brings two things to the table that a defensive handgun just can’t.

1. Firepower. A 12 gauge shotgun firing 00 buckshot throws twelve .33 caliber lead pellets at one time into its unfortunate target. Ouch. A 55 grain .223 bullet weighs significantly less than a buckshot load, but it’s traveling at a tremendous speed that allows it to impart a lot of force on-target, far more than common handgun calibers. In short, when it comes to firepower, pistols are pistols, and long guns are long guns.

2. Distance. An AR-15 rifle in the hands of a semi-competent marksman is more than capable of delivering shots on-target out to 100 yards and beyond, and a shotgun with slugs can hit targets out beyond 50 yards. Both of those distances are considered extreme distances for even the most competent of pistol shooters, so a long gun allows you to extend the fight to distances your pistol can’t reach.

Which is better for personal defense, a handgun, a rifle or a shotgun? In my opinion, they all have a role to play in keeping you and your loved ones safe. Let’s compare the advantages and disadvantages of each of type of firearm and how that might affect your choice:

  • Pistols
    Advantages: Compact, easy to carry, can be shot with one hand;
    Disadvantages: Not much ammo compared to rifles, low-powered compared to long guns.
  • Shotguns
    Advantages: Devastating amount of power per round, flexible ammunition types;
    Disadvantages: Hard to maneuver in tight spots, needs two hands to operate, low ammunition capacity.
  • Rifles
    Advantages: Powerful rounds. Higher capacity. Great for long-distance work;
    Disadvantages: Needs two hands to use. Harder to maneuver in tight spots. Some locales have magazine capacity limitations.

I use all three, inside and outside the house. Inside our home, we have a designated safe room, a place that the entire family knows is our “rally point,” the place we all go to if someone enters our home with evil intent. Inside that safe room is a first-aid kit, flashlight, cell phone* and a quick-access safe that contains a handgun and a spare magazine. Next to that safe, higher up on the wall to keep it safer from prying hands, is a Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun, cruiser-ready, loaded with buckshot, which also has a half-dozen more shells and a couple of deer slugs ready for fast reloads. Our safe room is meant to be the place where the entire family holes up and stays until help arrives. I’m not a SWAT cop and have no desire to move from room to room clearing my house of any bad guys. I’m going to try to wait it out, because aside from my family, there is nothing in my house worth dying (or killing) for. I have no need to creep through my house looking for bad guys unless one of my family’s lives might be on the line

Outside the home, I have my concealed defensive handgun on me and a rifle in the trunk. Yes, there is a danger that if my car gets stolen, my rifle will go along with it into criminal hands; however, I drive a seriously uncool car that’s devoid of NRA stickers and whatnot, so it will be a mighty desperate car thief who choses to steal my car rather than others in the parking lot. The rifle is there not to deal with active shooters, but because my family likes to travel, and I don’t want to repeat what my family went through when we decided to visit St. Louis last year.

Is a handgun good for home defense? Yes, absolutely. Is a rifle better? Maybe, and maybe a shotgun is preferable for you. For me, I see a pistol as my primary weapon outside the home and secondary inside the home. The pump-action shotgun is my primary home defensive weapon inside the home (because BOOM) and a rifle is, a best, a tertiary weapon for me.

Your life and your circumstances will probably be different than mine, so think about where and how you live, then plan accordingly. If you live in a rural area, the extra distance that a rifle gives you is something to think about. If you live in a more densely-packed areas, #4 buckshot penetrates building walls less than #00 shot, and I’ve seen studies that show that the fast, unstable bullet fired from an AR-15 will shed its energy faster than even a pistol round will.

Local laws can affect your choices: If you can’t own the standard-capacity 30 round magazine for an AR-15 or live in an area where scary black rifles might bring unwanted attention from a prosecutor, a lever-action rifle is an excellent choice for self-defense inside the home or as a trunk gun outside of the house.

Whatever you chose, commit to training with your gun and teach the responsible parties inside your house where your defensive guns are and how they are meant to be used. Having a plan, even having safe room with a sturdy locking door and a flashlight will put you far ahead of the rest of America. You don’t have to be perfect, you just need to have a plan.

* Any working cell phone can dial 911, no matter if it has a current mobile service plan or not. Mighty useful for people like me who don’t have a land line and tend to leave our smartphones lying around the home.

Published in General, Guns
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  1. RyanFalcone Member
    RyanFalcone
    @RyanFalcone

    Slightly off topic but how did you reinforce the walls of your safe room? I remember as a kid, being taught by a family friend, to claw my way through drywall and push through siding to escape if I was ever kidnapped by someone. I was shocked as a 6-7 year-old how easy it was (I was “helping” him demolish a wall for a new kitchen).

    • #31
  2. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    RyanFalcone: how did you reinforce the walls of your safe room?

    Do you really need to? Do you think people would be so intent on getting to you that they would work through a wall with an armed man on the other side?

    • #32
  3. Majestyk Member
    Majestyk
    @Majestyk

    Quietpi:

    Majestyk:May I ask how you feel about a Louisville Slugger for home defense? :D

    I mainly don’t want to loose bullets in the house.

    I can’t decide whether you’re serious or not, given your second sentence. To be sure, anything is better than nothing, but a bat is darn close to nothing.

    I’m quite serious.  It’s dark, you’re probably pumping adrenaline but still slightly groggy from being asleep – is the best thing to do to wield a gun in that condition?  Is slightly less lethal force a possibility?

    Obviously, if your assailant has a gun then you want the odds to be even – but the odds are already skewed in their favor as they’re likely alert and awake.  You have certain advantages inherent to defenders (you know your home, etc) but one would hope shooting in your own home would be the very final option given what could go wrong.

    • #33
  4. Goldwater's Revenge Inactive
    Goldwater's Revenge
    @GoldwatersRevenge
    • #34
  5. Phil Turmel Inactive
    Phil Turmel
    @PhilTurmel

    Kevin Creighton:

    Terry Mott: I want a gun, but worry about my boy’s curiosity, age, and surprising ability to climb into every nook and cranny of my house. If I had one now it would be so locked up as to be useless in a crucial moment.

    Your thinking pretty much mirrors mine ten years ago. There was a number of brutal home invasions in the Phoenix area, so my wanted wanted us to get an alarm system, and I got a gun, and put in a quick-access safe. They really work, and they’re good enough to keep young hands away from things they shouldn’t have.

    In addition to a quick-access safe, consider just wearing the gun all the time.  I mean, even around the house.  Yes, you’ll need a good holster, but you need that anyways.  If it’s comfortable enough to wear around the house, it’ll be comfortable enough to wear out in public.

    As a side benefit, your child(ren) will grow up seeing you wear a firearm all the time.  It’ll be normal.  Let them watch you at the range too, to instill early respect for the sound and fury a handgun contains.

    FWIW, I wear the Comfort-Flex shoulder holster from Aker Leather.  Highly recommended.

    • #35
  6. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    Second amendment advocates hurt their cause when they reject measures to restrict gun ownership only to responsible people. Saner minds must prevail.

    Name one who argues against keeping guns out of the hands of crazies and criminals. Please define “responsible people” and explain where current laws fall short by allowing those other than those you have defined to legally purchase or possess weapons. Lastly, please enlighten us as to which rejected measures served only the purpose of keeping guns out of the hands of crazies and criminals.

    • #36
  7. Terry Mott Member
    Terry Mott
    @TerryMott

    Goldwater’s Revenge,

    Get back to me when you have a plan for identifying who are “responsible people” and who are not.

    There are already laws that prohibit gun ownership by felons and the mentally ill.  The Democrats (and many Republicans) aren’t really interested in improving the ability of the government to declare the mentally ill incompetent.  They just want more restrictions on gun rights for everyone.  Indeed, most statists would argue than none of us are responsible enough to own a gun.  You and they are in agreement in principle, differing only in degree.

    If you want to increase the government’s power in this area, you’re going to have to address our lack of trust that they’ll use this power, dare I say it, responsibly.

    • #37
  8. Phil Turmel Inactive
    Phil Turmel
    @PhilTurmel

    Goldwater’s Revenge

    First let me say that I am a strong defender of the second amendment,

    You say this, but then you contradict yourself:

    I support the right of anyone qualified to own a gun to do so.

    Civil rights don’t require qualification.  You start with them.  There must due process to deprive you of a civil right.  If government believes citizens need certain training to carry a firearm, it needs to provide that training to all citizens.  Known to our founders as a well-regulated militia.  That most states require training for a carry permit is a travesty, because it is simply not necessary.  States that require training have statistically the same rate of permittee misconduct as states that don’t require it: virtually zero.

    I discarded your list of incidents that supposedly demonstrate the need to restrict firearms.  Those cases are overwhelmed by the lives saved by defensive use of firearms and the reality that many if not most of those deaths are just as likely with other weapons when firearms aren’t available.  Also, case studies and personal testimonials are the first tools of deceptive marketers.  They are islands of information with no context.  Randomized studies are needed to separate correlation from causation.  Criminologists like Gary Kleck and researchers like John Lott Jr. have done this — their results do not support your implication that ordinary people can’t be trusted with firearms.

    You closed your comment with:

    Second amendment advocates hurt their cause when they reject measures to restrict gun ownership only to responsible people. Saner minds must prevail.

    I vehemently disagree.  Or rather, I challenge the implication that ordinary Americans aren’t responsible people.

    • #38
  9. Terry Mott Member
    Terry Mott
    @TerryMott

    Further, the implication of your post is that, in all these cases, removing the gun would have avoided catastrophe.

    I’m sorry about your father, but people use other means to commit suicide, too.

    As for the rest of your anecdotes, the lack of a firearm arguably may (or may not) have reduced the death count in the case of the college professor had the nut used a machete instead.  In the two cases of women shooters, the man in the scenario may have been able to overpower a crazy woman armed with a knife, but that’s no certain thing.  In the other anecdotes, replacing guns with knives or clubs changes nothing in the likely outcome.

    • #39
  10. Terry Mott Member
    Terry Mott
    @TerryMott

    Kevin Creighton:

    Terry Mott: I want a gun, but worry about my boy’s curiosity, age, and surprising ability to climb into every nook and cranny of my house. If I had one now it would be so locked up as to be useless in a crucial moment.

    Your thinking pretty much mirrors mine ten years ago. There was a number of brutal home invasions in the Phoenix area, so my wanted wanted us to get an alarm system, and I got a gun, and put in a quick-access safe. They really work, and they’re good enough to keep young hands away from things they shouldn’t have.

    Just to be clear, the above quote wasn’t me.  It was BenMSYS.

    • #40
  11. Terry Mott Member
    Terry Mott
    @TerryMott

    Phil Turmel:

    Kevin Creighton:

    Terry Mott: I want a gun, but worry about my boy’s curiosity, age, and surprising ability to climb into every nook and cranny of my house. If I had one now it would be so locked up as to be useless in a crucial moment.

    Your thinking pretty much mirrors mine ten years ago. There was a number of brutal home invasions in the Phoenix area, so my wanted wanted us to get an alarm system, and I got a gun, and put in a quick-access safe. They really work, and they’re good enough to keep young hands away from things they shouldn’t have.

    In addition to a quick-access safe, consider just wearing the gun all the time. I mean, even around the house. Yes, you’ll need a good holster, but you need that anyways. If it’s comfortable enough to wear around the house, it’ll be comfortable enough to wear out in public.

    As a side benefit, your child(ren) will grow up seeing you wear a firearm all the time. It’ll be normal. Let them watch you at the range too, to instill early respect for the sound and fury a handgun contains.

    FWIW, I wear the Comfort-Flex shoulder holster from Aker Leather. Highly recommended.

    Just to be clear, the above quote wasn’t me.  It was BenMSYS.

    BTW, I started carrying full-time myself earlier this year.

    • #41
  12. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Plus, an AR is big, scary, and black.  And everyone runs from big, scary, and black.

    • #42
  13. Scott Wilmot Member
    Scott Wilmot
    @ScottWilmot

    Thanks for these posts, Kevin, they are extremely informative and helpful.

    What are your thoughts on semi-automatic shotguns as compared to pump-action for home defense?

    Do you know anything about the Beretta 1301 tactical (say as compared to your Mossberg 930?). I think you also recommended somewhere in the comments against a pistol grip on a shotgun – would you rule out a Benelli M4 with pistol grip.

    Thanks for your help.

    • #43
  14. EHerring Coolidge
    EHerring
    @EHerring

    I am deciding between the Remington and the Mossberg.There are features about both that I like.  There is something traditional about the wood grain on the Remington and its reputation while the Mossberg I saw pleased the tactical side of me. It had rails for things, including a light that can activate when you grip the pump.  I must admit that age and arthritis mean I can’t shoot the things I used to, or at least shoot them enough to stay proficient, so a 20 gauge might be the most I should consider.

    • #44
  15. Terry Mott Member
    Terry Mott
    @TerryMott

    Scott Wilmot:Thanks for these posts, Kevin, they are extremely informative and helpful.

    What are your thoughts on semi-automatic shotguns as compared to pump-action for home defense?

    Do you know anything about the Beretta 1301 tactical (say as compared to your Mossberg 930?). I think you also recommended somewhere in the comments against a pistol grip on a shotgun – would you rule out a Benelli M4 with pistol grip.

    Thanks for your help.

    Since Kevin seems otherwise occupied, I’ll chime in.

    Pump action shotguns are often suggested over semi-autos for potential reliability reasons.  Semis such as the Remington 1100 series have a simple rubber o-ring in the gas system that can and does fail, eventually.  This isn’t much of an issue for a bird gun — just carry a spare o-ring in your hunting bag.  If it fails, you may miss a bird or two.  If it fails in a defensive situation, you might be dead.  The pump-action 870 has no such fragile point of failure.

    However, the Benelli M4 was designed as a tactical shotgun.  It’s not a re-purposed wing gun.  It has a reputation for reliability.

    I believe the pistol grip shotguns Kevin was referring to are those having only a pistol grip, i.e., no shoulder stock.  I doubt he meant one having a pistol grip in addition to a shoulder stock, like the M4.

    • #45
  16. Kevin Creighton Contributor
    Kevin Creighton
    @KevinCreighton

    Scott Wilmot: Thanks for these posts, Kevin, they are extremely informative and helpful. What are your thoughts on semi-automatic shotguns as compared to pump-action for home defense?

    Soory ’bout that…

    I don’t like pistol-grip only shotguns because they don’t offer you any mobility advantages at the cost of significantly worse accuracy and recoil control. A pistol grip on a Mossberg gun is an issue because the safety for that gun is on the back of the receiver and is REALLY hard to use with a stock and pistol grip.

    Other than that, go for it. The M4 is a tremendous gun, and it works well with a pistol grip. One thing I will say is that in a sport where rapid aimed shotgun fire is essential, 3 Gun competitors who shoot Benellis use a standard stock, not a stock and pistol grip.

    Saigas, Akdals, etc. are another thing, of course.

    I like a pump gun for defense because it works no matter gets slipped into the tube. Modern semi autos aren’t as finicky as their predecessors (although my 930 despises AA Winchester loads), but there is something to be said for knowing that your gun WILL work not matter what is in it.

    • #46
  17. EHerring Coolidge
    EHerring
    @EHerring

    After trying numerous models, I have narrowed my choice to the Remington 870 Youth model, 20 gauge (pump).  I have better control with the shorter stock, lighter weight, and shorter barrel.  I think women should equate the “youth” label to “petite” in clothing.  It is a very fine shotgun and beautiful too, if you get the wood stock.  The shorter barrel should also be more appropriate for home defense.  I will only use it for that and skeet.  I understand this to be a very high quality product.  I am not sure what shells would be the best for home defense.

    • #47
  18. Terry Mott Member
    Terry Mott
    @TerryMott

    EHerring:After trying numerous models, I have narrowed my choice to the Remington 870 Youth model, 20 gauge (pump). I have better control with the shorter stock, lighter weight, and shorter barrel. I think women should equate the “youth” label to “petite” in clothing. It is a very fine shotgun and beautiful too, if you get the wood stock. The shorter barrel should also be more appropriate for home defense. I will only use it for that and skeet. I understand this to be a very high quality product. I am not sure what shells would be the best for home defense.

    Sounds like a good choice.  I bought that exact shotgun years ago with the idea it’d be good for my wife, but she was never interested in learning to use it.  I loaned it to a friend for his son, and he still has it.

    As for which shells, I suggest 2 3/4″ buckshot, the largest pellets you can find, which for 20ga. 2 3/4″ shells is usually #3 buck.  Federal makes a Personal Defense load that uses #4 buck in a lower recoil load that would work, but I’d prefer the greater penetration that #3 buck would provide.

    • #48
  19. EHerring Coolidge
    EHerring
    @EHerring

    Terry, Thank you.  I didn’t know anything about shotgun shells and what to buy.

    There is a military surplus, mail-order store near my house that lets locals shop in person.  I asked about the Howitzer tubes on sale.  He said that locals buy them now to hold their guns (to hide them).  Judging from their popularity, gun controllers will have little success.  I might consider getting one myself.

    • #49
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