Originally posted by: exdeath
Originally posted by: bloodugly
Originally posted by: exdeath
Originally posted by: bloodugly
If you're not a great shot, just get a shotgun...pretty damn hard to miss. Its not small, but its effective. Just don't use some weak birdshot in it. I've unfortunately had to rid our ranch of some animal pests ( I seriously hate killing animals), and at 10 yards you can easily take the head pretty much off an animal with one. Immediate and painless death is the way to go if you have to put something down.
You've obviously never fired a shotgun at close range before. Love how people keep saying you cant miss with a shotgun...
Whats really funny is the birdshot load that you are least likely to miss with is the one you are saying not to use!
With my Mossberg 590 20" 12ga with 9 pellet 00 tactical loads all 9 .30 cal pellets strike within a 4" circle at 10 yards. Aim and shot placement are just as essential with a shotgun as any other weapon, more so when you have more than 1 projectile to be accountable for with every shot.
Birdshot just doesn't have enough stopping power at any kind of distance for me to consider it adequate if the desire is pretty much quick death to a human target. I'm not saying it won't totally screw someone up and quite possibly kill them, but 00 buck will have much more of an impact and more likely cause the attacker to go down immediately...especially if they're hopped up on crank or something and can take an abnormally high amount of abuse and fire back. A 4-6 inch spread (depending on the barrel) across a room is certainly alot more spread than you'll get with a single bullet, making it much harder to miss....not impossible, but pretty damn hard if you ever practice much at all. I've used a shotgun plenty up close, and I've never had a problem with missing, even at night on moving targets. If someone is trying to kill me, I'm not really concerned about being accountable for every projectile, so long as the ones that hit him take him out. I could always get new drywall done or buy a new TV. However, in a apartment with neighbors right on the other side of a possibly thin wall, birdshot would be a better choice, just for safety's sake.
I agree birdshot isn't ideal for defense. I was just pointing out the irony that the shotgun load most likely to magically not miss is the one that isn't even that good for defense.
Another thing to consider, is that the 4-6" spread you accept with a shotgun across a room is also a typical size defense grouping when rapid firing a short barreled handgun across that same room. Fire a handgun rapidly at a target 10 yards away and your shots should produce pretty much the same grouping pattern as the shotgun with 00 buck. Even with a single shot from the handgun and allowing for random deviation, the shot from the handgun WILL fall in the same circle as the shotgun grouping.
As far as I?m concerned, that?s the same percentage to hit the target. Of course 9 rounds are delivered at once with the shotgun... I?m not disputing the power of a shotgun with 00 buck, I'm only comparing accuracy and pointing out that the 'you can't miss' claim with shotguns is false. As I've demonstrated above, aiming at the same spot, the single shot from a handgun will lie in the same grouping with a single shot of 00 buck; ie: same chance of that 4-6" circle as a whole either hitting or missing. I won't consider 'what if the circle is half on half off on the edge of the target' scenarios because you should be aiming center of mass, and if it was simply a difficult shot that missed its mark, a grazing shot with a shotgun mandates a follow up shot just as much as a total miss with a handgun.
However, the primary accuracy advantage of the shotgun isn't unique to the shotgun, it applies to all
long arms: larger sight radius due to the longer barrel provides better visual feedback with respect to movement, shaking, etc. The movement of a longer barrel will have a more pronounced effect on the movement of the front sight with respect to the rear sight due to the lever effect of the longer barrel amplifying even the slightest movement. This doesn't automatically make rifles more accurate than handguns, rather it provides the shooter with a finer degree of granularity of aim feedback so that the
shooter can be more accurate.
The smallest target you should aim for should be the largest size of the grouping you are able to produce with any given firearm. Ie: if you can make a 6" circle with a handgun at a given range, then your sight picture on an assailant at that range should include a mentally projected spotlight image of that 6" circle on center of mass of the target, centered about the point of aim (pretend in your mind you have a laser pointer making a 6" diameter circle that moves with your aim point) ie: your line of fire is a cone, not a straight line.
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