by Gila Hayes
Unloading Professionally
Now its time to discuss proper unloading. “Can’t I just pump the shells out of my shotgun to unload?” a student always asks during our defensive shotgun classes. You can, but there is a better way that first empties the chamber, then keeps it empty for maximum safety.
First, remove the round from the chamber. Engage the safety and open the action, being careful to maintain safe muzzle direction. The chamber round should eject; you can catch it if you open the action slowly. With most shotguns, this step will have positioned a shell on the carrier or shell lifter. Roll the shotgun over, so the ejection port faces down. The shell on the carrier should fall into your hand. Carefully check by sight and feel to ascertain that the chamber is indeed empty.
Watching carefully to assure the chamber remains empty, close the action. The chamber should remain empty as you close the action, because you have removed the shell from the carrier. On most shotguns, a new shell shouldn’t feed from the magazine tube without fully cycling the action. Turn the gun over, so you look down into the loading port. With the tip of your finger, depress the shell stop. The shell may remain in place, constrained by the shell stop on the opposite side. Use your thumb to wiggle the shell free. When it pops past the shell stops, lift it from the loading port and repeat the process until all the shot shells are out of the magazine tube.
Be sure each shotgun shell you load goes well past the shell stops, so you don’t create your own malfunction.
Before declaring the shotgun unloaded, open the action again and double check both the chamber and magazine tube visually. Insert your finger into the empty chamber for a manual inspection. Reach lower and feel for the magazine follower to be sure a shell is not present. If the gun is simply being stored, the magazine tube should be empty so the compressed metal spring does not take a “set.”
Don’t be discouraged if this unloading process is difficult at first. The thumb and fingers may seem too big for the limited space inside the loading port, yet it feels like you need three hands to get the job done! Persevere, and you will learn how to jimmy the shell stops, carrier and shell into position where the shell pops out easily.
Learning how to properly unload your shotgun is important. It keeps you from having to chamber and manually eject each round when you need to unload the shotgun, reducing wear and damage to the shells. Safety must come first, over any perceived inconvenience! Pumping the shells out of the magazine tube is the mark of an amateur.
Tactics for the Home-Defense Shotgun
As discussed in the previous chapter, the shotgun is an excellent survival tool for the defender ensconced in a safe room, prepared to defend self and family if the intruder ignores warnings and breaks through the door. This scenario presumes that the defender knows the direction in which the shotgun pellets will travel and is certain no innocents are in the path of the shot. The shotgun is best applied to home layouts where children’s rooms lie behind the defender. In home layouts where rooms are scattered throughout the home, young children will need to be quietly evacuated to the safe area as quickly as is safely practical. If, within the constraints of your circumstances, this does not seem possible, the shotgun may not be your best choice.
In apartments, safe rooms must be arranged so the area into which the pellets will fly is backed by bullet-stopping material, something scarce in urban housing. While nothing short of heavy concrete or masonry construction gives full bullet-stopping ability, careful shot placement into known uninhabited directions is necessary for those who plan to use the shotgun’s multiple pellets in home defense.
The shotgun is not the best weapon to take prowling through your house to check out a noise in the night. Not only are house searches dangerous, the long muzzle of the shotgun may alert a waiting intruder to your approach, so he may grab and lever it from your hands. The shotgun’s size makes it more difficult to move quietly, avoiding furniture, lamps and other household objects. Return to lesson one: don’t search your house if you believe you have an intruder in the home! Call the police and let them do it!
Weapon retention techniques have been developed for the shotgun; if you adopt this weapon you owe it to yourself and your loved ones to get the proper training in its use and retention. Know how to accurately shoot your shotgun, and know how to keep it in your hands if the assailant tries to take it from you. One advantage of the “Arm Tuck” shooting stance taught by author Massad Ayoob and defined in his shotgun book StressFire II: Advanced Defensive Shotgun11 is the ability to withdraw the muzzle somewhat while remaining in a firing stance. It is also a good fall back stance for shooters who do not wish to take the impact of the recoil on the shoulder, and when the shotgun is grossly oversized for the shooter. It is only good for targets at relatively close range.
The shotgun, handgun or rifle each has defensive advantages and tactical disadvantages. Serious self-and home-defense practitioners often pursue proficiency with more than one defensive weapon system available, to increase the chances that they and their family can survive criminal attack. In trained hands, the shotgun is a most formidable self defense tool.
In Ayoob’s “Arm Tuck” shotgunning stance, the comb of this big Browning Auto 5 shotgun is pressed firmly into both the front and rear tendons of the armpit. The barrel is seen in the low peripheral vision and can thus be roughly aimed. Ayoob learned this technque from the late Bill Groce when he was head of firearms training for Ohio Peace Officers Training Academy.
Notes
1Pachmayr, 800-423-9704, www.lymanproducts.com/pachmayr/.
2SPEEDFEED®, 13386 International Parkway, Jacksonville, FL 32218 800-433-2909 www.speedfeedinc.com.
3Hogue Inc., P. O. Box 1138, Paso Robles, CA 93447 800-438-4747, ww.hogueinc.com.
4Vang Comp Systems, 400 W. Butterfield Rd., Chino Valley, AZ 86323 928-636-8455 www.vangcomp.com.
5XS Sight Systems, 2401 Ludelle St., Ft. Worth, TX 76105 888-744-4880, www.xssights.com.
6PAST Hidden Comfort Shield, Battenfield Technologies, 5885 W Van Horn Tavern Rd., Columbia, MO 65203 573-446-3857 http://www.battenfeldtechnologies.com/360000.html
7Training resources quoted: Thunder Ranch, op. cit.; Lethal Force Institute, op. cit.; http://www.Yavapai Firearms Academy, P. O. Box 27290, Prescott Valley, AZ 86312 928-772-8262, yfainc.com.
8Brownells, op. cit.
9Yavapai Firearms Academy, op. cit.
10Delta Press, 215 S. Washington Ave., El Dorado, AR 71730 870-8626-3811 www.deltapress.com
11Police Bookshelf, op. cit.
CHAPTER 22
Shotgun Ammunition
Shotgun ammunition choices range from slugs to buckshot to small game loads and birdshot. To give you an idea of the differences within just one category, Federal Cartridge Company sells a half dozen different slugs (a solid, single projectile) in weights ranging from the 1-3/4 oz. 10-gauge slug; 1-1/4- or 1-oz. slugs for the 12-gauge; a 4/5-oz. slug for the 16-gauge; the common 3/4-oz. slug for the 20-gauge; and finally a 1/4-oz. slug for the .410-caliber shotgun.
The list is several times longer for buckshot, since it comes in at least seven different sizes of shot, and may be loaded in either 3” “Magnum” shells or 2-3/4” “Maximum” shells for 12-gauge, 16-gauge or 20-gauge shotguns. (Note that the length of the shotgun shell refers to its “opened-up” length after it has been fired.) On the topic of birdshot and field loads, the choices are as numerous as the different gauges multiplied by ten or more sizes of shot and BBs used to hunt everything from tiny doves to large geese.
Out of all the choices in shotgun ammunition, we need to study two categories for home defense: buckshot and slugs. Some will advise you to load your home-defense shotgun with bird shot “because it won’t go through the walls.” That statement is incorrect, false and dead wrong! We have fired birdshot through three layers of half-inch sheet rock. Whether it would penetrate the body cavity after going through walls is questionable, yet there remains potential for harm to delicate tissue like eyes
.
However, that is not my argument against such advice. Even without intervening obstacles like walls, bodily penetration by field, game, or bird shot is too shallow to reach vital organs on an adultsized assailant, a problem compounded by thick clothing, obesity or heavy musculature. In bare ballistic gelatin, birdshot will penetrate just six to eight inches, but placing multiple layers of fabric on the face of the gelatin block seriously impairs performance. By comparison, #00 buckshot can penetrate up to 16 inches on bare gelatin and manages to penetrate 10–12 inches beyond simulated clothing.
#8 Birdshot
#4 Birdshot is larger and heavier than #8.
Buckshot made for the 20-ga. (abbreviation for “gauge”) shotgun
#4 buckshot is the smallest buckshot for the 12-ga. shotgun.
#1 Buckshot for 12-ga. shotgun.
Pronounced “single aught,” #0 buckshot in a 12-ga. shell.
#00 (“double-aught”) buckshot is the most common buckshot for 12-ga. shotguns.
The monstrous .36-caliber pellets of the 12-ga. #000 (“triple-aught”) buckshot shell.
20-ga. shotgun slug.
A 12-ga. Foster-style shotgun slug.
A sabot slug is a more aerodynamic projectile housed inside the plastic sabot during its trip down the shotgun barrel. Once past the muzzle, the sabot falls away.
The larger the projectile, the deeper the penetration. This is certainly the case with the next kind of shotgun ammunition we’ll discuss: slugs. The 1-oz. 12-gauge shotgun slug is capable of devastating stopping power. Some folks, including Marty Hayes, director of The Firearms Academy of Seattle1, have gone so far as to recommend loading only slugs in the 20-gauge shotgun, bypassing buckshot altogether. Personally, I would temper that advice, commenting that the slug is simply designed to do a different job than buckshot.
Slugs best serve the shotgunner’s long distance and extreme accuracy shooting needs. With decent sights, a skilled operator can hit accurately with a slug out to 100 yards, farther than we might anticipate using the gun in home defense, yet a very real necessity for law enforcement officers or for hunters. Slugs can also penetrate glass, wood and automobiles, needs also more common to law enforcement duties.
Buckshot Choices
With buckshot, penetration is influenced by size and velocity of the projectiles, more than the gauge of shotgun from which it is fired. Larger buckshot is recommended where heavy clothing or intervening obstacles may interfere with penetration. Where it would be difficult to anticipate an obese or leather-clad assailant, the differences between summer and winter weather in many areas can certainly indicate light or heavy clothing.
Because body mass is also impossible to predict, it might be more sensible to load the home-defense shotgun with a medium-sized buckshot like the common 20 gauge #3 buckshot, or #1 buckshot in the 12-gauge. While penetration is not likely to be as deep as with the more common #00 buckshot, the slightly smaller shot simultaneously introduces a lot of projectiles, creating a devastating wound channel.
The following chart lists common buck shot sizes, with the largest shot shown first. To help you compare, the size of the shot is described here in caliber, which you will remember from handgunning is the measurement of the projectile at its greatest diameter.
Shot Size ShotshellCaliber Qty in Shell # Pellets
000 buckshot 3” Magnum 12-ga. .36 caliber 10
00 buckshot* 2-3/4” Maximum 12-ga. .33 caliber 9-12
0 buckshot 2-3/4” Maximum 12-ga. .32 caliber 12
#1 buckshot 2-3/4” Maximum 12-ga. .30 caliber 16
#2 buckshot 3” Magnum 20-ga. .27 caliber 18
#3 buckshot 2-3/4” Maximum 20-ga. .25 caliber 20
#4 buckshot ** 2-3/4” Maximum 12-ga. .24 caliber 27
* With 00 buckshot, 3” Magnum shells contain 15 pellets; 2-3/4” Magnum shells contain 12 pellets, and the low-recoil law enforcement loads have just nine.
** With #4 buckshot, 3” Magnum shells contain 41 pellets; 2-3/4” Magnum shells contain 34 pellets. The magnum shells recoil viciously, in my opinion, and are to be avoided.
In choosing buckshot, you will sometimes face additional choices. For example, #4 buckshot is sold in Magnum 3” shotshells containing 41 pellets, 2-3/4” Magnum shells with 34 pellets, and 2-3/4” Maximum shot shells with just 27 pellets. The last 27-pellet shell will recoil less than the Magnum cartridges, which must push the heavier payload of more pellets. And, if you’ve chosen the 20-gauge, the #3 buckshot recoils considerably less than #00 buckshot from a 12-gauge.
Shot Spread
Until we understand how buckshot behaves after it exits the shotgun’s barrel, the idea of simultaneously unleashing from nine to 27 pellets seems pretty risky. Testing your own shotgun is the key to knowing where and how it will hit with different brands and sizes of buckshot. The distribution of the shot pellets striking the target is called “patterning.” Every shotgun will pattern differently, and the same shotgun will pattern differently with different ammunition. Only hands-on experience at the range will show you what to expect from your own shotgun and the ammunition you have chosen.
Expect the buckshot pattern to expand at approximately one inch per yard between the muzzle and the target with 12-gauge #00 buckshot. The pattern will be larger with 20-gauge #3 buckshot and with 12 gauge #4 buckshot. That means that shot fired across a seven-yard-wide bedroom should cluster in a six- to eight-inch circle, depending on ammunition and the shotgun. Additional factors affect how tightly the shot patterns. The first is the ammunition; the second is the addition of a choke tube, which can be used to constrict that column of shot as it leaves the shotgun barrel. Another method to tighten shot groups is backboring, which lengthens the forcing cone and changes how the shot travels down the barrel. Hans Vang of Vang Comp Systems2 is the leading source of this defensive shotgun modification.
Since we’re addressing ammunition, let’s discuss how the shot itself affects the size of the pattern. Shot may be either copper-plated or bare lead. The harder copper-plated shot reduces denting that can occur while the shot is being propelled down the barrel. A dented pellet that is no longer spherical will fly erratically, expanding an otherwise good shot pattern. (Steel shot is also sold, but as it is commonly used in game loads, not buckshot, it doesn’t really play a part in home defense.)
#4 buckshot fired 10 yards from target using 12-ga. shotgun.
#1 buckshot fired 10 yards from the target using 16-ga. shotgun.
#00 Buckshot fired 10 yards from target using 12-ga. shotgun; two slugs in head of target.
#3 buckshot fired from 10 yards with 20-ga. shotgun; two 20-ga. slugs in head of target.
Confused?
While much of the foregoing is perhaps more detailed than you need, I’ve included it to give you an overview of shotgun ammunition. At the risk of oversimplification, I believe it boils down to home defense choices of a 20-gauge or 12-gauge shotgun, as indicated by your strength, stature and how much recoil you can control. For home defense, I would load the shotgun’s magazine tube with buckshot, and keep some slugs readily at hand for unexpected circumstances requiring very fine accuracy.
The 16-gauge shotgun would also make a fine home-defense weapon, but the owner may have trouble finding a readily available variety of ammunition, especially at budget prices like those that come along at large chain stores and gun shows. And, like any other defense weapon, the shotgun is only as effective as the shooter’s training, practice and confidence, and those come only from training and regular practice.
Notes
1The Firearms Academy of Seattle, Inc., P. O. Box 400, Onalaska, WA 98570 www.firearmsacademy.com 360-978-6100
2Vang Comp, op cit.
CHAPTER 23
Rifles and Carbines
Is there any place for the light rifle or carbine (a carbine is simply a short-barreled rifle) in the private citizen’s self-defense arsenal, or is it best carried by cops, sheriffs and soldiers? I asked instructors John and Vicki Fa
rnam, who responded with a story:
A woman and her children were in their remote Montana home when a warning came over the radio that authorities believed an escaped, dangerous prisoner was in their area. The announcement put the woman in a heightened state of awareness, so she was prepared when some while later she spotted a lone figure walking up her mile- and-a-half driveway.
Standing on her porch, rifle in hand, she ordered the stranger to come no closer. When he ignored repeated verbal warnings and continued to approach, the woman shot him in one knee. With determined aggression, the man continued to approach the home. Her second shot took out his other knee. The woman held him at gunpoint for law enforcement officers, who confirmed her fear that she had indeed encountered the escapee.
The rifle extended this woman’s perimeter of safety dramatically. The escapee’s proximity would have endangered the family if he had approached to within the distances most handgunners would confidently make a shot on a moving aggressor. The tactics of this situation underscore the very real danger of being overrun by the aggressor and sometimes their accomplices, as well. People who are shot with a handgun can remain aggressive and assaultive for some time before the wound incapacitates them. In this dangerous time gap, the home defender can be killed or seriously injured if the invader is too close. The rifle extends the effective marksmanship range to prevent this danger.
