Is a Small Underpowered Pistol Better than Nothing?

 Firearms, Training  No Responses »
Feb 052012
 

Clint Eastwood’s character Dirty Harry was famous for his use of a .44 magnum revolver. While that is probably inconvenient overkill for most of us, how small can we go before we’ve gone too far?

We interact with gun owners all the time, and from time to time we encounter groupings of misapprehensions in some strange manner whereby a series of people who don’t know each other will separately each tell us the same thing.  For months, the issue might never be raised, then all of a sudden, we hear it from multiple people in the space of just a few days.

Over the last week or so, we’ve had a number of people all proudly show us their self-defense/carry pistol, and they have all been woefully under-powered.  They have been chambered for .22LR or .25ACP rounds (did you realize that the .25ACP round – even though it is ostensibly larger and is center fire, is actually less powerful than the .22LR rimfire round – size isn’t always the ultimate measure of effectiveness).

The people with such pistols generally justify them by saying something like

Well, yes, I know it isn’t a very powerful caliber, but it is convenient and small, and  I figure it is better than nothing.  Surely the size of the gun doesn’t matter as much as simply having any gun at all – just having a gun of any size will save you from an attack.  After all, what kind of crazy person wants to be shot by anything?  It would surely hurt like hell!

Hmmmm – where to start in an analysis and rebuttal of such a statement?  Perhaps one could point out that, almost by definition, people who choose to attack you are crazy, so when you say ‘what kind of crazy person’ the answer is ‘the kind that is staring you down on the street’ – in other words, the very sort of person you need to plan to encounter and to ensure you can respond positively to.

Can we all accept that a tiny pistol chambered for .22LR or .25ACP is indeed an inadequate type of gun for most situations, and focus in on the issue of whether such a pistol is better than nothing.

On the face of it, you’d probably agree that any pistol is better than no pistol.  The excellent Front Sight training school has a slogan ‘Any gun will do, if you will do’ which is very true (although I think the minimum caliber they allow people to train with is 9mm, which rather makes a nonsense of their slogan!).

You may have also heard the saying ‘It isn’t the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog’ and that too is very true.

But the problem with trying to answer a question such as ‘is any gun better than no gun at all’ is that we restrict our thinking by accepting the premise in the question, without examining the premise to start with.  In this case, the implied premise is that a person has only two choices – a tiny ‘mouse gun’ or no gun at all.  That’s not correct.  We all have multiple choices – we can choose to carry any size pistol we want, and for that matter, we can choose to carry two or three guns if we feel it prudent, too.

So we rather object to the question itself – it is a bit like the question ‘Have you stopped beating your wife yet?’.  We have never beaten our wives, and we have never had the situation where we had to choose between a woefully underpowered pistol or none at all.

As a senior instructor said when discussing this topic :

I see pocket guns as an extreme concession to concealment issues that may not be necessary or real.  Additionally, the kitschy value of such concealment makes some feel more prepared….this is absolutely lost upon me as EDC [Every Day Carry] of a handgun should call for a clothing compromise long before a caliber compromise.

In other words, if you feel you need to accept a tiny small pistol so as to have better concealment, change your dress style instead.  Or, for that matter, if there’s no way around size issues (maybe you need to wear a suit or formal wear to a wedding or some other special event) consider one of the amazing slim and small pistols in .380 that are out there these days such as the Ruger LCP.

We’d recommend you consider attending our How Best to Concealed Carry class to learn about all the different ways you can successfully and discreetly carry a pistol, most of the time allowing you to have a larger sized pistol with you, no matter what your clothing choices/requirements may be.

So, to more fully answer the opening question – is an underpowered pistol better than no pistol at all – the answer is ‘Of course it is, but you should try to avoid having to end up with only an underpowered pistol in the first place’.

Let’s also consider how helpful an underpowered pistol may actually be.

Guns can solve problems in one of two different ways.  Their most valuable service is when the simple presentation of a pistol is sufficient to cause a would-be attacker to break off their attack and to either surrender or run away.

When you show your pistol to a potential attacker, you should be conveying two messages.  The first message is that shown by the pistol itself – ‘I have the means to resist your attack and to cause you potentially lethal harm in the process’.  The second message is one conveyed by your body language – your posture and demeanor, and the way you are presenting the pistol and speaking to the attacker.  This message hopefully says ‘I have the ability and the will to use my pistol to successfully fight you off’.

For sure, a tiny little ‘mouse gun’ isn’t going to broadcast the same type of positive message that would be conveyed by pulling out a Dirty Harry style long-barreled .44 Magnum revolver.  Which makes the second part of your message all the more important – that conveyed by your attitude and bearing.

If you can maintain a confident non-victim posture, and if you can present your tiny gun authoritatively and assertively, your demeanor and bearing will magnify the perceived threat of a small pistol.  But if your body language betrays fear and incipient submission, even the biggest gun will struggle to compensate for the non-verbal messages of failure and defeat you are broadcasting to the other guy(s).

You need to practice shouting out verbal commands and warnings to a bad guy, and you need to be sure you can competently and quickly draw and present your pistol when the situation requires it.

However, the fact remains that your chances of avoiding the need to use your pistol are reduced if you have a smaller gun.  Let’s now consider just how effective a small gun may be in defending against a determined attacker.

You should read our recent article about Where to Aim and How Often to Shoot an Attacker.  This article was written with the assumption that you’d be using a pistol chambered for at least .38 SPL or 9mm.  But now you’re using a pistol with a bullet weighing little more than one-quarter the weight of the 9mm round, and traveling potentially the same speed or slower.  If it might take four rounds from a 9mm pistol to stop an attacker, how many more rounds will it take of .22LR or .25ACP?

Oh – related question – how many rounds does your little mouse gun hold?  Probably only five, six or seven rounds, and most likely with an inconvenient way of swapping magazines (or reloading a revolver cylinder).  In other words, you’ll probably have to win your fight with only the rounds loaded in your gun at the start of the fight.

Is that possible?  Don’t forget to allow for something over 50% of your shots being misses, and consider also what you’d need to do if you were facing multiple assailants.  All of a sudden, the 15 – 20 rounds in a full size 9mm pistol seem much more comforting than a handful of tiny bullets in your mouse gun, don’t they!

Let’s also consider what might happen if the bad guy has a gun too.  If you’re both staring at similar sized guns, you’ve a bit of a stalemate and either you start shooting or else neither of you shoot and you both back off.  But if he has a full size 9mm or .40S&W with maybe 15 or more rounds in his magazine, and you have a tiny .25ACP with six rounds in your magazine, who do you think is going to prevail in that encounter?  In other words, when he draws his gun, many people will then surrender (this is probably a mistake, but they’ll do it all the same).  All you’ve done is make the situation worse.

One last thought before our closing comment.  Underpowered pistols are more likely to malfunction than more generously powered ones.  There’s less recoil energy when you shoot them for the pistol to utilize to eject the fired cartridge case and to cycle in a new round.

This article has been full of questions already, but we will close with one final question for you :  Are you willing to bet your life that your teeny tiny little popgun will guarantee your winning a deadly encounter with one or multiple attackers?  Because, after all, that truly is what you’re doing, isn’t it.

We’re unwilling to take that bet, and we urge you not to do so either.  Carry the biggest pistol you can manage to carry/conceal, and if you have a problem, it is better to change your dress style rather than downgrade your gun.

2011 Christmas Gift Giving Guide

 Firearms, Home Protection  No Responses »
Dec 132011
 

Choose an item from this article to delight the shooter in your life this Christmas

You probably don’t need much advice on what to buy yourself.  This is an article you might find useful to print out and leave lying around somewhere where the people in your life who will probably soon be wondering what to buy you for Christmas might find it.  It might even help to draw rings about the better ideas, and add smiley faces and stars.

So what sort of gifts are appropriate for someone who owns firearms?  The good news is there are a lot of things you can give to a gun owner, ranging in price from as little as $10 to as much as, well, the sky’s the limit.  Best of all, many of these items are ‘universal’ – that is, the firearms owner in your life will appreciate and use the gift, no matter what his personal tastes and preferences may be.

Here are some suggestions :

Ammunition

So what does anyone who owns guns always need more of?  Ammo!  The good news with choosing ammo is that most of the time, we are just plinking the stuff at a range.  So go buy a few boxes of the cheapest range ammo you can find.

Note that for hunting and self-defense ammo, the different variations within a caliber are more important and better not guessed at, but for simple plinking fun, just about anything should work and would be sure to be appreciated.

Ammo Cases

Ammunition usually comes in thin cardboard boxes; sometimes with each round nicely packed in some type of ‘egg carton’ type frame holder, and sometimes bulk, packed loose.

Many shooters like to transfer their ammo to plastic storage cases like you can see on this site and also on Amazon in all sorts of different sizes and capacities.  Some people like to color code the boxes for different types of ammo, others like to have clear ones so it is easy to see what is inside.

Magazines

Most shooters would like to have another magazine or two for each of their guns.  We generally have anywhere from a minimum of four up to a maximum of – well, let’s just say, a lot more than four.  We know people with twenty or more, for each of their guns.  We’re not saying you really truly need that many, but we are saying you can probably safely buy another magazine or two for any of the guns a shooter owns.

Generally, you should buy name brand magazines for guns – ie, magazines made by the same company that made the gun.  You get what you pay for with magazines, and it is a bad idea to buy cheap magazines, because they have an increased change of causing jams.

The one exception to the concept of always buying name brand magazines is with 1911 .45 semi-auto pistols.  These wonderful guns can be quite fussy as to the magazines they use, and shooters pretty much unanimously agree that the absolute ‘gold standard’ for 1911 magazines are those made by Wilson Combat.  We use the eight round Elite Tactical magazines ourselves.

Magazine Pouches

Everyone should have a magazine pouch/holder – something that fits on your belt to hold a couple of magazines.  This is essential when practicing malfunctions and reloads, and useful for general range work and plinking.  Generally we have been very happy with these holders made out of Kydex (eg made by Blade Tech), and prefer those to leather or loose nylon pouches.

You’d probably want a different way to carry spare magazines for concealed carry purposes, but for regular range work, the Blade Tech or similar double mag pouches are excellent.

Range Bag

Here’s another thought.  If your shooter doesn’t already have a range bag for his pistols or just general ‘stuff’ (for a rifle/shotgun shooter), that could make a useful gift.  You’d want to choose something that is large enough to hold a pistol or two, hearing protection (think bulky headphones), eye protection (glasses in a protective case), half a dozen magazines, a similar number of boxes of ammunition, maybe some additional clothing, spare parts, and/or who knows what else.

A range bag typically has several different internal compartments so you can separate things from each other and have a bit of layout and organization in the bag.

We’ve been very happy with bags something like this Uncle Mike’s Deluxe Range Bag .

One thought is to buy a regular/generic travel duffel bag (or a camera bag) instead of a range bag.  The price will probably be the same, or possibly even a bit lower, and your shooter will get a bag that looks more nondescript and anonymous, rather than one which shouts out ‘Hey, I’ve got a gun in here’.

Cleaning Gear

An unavoidable part of shooting (unless you have Glocks, of course – Glocks are renowned for not needing much care or cleaning) is cleaning the guns afterwards.  There are three products that we swear by.  In the order of application to a dirty gun, they are :

Hoppes No. 9 solvent is our favorite bore cleaner.

Gun Scrubber is our favorite ‘dissolves anything’ cleaner and makes light work of getting in all the ‘hard to get at’ but important places in a gun where guck and gunk accumulates (don’t ask what the difference between guck and gunk is!).  We’ve no idea what sort of noxious poisonous cancer-causing solvents they might have in their product, but the more the merrier, we say!  All we know for sure is that it smells very strong and makes the dirtiest of guns magically clean with the least amount of hassle and effort.  Best used outside with plenty of fresh air!

Break Free is our favorite lubricant/gun oil.  It is available both in a CLP formulation and an LP formulation.  The CLP product stands for ‘Clean, Lubricate and Protect’; the LP stands for ‘Lubricant/Preservative’.  Because we’ve used the Hoppes No.9 and the Gun Scrubber, we feel we only need the LP rather than the CLP product, but see below for a situation where the CLP product might be a better choice.

These three liquids can be used together with a traditional gun cleaning kit – a combination of rods, push/pull handle, hooks, brushes, patches, fluids, and various other things (we use nails to help us get into far away places and also toothbrushes too).  Or, if you prefer, there’s a much simpler approach these days, too.

All In One Cleaning Approach

Gun cleaning usually involves a lot of time, a lot of materials and chemicals, and a lot of hassle.  But if you get a Bore Snake, one single product takes the place of all the other components of barrel/bore cleaning.  Sure, the rest of the internal parts of the gun aren’t cleaned by a Bore Snake, but the barrel surely is.  Note that Bore Snakes come in different sizes to match with different caliber guns and barrels.

A Bore Snake and CLP is a great way to quickly clean your gun; perhaps between days of shooting if you’re on a multiple day shooting course (but if you’re doing that, be like us and whether you need to or not, give your whole gun a lavish amount of cleaning and care before your last day and any qualification shoots/competitions you might have).

Electronic Hearing Protectors

An interesting technology that is becoming more commonplace and more affordable are electronic hearing protectors.  These look like normal ‘headphone’ type ear muff things that fit around a shooter’s ears, but they have a clever extra function.

For sure, like normal hearing protectors, they block out sound.  But they also have microphones on the outside of them and speakers on the inside, and a clever electronic amplifier that amplifies quiet noises but not loud noises.  This means that you can end up hearing more or less normally what is going around about you, but when loud noises (ie gun shots) occur, the amplifier switches off and those are blocked.

This makes it easy to carry on reasonably normal conversations on the range, and to hear what your instructor is telling you, without having problems when the shooting starts.

These can now be found for as little as $25 at Walmart (but – warning – neither of the two pairs we’ve bought at Walmart have worked reliably).

You want to look for a pair that has the highest possible noise rating (NRR) – look for something greater than perhaps 22dB, and ideally better than 24dB.

Belt

Okay, so your shooter probably has plenty of belts for his trousers already.  But a shooting belt is different in two respects – it has an internal stiffener so the belt stays rigid rather than flexing and sagging, and it is designed to be able to hold a weight of gear – it is easy to end up with five or more pounds of gear on a shooter’s belt.

The strength of the belt is both in its material and also in its buckle mechanism – obviously the belt as a whole is only as strong as its weakest component, so you want a belt that is very strong in all respects, not just one which is selectively strong.

If a shooter is doing fast draw/timed competition shooting, he needs a very stable strong belt to provide a good platform for his holster from which he can powerfully plunge his hand down onto the gun and then draw it up and out of the holster.

An ‘instructor belt’ such as this from Uncle Mike’s is an excellent choice of belt.

Tactical Light

There have been enormous improvements in flashlights over the last decade or two.  Do you remember back to the ‘bad old days’ where flashlights were enormously big and similarly heavy – the Maglite series of flashlights made out of metal, with anywhere from three to seven or more huge D-cell batteries inside them?

These monsters weren’t even all that bright, and they chewed through batteries at an impressive rate.

These days, any decent flashlight will use LEDs rather than ‘old-fashioned’ lightbulbs.  Ignore regular light bulbs, ignore halogen bulbs, ignore Xenon or any other type of bulb, and only choose an LED type flash light.  There are several reasons for this – the LED uses as little as one tenth as much power to create the same amount of light as old fashioned bulbs, while being much more robust and having a huge long life (tens of thousands of hours).  They are also very small, allowing for good results from small reflectors.

Most flashlights these days have their power measured in lumens.  The more lumens you can get, the better, and don’t settle for anything less than 100.  We also recommend you get a flashlight that is powered by regular (ie available everywhere and inexpensive) AA or AAA batteries rather than one which requires some sort of special battery that is more expensive and hard to find.

A flashlight that has both high and low power settings is also very good – most of the time we use the low power setting on our lights, and that is all we need, and we get wonderfully long battery life.  But if we have a situation where we need extreme light, then it is great to have the extra power on hand.

We have been delighted with just about every light we’ve purchased.  We always have tiny Fenix lights in our pockets – they are lightweight and bright and versatile.  But for situations where only the best will do, we use Streamlight brand lights and you should too.

Guns

Well, of course, there’s one other thing to consider buying for the shooter in your life – another gun.  We shooters can never have too many of those.

But if you’re going to buy a gun as a gift, you’ll want to be sure you’re choosing exactly the make and model that your recipient wants.  There are lots of different options that can make it hard to get the right one – this is probably something you should consult with your shooter before choosing.

Which brings us to the other important consideration :

What Not to Buy

Don’t buy your shooter a new holster, unless you know for sure exactly what he wants.

Most shooters (ourselves most definitely included) have a ‘holster drawer’ – whether it be a real drawer or not, it is a resting ground for way too many (and often way too expensive) holsters that we’ve bought and ended up not liking.  This is particularly so of concealed carry type holsters.

So perhaps best not to buy a holster.

A similarly difficult thing to buy is clothing, which is a shame because it is something we almost always need more of.  Most shooters can always do with more ‘tactical’ or concealment gear – shirts, trousers and jackets, but trying to get the right mix of size, style, color and function is tremendously difficult.

For More Inspiration

Here are the results of a survey of hunters and shooters who were asked ‘What hunting or target shooting gear are you most hoping to receive this holiday season?’.

Whatever you choose, have a very Merry Christmas, and a very safe wonderful New Year.

Black Friday Gun Sales Set a New Record

 Firearms  No Responses »
Dec 062011
 

More guns were sold on Black Friday this year than on any other day since records started being kept

Usually we think of Black Friday shopping excesses in terms of deep discounts at Walmart, Best-Buy, and other similar stores.

Few of us would think of Black Friday as being a special day to shop at one’s local gun store, and our own informal checking revealed little or nothing in the way of Black Friday special deals at local gun stores in Washington.

But, special deals or not, the day after Thanksgiving this year (called ‘Black Friday’ because traditionally it represents the point in the year where retailers have finally covered their year’s expenses, shifting from the ‘red’ into the ‘black’) probably saw a huge increase in gun sales, with the number of FBI/NICS background checks called in by gun dealers on behalf of customers intending to buy guns soaring 32% above the previous busiest single day since records began.

This year saw 129,166 NICS checks on Black Friday.  The previous busiest day, since the NICS system was instituted in November 1998, was Black Friday of 2008, with the last two months of 2008 being two of the three busiest months of all time (perhaps due to the outcome of the 2008 elections earlier in November).

It is unclear exactly how many gun sales are represented by the NICS checks.  On the one hand, the FBI only counts each call in to its center, and sometimes (if a customer is buying more than one gun at the same time) a single call can represent more than one gun sold.  On the other hand, sometimes NICS checks are required for ‘administrative’ purposes such as perhaps part of a state’s check when issuing a concealed weapon permit, or a gun being transferred between two people, through an official dealer, and as such it is not so much a new gun sale as it is a swap in ownership between one person and another.

A leading industry group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, generally adjusts the NICS numbers considerably down to arrive at what it estimates to be net new gun sales numbers.  But treat the raw NICS numbers any way you wish, and the fact remains clear that Black Friday this year probably saw more new guns sold than any other day since records started being kept.

NICS checks for the entire month of November closed 16.5% up on the same month in 2010, meaning that already, for the first eleven months of 2011, more NICS checks (and therefore, presumably more gun sales) have occurred than in all of 2010.  This will make 2011 the ninth year in a row in which more checks/guns sold occurred than in the previous year.  With an estimated total checks for 2011 somewhere greater than 16 million, this is nearly twice as many checks as was the case in 2002, the base year from which each following year has seen an increase.

Gun supporters suggest that this steady growth in firearms sold and owned, and the massive increase in states allowing concealed carry, is a major factor in explaining the similar significant drops in violent crime statistics.  Violent crime dropped a massive 5.5% in 2010, 5.3% in 2009, and lesser amounts in almost every previous year, even though our population as a whole continues to steadily increase.  In the period 1993 – 2010, violent crime has almost halved.

Here are the FBI’s month by month statistics on NICS calls.

Don’t Tell People If/When You Are Carrying Concealed

 Firearms, Training  1 Response »
Nov 302011
 

If you have the element of surprise, you’re more likely to win this encounter. But if the bad guy already knows you are carrying, you’ll probably lose.

Why do we carry a concealed firearm?  Note the question.  We know why we carry a firearm in general – for self defense, to save our lives and the lives of those who rely on us for protection.

But why do we carry it concealed?  In Washington state, we are allowed open carry – indeed, we don’t even need any sort of permit for that.  Anyone can carry openly, only those of us with concealed carry permits can carry a concealed weapon.

You might think this is the opposite of the way it should be, but the reason that concealed carry is considered more dangerous is because, well, it sort of is – to other people, but not to those of us who are carrying.

Arguments For/Against Open Carry

Some people advocate open carry, and say that if we don’t all make use of this right more, we risk losing it.  That’s for sure what happened in California just a couple of months back – prior to then, it was lawful to open carry pistols, but only if they were unloaded.  A group of pro-carry activists started prominently open carrying, which alarmed/terrified the more delicate citizens of California, and now new legislation has passed and you can’t even open carry an unloaded pistol in California.

We are – self evidently – enthusiastic supporters of the Second Amendment.  But we’re not enthusiastic open carriers, because open carry gives the bad guy the advantage.  He can see you, and he can see your gun.  But you can’t see him – he’s just one more person in the crowd in front of you.  Or, even worse, he’s behind you, and the next thing you know, he’s alongside you, and all of a sudden, your gun has been taken from you.  Ouch.

If you open carry you also run the risk of being confronted by ill-trained police officers.  We’ve had experienced police officers tell us directly that open carry is illegal in WA, and/or they’ve invented all sorts of weird restrictions on open carry.  They are utterly and totally wrong, but that’s not really relevant when they are surrounding you with weapons drawn and requiring you to turn away with your hands in the air and then kneel on the ground, etc.

Washington’s open carry law is also a bit ambiguous – you can’t open carry in a manner likely to cause alarm.  For some folks, simply seeing a gun on a person’s belt is enough to alarm them and have them dialing 911 on their cell phone.  And then you have the self-fulfilling prophecy – if a person calls 911 to say “I’m alarmed to see this person with a firearm” then prima facie they are alarmed, and if they are a sensible decent person and respected member of the local community, you then have to somehow prove that their alarm was inappropriate and unnecessary, rather than them having to prove that their alarm was justified.

Or, even worse, some drunken jerk decides to pick a fight with you, based on seeing you having a gun, and ends up backing you into a corner, both figuratively and perhaps literally too, daring you to shoot him, and threatening you with negative consequences if you don’t.  Sounds ridiculous, right?  But it does happen.

Visible handguns are magnets that irresistibly draw bad guys and idiots to you.

So, enough about open carry.  We don’t recommend it, and only open carry on ‘special occasions’.  But we’re very appreciative to see others ‘fight the good fight’ and keep those rights alive, and there’s one thing that we all should be very thankful for – most of the time, if our concealed weapon is briefly sighted by someone, somewhere, we haven’t committed a crime.

We’ve simply transitioned from concealed carry to still lawful open carry before then transitioning back to concealed carry again.  In states that don’t allow open carry, such a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ could (and does) have you up on a charge of brandishing.  You’d probably lose your concealed weapons permit, and might even suffer some jail time too.

The Danger of Letting People Know You are Carrying Concealed

So you don’t want to open carry, because that lets other people know you have a gun and allows them to plan and surprise you, rather than allowing you to react and surprise them.  However, while this is bad, at least in such cases, you know that other people know you are carrying, and you’re in a heightened stage of alertness and more protective of people getting close to you and your gun.

But there’s one thing much worse than this.  That is when you think your weapon is concealed, but when – unknown to you – other people actually do know you have a concealed pistol on your person.  In that sort of case, any actions they take against you based on that knowledge totally surprise you, even more than if you were open carrying.

Now, we’re not just writing here about the need to use good concealment when carrying your pistol.  We’re instead talking about not telling your friends, your family, your co-workers, and other people you meet and mix with about how you sometimes carry a concealed pistol.

Sure, you might trust people you tell this to completely.  But what say they in turn then tell other people?  Do you trust them, too – even if you don’t know them?  And then these people might pass it on to other people, with some sort of exaggeration of inaccuracy added on each retelling of the story.

Before you know it, you’ll have strangers coming up to you and asking you about your gun – possibly in front of other people who didn’t know you were carrying – people that you maybe didn’t want to know about this, either.

Here’s an example.  You’d told a friend, and then one day you meet him somewhere socially, and he asks you in front of others ‘Hi, John, is that bulge under your jacket your pistol?’.  Suddenly the entire crowded rooms goes silent and everyone turns and stares at you.

What happens next depends on the function you’re at and the other people in the room.  Let’s hope the people around you when the unwelcome other guy comes up and blurts out his nonsense aren’t gun hating people you were trying to impress!  Even gun neutral people will start to look at you a bit strangely, and wonder what color of paranoid to ascribe to you.  And what about your gun-hating boss.  And the gun-hating client you were trying very hard to close a big sale with.  etc etc

Or maybe, after you part, he turns to the people he is with and says ‘See that guy I was just talking to?  He’s got a Glock pistol under his shirt – if you look carefully, you can see the clips of his inside-the-waistband holster on his belt – see’.  He points at you, and half a dozen people all turn and stare at your belt.   Then one of them comes up to you, while you’re talking to someone else, and says ‘I’ve just gotta ask, is that really a Glock you’ve got under your shirt?  Joe said those clips on your belt are from its holster.’

Then, again, the room goes silent, etc etc.

And that’s not all.  Maybe one of the temporary staff hired to cater the event overhears the discussion, and tells his not so nice friends to watch out for you as you leave the function.  They jump you, take your gun, your wallet, and hopefully leave you unharmed in the process (but maybe not).  Your gun has made you a target and a victim, rather than what it was intended to do – protect you.

You can even have problems with people much closer to you than in this example.  Maybe a former girlfriend invents an untrue allegation about you threatening her with your pistol, and describes to the police both where/how you carry the gun and what it looks like.  That’s a lot more credible than an empty claim ‘well, yes, he threatened me with his gun, but I’m not sure where it came from, where he put it afterwards, and I don’t remember even if it was shiny mirror finish, pink, or dull black.

Closer still.  Maybe you get in an ugly custody dispute as part of a divorce and your ex-wife invents fictions about you being careless with the gun you carry.  If she doesn’t know the details of what/when/how, she’s not going to be nearly as credible as if she knows all these things.

Avoid Other People Knowing

It is possible, if you’re careful and discreet, to prevent even people who know you extremely intimately in other respects from knowing if/when/where you have a gun.  We know this from our own personal experience (not just from watching James Bond movies!).

We’ve regularly carried in every sort of business and personal situation, and no-one has ever known if we’re carrying or not.  We don’t even talk about it with our spouses – and they know not to enquire.  Our children don’t know about it either.

Maybe you have friends who know you’re pro-gun; maybe they even know you have a concealed weapons permit.  Perhaps they’ll ask you ‘So do you carry a concealed gun?  Do you have one now?’

You have to be careful in your answer, because quite apart from anything else, you want to convey a positive image of gun ownership to this person.

We’d suggest a vague response such as ‘Yes, as you know, I have a concealed carry permit.  That makes it easier for me to buy guns without a waiting period, to transport guns, and of course, it allows me to carry a concealed gun too.  Sometimes, in some situations, I feel comfortable knowing there’s a gun close to me, and I appreciate the rights my carry permit gives me.’

If pressed further ‘So, tell me, Bob; do you have a gun under your jacket now?’ you could laugh and say ‘You know how the US Navy will never confirm or deny whether its ships have nuclear weapons on board?  Well, perhaps I should do the same thing!’  Then seize the conversational initiative and start talking about the other person.  ‘And what about you, too, Joe?  Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’.  Or whatever else you choose to say.

The One Time You Can Reveal Your Concealed Firearm

The only person who should ever know about your concealed firearm is the bad guy, and preferably mere fractions of a second before he either wisely makes a sudden and profound change of plan; or, if he continues his evil actions, just before he gets a series of very nasty surprises in the center of his chest.

Update on National Concealed Carry Act (HR 822)

 Firearms  No Responses »
Nov 222011
 

The National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011 has now passed the House but needs to now clear the Senate

Very good news on this topic.  As you may know, for many years now there have been efforts to pass a national concealed carry reciprocity provision which would mean that if you have a concealed carry permit from one state, you could lawfully carry in all other states that allow for concealed carry (which presently is 49 of the 50 states).

At present, there is a confusing and regularly changing mess of a situation where some states recognize permits from some states but not others.  We discuss this in detail in our article about the best way for Washington residents to get as broad a set of concealed carry permissions in other states as possible.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011, also known as HR822.  This was passed by an encouragingly broad majority of 272 to 154, with nearly all Republicans supporting it, and being joined by 43 Democrats.  This act – you can read it here (and it is amazingly short) would allow exactly what we hope for – a situation analogous to drivers licenses; a concealed carry permit from your home state works equally well in all other states too.

Interestingly, our own WA congressman Dave Reichert had an uncertain role (in terms of did he help or hinder) in the final form of the act.  He successfully added an amendment which is now section 4 of the act, requiring the GAO to report back within a year on how easy it is for state and local law enforcement officers to verify the validity of out-of-state concealed weapons permits.

Dave has been at best an uncertain friend to the Second Amendment, and this provision opens the door for a negative report back – ‘The police tell us it is too hard to check on the validity of a person’s concealed weapons permit’ – which could have one of two consequences; neither good.  The first would be repeal of the new law due to it being proven to be unworkable in the field.  The second would be the creation of a federal level concealed weapons permit registry system and license, and few of us can feel comfortable at the thought of allowing another level of government bureaucracy to get in the middle of our right to carry concealed weapons.

If the states can solve the de minimus problem of identifying out-of-state (and even out of country) drivers licenses, surely they can solve the ‘problem’ of how to identify out-of-state concealed weapons permits too.  This should not be an issue, and it is a concern that Reichert has allowed it to potentially become one.

Anyway, it is what it is.

The next step is for the Senate to pass a matching law.  HR822 has been referred to the Senate, but at present there is not yet any schedule set for its hearing or for a vote.  Then of course, we have to cross our fingers and hope another time that the law would receive presidential approval too.  That is far from certain.

If you’d like to help, you could contact our two senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and ask them to support the bill and to help it move speedily through the senate.  Click the links for the contact information for each of them.  Neither are known to be at all pro-gun, but if enough of us call, it might at least dissuade them from actively participating in moves to hinder the bill’s passage through the senate, and the more they hear from us, the more they may find themselves needing to rethink their current gun-unfriendly positions.

Talking points to raise with these two ladies include :

  • You have had a concealed weapons permit for (however many) years and have never been in trouble with the police because of it
  • You sometimes travel out-of-state, and as soon as you cross the state line into Oregon, your gun rights are zeroed out due to Oregon refusing to recognize WA permits (although Idaho does).  In total, 25 states (and DC) refuse to recognize WA permits.
  • The bill passed with bi-partisan support in the house, including the support of a quarter of all Democratic Congressmen
  • The concept is no more extreme – and just as necessary – as requiring each different state to recognize other states’ driving licenses (and there are many different driving laws in each different state, and vastly more deaths and injuries on the road each year than from handguns)
  • The bill doesn’t trample over each state’s rights – out-of-state permit holders have to observe the laws of the state they are visiting (just the same as with drivers)
  • The bill clears up an area of appalling confusion at present that sees ordinary law-abiding citizens risking the danger of becoming inadvertent felons (if one state has suddenly stopped honoring another state’s permit – how can we possibly keep fully up to date on this)

Remember the old adage – keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.  We need to be regularly in contact with Maria and Patty on this and all other gun rights issues.

Are Fixed or Adjustable Sights Better for Your Pistol

 Firearms  No Responses »
Nov 082011
 

These adjustable sights are fragile, obtrusive and unnecessary

Sometimes a pistol you’re thinking of purchasing is available with either fixed or adjustable sights.  I was talking to a lady last week who was considering two guns in the case and who decided she’d prefer the one with adjustable sights, because it was ‘better’.

Not so.  For most of us, and for most of the time, fixed sights are very much better than adjustable sights.

If you are choosing a pistol to use for target shooting, and which you’ll carefully transport always in its protective case, then there is a case to be made for adjustable sights.  And if you have a rifle that you’ll be shooting different loads through, at widely varying ranges, then adjustable sights are essential.

But for home and/or self-defense purposes, adjustable sights are not only unnecessary but may actively be a bad thing and detract from the ease with which you can use your gun when needed.

Six Reasons to Choose Fixed rather than Adjustable Sights for Your Pistol

First, it doesn’t really matter if the sights are slightly out of alignment on a gun that you’ll be using at large targets and short distances.  You’ll probably be snap shooting at the ‘center of mass’ of an oncoming attacker – someone who is already way too close to you, and closing the remaining distance rapidly.

This is not a carefully aimed shot to start with.  You’re going to be instinctively pointing and pulling the trigger as fast as you can rather than carefully making sure you have the correct stance, grip, sight alignment, sight picture, breath and trigger control.

You have a maximum of one, possibly two seconds, in which you need to stop this attacker.  Sight alignment is the least of your worries.

Second, adjustable sights are more delicate than fixed sights.  If you are carrying your pistol, particularly in a hip type holster, you will for sure bump it against things from time to time, and with the sights being one of the bits that stick out, the chances are you’ll be hitting the sights against other objects from time to time.  That is okay for fixed sights, but not so okay for adjustable sights – a few bumps and blows and knocks and you’ve not just bumped them out of alignment, you’ve damaged them so they now wobble loosely or sit on an angle or something.

To put it another way, adjustable sights are something that can more easily ‘go wrong’ – either by accidental damage or just from the stresses inherent in being mounted on the gun’s slide and the strong recoil and spring forces it experiences every time you fire the pistol.

Competition shooters love to adorn their pistols with all sorts of ‘enhancements’ – if they work, the enhancements may improve their chances of winning a competition, and if they don’t work, the worst the shooter has to experience is not winning.

But defensive shooters want a gun that is as simple as possible – the less complex it is, the less that can go wrong, and the more reliable it may be.  Because we – the defensive rather than competition shooters – are relying on our gun to save our life, not win a competition, and the downside we face is similarly extreme.

Third, it is extremely rare for factory fixed sights to be appreciably out of adjustment to start with.  You just don’t need any adjusting capability.  The only thing most of us can do with adjustable sights is ‘un-adjust’ them and make their aiming point worse, rather than better.

Fourth, adjustable sights are often slightly bigger than fixed sights, and may stand proud of the gun a bit more, making it slightly harder to conceal and easier to catch on things.

Fifth, if the sights are indeed larger, they can make fast sight picture acquisition more difficult than with lower seated sights.  A big rear sight obscures your picture of your gun’s barrel, and the rear sight can hide the front sight, making it difficult for you to know if the front sight is to the left or right of the rear sight’s notch.  Or maybe it is neither to the left or the right – maybe it is too low.  These ‘sight acquisition’ issues are not nearly so problematic with small low-rise type fixed sights.

Sixth, if you have a gun with a short barrel, the sight radius – the distance between the front and back sight – is so short to start with that fine accuracy is never going to be possible.

So – do you want adjustable sights on your next defensive handgun?  Hopefully not!

For More Information

For more information, please refer to our detailed series on choosing a pistol.

Daylight Saving Switch – Time to Check Your Guns and Other Defense Items

 Firearms, Home Protection, Training  No Responses »
Nov 072011
 

Use each Daylight Saving switchover to remind you to run through this checklist

They say (whoever it is that ‘they’ are) you should check the batteries in your smoke detectors every time daylight saving switches on or off.  That is probably a good idea, but don’t just stop with checking the batteries in the smoke detectors.

We recommend you use these six monthly occurrences as a prompt to check some other things that, the same as smoke detectors, might make all the difference in an emergency between safely surviving and, well – let’s just say ‘not safely surviving’, shall we!

Here’s a check list of home and self-defense items to check over too.

1.  Light bulbs

Check all your exterior and key interior lights and make sure the bulbs are all functioning correctly.  If you have any lights that are essential to your home defense plan, consider swapping the bulbs for new ones every six months.  Take the still working bulbs and use them, as needed, for other lights in less critical locations.

Most lights give no warning or indication of their pending failure, and while bulbs have an average life, they are a bit like people.  Some keep working perfectly way beyond their promised lifespan, but others fail tragically early.  This is as true of ‘long life’ bulbs as it is of regular bulbs.

Of course, if you have a ‘must work’ light somewhere, you should consider having a twin head to the light, with two lamps, so that you have built-in backup in the event either bulb fails.

Flashlight bulbs

If you have defensive flashlights – well, of course you do, right?  For your defensive flashlights, make sure they do not have ‘old fashioned’ incandescent type bulbs, or even newer style Xenon or halogen or whatever.  There is only one type of light source that is acceptable these days for defensive flashlights – LED lights.  This is for two reasons.

First, they have a very long life indeed (think tens of thousands of hours).  Second, they are very efficient – they use very little power to generate a huge amount of light.  Third (a bonus reason!) they are small and don’t generate a massive amount of heat, allowing you the flexibility of much tinier flashlights that are easier to carry and operate.

2.  Batteries

Don’t just check the batteries in your smoke detector.  Check the batteries in any and all other things you might use for self/home defense purposes too.  Of course, flashlight batteries are an obvious thing to check, and the rule of thumb is that you’ve always used more battery life than you think.

What other devices do you have with batteries in them?  Go through all the gear in your emergency kits and make an inventory of what you have that is battery-powered.

Make sure that batteries are still at least six months away from their expiry date, that they haven’t started to swell or corrode/leak, and that they can fully power the device they are with.

If devices use rechargeable batteries, check that they are being correctly recharged, and also check that once you take the device off its always-on trickle charger, that the battery has reasonably good life.  Batteries can sometimes fail over time, even if they are never used.

Perhaps under this category can also be considered your emergency power generator, if you have one.  You should run this for 5 – 15 minutes or more every month or two or three, and definitely at least once every six months.  And keep it with only a little fuel in it so you can burn through the fuel and replace it rather than end up with five-year old fuel that will not work and/or which will damage the generator when it is finally operated.

Make sure also that you can access and activate your generator in an emergency.  If you have no power, and your generator is in your garage, how will you get it out of the garage (if the garage door won’t open electrically)?

3.  Inventory of Supplies

You probably have various things as part of your emergency kits – in your cars, in your home, maybe at work, and take-along kits that you always keep with you.

Check each of these different emergency kits and make sure that they are full and everything is operational.  Maintain anything with moving parts.  Check expiry dates on other items – because you won’t be checking again for six months, make sure you’ve still got at least six months of validity in them.

Replenish anything that has been taken from the kits.

4.  Guns

Field strip, clean and oil all your guns, whether you’ve fired them or not in the last six months.  Even if they haven’t been touched, they may have gathered dust or in some other way now could benefit from a bit of TLC.

As part of this process, you’ll see if there are any problems with corrosion, or any other unexpected issues.  Maybe you’ve had a moth lay eggs inside, or rodent infestations, or anything at all.  You need to check your guns on a regular basis, at least six monthly.

This also means you are inventorying your guns, too, and confirming their locations and readiness states.

Part of inventorying your guns should also involve checking your logs for each gun and totaling up the rounds fired.  Is it time for some gun-smithing?  Do you need to give the gun an overhaul and get some springs replaced?

5.  Ammo

You should inventory the ammunition you keep at home, and make sure you are properly rotating ammunition so that you are shooting the oldest stuff first.  Don’t end up with a box/case in the back of everything that stays untouched and almost forgotten about, while you buy newer boxes of ammo, shoot them off, and replace them, on a regular basis.

This will also give you a feeling for what your supply levels are like.  Is it time to check around for a bulk pricing deal on a large re-order?

Critical Defense Ammo

By this we mean the ammunition you keep loaded into your magazines and in your primary defense guns.

Although most modern ammunition has a long shelf life (five, ten, maybe even twenty or more years depending on how it is stored) the ammunition you keep loaded in your guns will have a much shorter life, while also needing to have the highest degree of reliability.

The ammunition that you carry is all the time being attacked by corrosive sweat, humidity, temperature changes, and, if in your gun, possibly by gun oil and other cleaners/lubricants too.

We suggest that every six months you shoot off the ammo that is always in your guns, and replace that with the ammo that are in your extra magazines (which will then get shot off in six months time too).  That way the ammo in your gun never sits there for more than six months, and the other carry ammo spends probably six months being carried, then six months in the gun, before also being used up.

Shooting your ‘real’ defensive ammo is of course more expensive than your plinking ammunition, but needs to be done from time to time just to reassure yourself that it is still working perfectly, feeding perfectly, and to remind you of the different shooting experience you’ll get from shooting possibly hotter loads than you use for plinking and practice.

6.  Magazines

No, not the things you buy at the bookstore to read.  The things that hold your ammunition.  🙂

We generally recommend that you never load magazines all the way to maximum capacity.  Single stack magazines should have one less than the maximum number of rounds, and double stack magazines two less.

This reduces the stress on the spring in the magazine, and also it seems that if a semi-auto is going to jam, it is most likely to do so when the magazine is completely full (also can jam when nearly empty).  So by not filling your magazines all the way to the top, you give yourself a bit more reliability.

We recommend that every six months, you rotate your magazines.  Empty out the ones you normally carry loaded, and fill up a matching set of spares.  That way, your magazines and their springs get six months of duty followed by six months of recovery.

Yes, do the math.  If you typically have a magazine in your semi-auto pistol and two extra magazines, that does mean you’ll need to have six magazines total.  It is a small price to pay.

7.  Range Visit

Several of the things you need to do every six months might involve shooting some ammo.  Even if nothing causes you to ‘need’ to go shooting, when did you last spend some time at the range?

Skill at arms is a ‘perishable’ skill.  While it is probably true that you never forget how to ride a bike, your skill at arms definitely drops off if you don’t practice it from time to time.

In truth, you should visit a range much more than once every six months.  But if other things get in the way of spending an hour at the range on a regular basis, you’re far from the first person to mean to go to the range more often than you actually make it there.  But do make it a high priority item to go at least twice a year – and this is as good a time trigger as any other.

This is even more true if you’ve never built up a basic mastery (is that an oxymoron – ‘basic mastery’) of your weapons in the first place.  If you don’t instinctively know how to work your safety lever, if you can’t almost without thinking respond to and clear a jam, if you don’t always focus solely on the front sight, then you should invest more time to build your skills up to the point where they are more readily maintained.

8.  Everything Else

What else is part of your home/car/personal defense gear?  All sorts of things.  Well, for sure, you have fire extinguishers in your home, right?  Check those for pressure and expiry dates.  Check the pressure in the spare tire in your car(s).  If you keep spare cans of gas in the garage, even after treating them with fuel stabilizer, you need to use those up and replace them perhaps every six months.

If you keep a bulk supply of emergency drinking water, that needs to be flushed and replaced, perhaps also every six months.  Frozen food and dry goods also has finite shelf life.

How about other things not so obviously related to defense?  Emergency contact details, both your own that you’ve given to other people, and those of people you in turn want to be able to reach in an emergency.  Are your present emergency routes – for example, to the nearest hospital – still correct?

If you have children, you may need to update details of their school contacts, their probable friends, and such things too.

You should consider also having a ‘family meeting’ to quickly go through the family plans for emergencies of all kinds.  Again, if you have children, their roles will be changing as the grow up and mature, and with other changes in your life and situation, other aspects of how best to respond to all emergencies – not just those involving lethal force in a life or death self-defense situation – are ideally revised and reviewed every six months too.

Have there been any legal changes that might alter how you should respond to an emergency?  You should check with a reliable source every so often to see if the laws have changed – either for the better or worse.  Remember that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

A little time spent going through a checklist such as this every six months will help ensure that if you ever need to use any of these emergency items or strategies, they are likely to work as needed at the time when they are indeed desperately needed, and also means that you are more likely to be familiar with how to use these items and best respond to whatever the emergency is.

Gun Ownership Now More Strongly and Broadly Supported

 Firearms, Home Protection  No Responses »
Nov 022011
 

This chart from Gallup’s 2011 survey clearly shows the erosion of support for banning handguns.

Sometimes – if we are to believe the media reports – we may feel that we’re in a small and extremist minority because of our interest in firearms, and our personal ownership of them.  It isn’t just the media – the chances are you probably know some friends, colleagues, and/or neighbors who are vociferously opposed to any sort of guns and any sort of gun ownership, under any sort of situation.

The loudness of these people’s sincerely held opposition to firearms sometimes serves to obscure the fact that it is they, not us, who are the minority extremists.

This is vividly shown in the annual Gallup Crime Poll, where the well-known polling organization gathers statistics on people’s attitudes to guns as part of their crime survey.  This year’s results (the poll was held in early October) have just been released, and the results are very conclusive.

Only one in four American adults favor an outright ban on handgun ownership.  A record low of only 26% favor this, whereas an all time high of 73% of Americans are opposed.

We know there are two types of gun the media (and gun haters) particularly focus on – pistols and so-called ‘assault rifles’ – a made up term that has no meaning or reality other than whatever it is the anti-gunners choose it to mean from time to time.  And this year, even with the best will in the world (and a question designed to make it easy to support banning), Gallup can’t get people to support an ‘assault rifle’ ban, either.  An all-time low of 43% of American support banning ‘assault rifles’, compared to 53% who oppose such bans.

There are also significant changes in the number of households who are now admitting to owning a firearm.  This year 47% of adults said there was a gun in their house or elsewhere on their property, up from 41% last year, and the highest level since 1993.

Interestingly, Gallup themselves wonder if part of the reason for the sharp drop in claimed household gun ownership in the second half of the 1990s was due to people simply lying and not admitting to owning guns.  This is understandable – it is not always prudent to admit to a stranger on the phone that you keep guns in your house.

So maybe the increase in apparent household gun ownership is due merely to more people feeling free to tell the truth about their gun ownership?

On the other hand, it seems reasonable to expect that overall gun ownership – whatever the real true level actually may be – is on the rise.  Gun sales are booming, and more guns are being sold per month now than at any other time since gun sales started to be nationally tracked.  All new gun sales are sort of reported in the form of gun dealers needing to get approvals from the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), a system instituted in late 1998.  The FBI publish monthly statistics on the number of requests received each month and as you can see, these numbers have been steadily and significantly increasing for the last ten years.

If anything, it is surprising that only 47% of households have a gun.  With 130 million NICS checks since 1998, and – by coincidence – the same number of households in the US, it seems that, on average, every household in the country has bought a gun in the last 13 years.  And because guns have very long lives, most of these gun sales have been new guns rather than replacement guns.

This is supported by our own sense of who it is that come into our stores and buy guns from us.  We’re seeing a lot more ‘first time’ gun buyers, in all age groups and demographics, coming in, getting advice, carefully considering it, and walking out with their first ever gun.

Anyway, whatever the level of real true gun ownership is, this Gallup survey shows us some very clear things.  People are more supportive of gun ownership than at any previous time over the last 20 or more years, and people are both buying and owning more guns than ever before, too.

So, please don’t feel part of a strange minority group.  You’re part of the (silent) majority.

The Maximum Effective Range for a Shotgun

 Firearms  9 Responses »
Oct 162011
 

Shot pattern approaching the end of the gun’s B zone, image from www.stu-offroad.com/firearms/patterntest/buck1-1.htm

There are a lot of misperceptions about shotguns – perhaps more so than exist about rifles or pistols.  We addressed this topic before – see our article ‘Correcting Some Misinformation About Shotguns‘ for some helpful information about what they can and can’t do.

We got into the middle of a conversation about shotguns yesterday.   A client was considering buying a shotgun, and another person was advising them about shotguns.  Unfortunately, the advice wasn’t very accurate.  The first comment perpetuated the myth that shotgun rounds spread sufficiently at short ranges as to guarantee you an effective hit on your target, even at close range such as inside your house.

As our earlier article explains, at a 20’ range, a 00 buck load will spread to perhaps 4″ in diameter.  That is of course better than firing a single pistol round, but it is a long way short of guaranteeing that your shot will effectively strike the target.  While the shotgun advocate didn’t say exactly how much spread he thought a shotgun round would experience at short-range, it was clear he was expecting it more like a foot or two rather than an inch or two.

This leads on to an interesting topic that we did not consider in our earlier article about shotgun misperceptions and also follows on from the next piece of advice this gentleman volunteered – what is the maximum effective range of a shotgun?

His answer was ‘Oh, about over to that bush there’ – a distance of maybe 30 ft.  He was again wrong.

Let’s first of all understand what determines the maximum effective range of a shotgun, then decide what that range actually is.  Note that in this discussion we’re primarily considering self-defense situations, rather than the maximum range you’d get if duck shooting or using the shotgun in some other type of situation (shotguns designed for bird shooting will have much longer effective ranges than shotguns designed for home defense).

There are four factors influencing the maximum effective range you’ll get.

Definition of ‘Effective Range’

The first thing to consider is what is meant by ‘effective’ range.  Do we mean the maximum range at which the shotgun remains reasonably accurate, or reasonably lethal, or something else?

Let’s define effective range as being the maximum range where a shotgun is both sufficiently accurate as to give you a high probability of scoring a hit, and with the hit you score being sufficiently lethal as to take your adversary out of the fight.  This dual factor definition reduces the range substantially below the theoretical maximum range.

Shotgun Barrel Length and Choke

A shorter barrel on your shotgun will cause the shot to spread more rapidly, and the more rapidly the shot disperses, the less the gun’s effective A and B zone ranges will be.

A shorter barrel will also result in slightly less of the energy from the explosive charge in the shell being used to push the shot out of the barrel.  A longer barrel obviously is the opposite – a tighter pattern (better A and B zone ranges) and slightly more energy from the shell is passed on to the shot (better C zone range, too).

The minimum length of a shotgun barrel, by law, is 18″; at the other extreme, you can get sporting shotguns with barrel lengths up to 34″.  That’s a huge range of different lengths, but for home defense purposes, you’ll be wanting something short and easy to carry/point with – 18″ – 20″, ideally.

Just so you know, there are two exceptions to the 18″ minimum barrel length requirement.  The first exception is if you get a special federal license for a shorter barreled shotgun.  The second is if you have a shotgun with a shorter barrel but a permanently affixed ‘flash suppressor’ type device on the end, so as to bring the length of barrel and flash suppressor up to the 18″ minimum.

A barrel’s choke refers to if it has an internal taper.  Some shotgun barrels have an internal taper, such that the barrel gets narrower in the last few inches as it gets closer to its muzzle (the end which the shot comes shooting out of).  If the barrel has some internal tapering, then it is said to have a choke.  If it has no choke at all – if the diameter of the barrel is the same all the way along, it is said to have a cylinder bore.  All pistols and rifles have no choke, but unlike rifles and pistols (which have rifling in their barrels) a cylinder bored shotgun has a smooth bore barrel.

The purpose of the taper or choke is to cause the shot pellets to spread more slowly.  This can be useful when shooting at birds from a distance, but it is less useful in a home defense situation, where distances are very short, and you’re probably hoping for a good deal of spread to compensate for any lack of perfect aiming.

A barrel with choke can not be used to fire slugs.

There are many degrees of choke, and they are usually described by name.  Those names that include the word ‘Full’ in them have the most choke, with the least amount of choke being possessed by a Skeet type choke, followed by Improved Cylinder, then various types of ‘Modified’ before progressing on to Full choke types.

To give you a feeling for the impact choke has on spread, you can get twice the range for the same degree of spread from a barrel with a Light Full choke than you could from a barrel with a Skeet choke.  Bearing in mind there are even tighter choke options (and also the unchoked option too), clearly the choke has a big impact on spread and therefore also on effective range.

Which brings us to the next point.

Spread – How Much Shot is On Target

Some spread is a good thing when firing a shotgun, because it gives you a broader ‘cloud’ of pellets when they reach the target.  If they all hit the target, you’ve scored multiple hits in multiple parts of the target; potentially causing multiple wounds to multiple organs and speeding the rate at which the adversary is incapacitated and taken out of the fight.

And if your aiming is slightly off-center, hopefully the spread of the shot will be enough so that some of the pellets will still hit the target, on the basis that ‘some is better than none’.

The biggest real world advantage of a shotgun is with a compact cloud of pellets all hitting the target.  The biggest hoped for but imaginary advantage of a shotgun is the incorrect expectation that the expanding cloud will reduce the need for careful aim.

If you’re firing 00 buck from a 2 3/4 inch shotshell, you are probably shooting nine balls, each comparable to a .380 bullet, at the target.  You could accept a few missing the target as long as most hit, and still have an excellent chance of winning your encounter after firing a single shot with less than nine (but more than one or two) of the balls hitting the target.

Now for the swings and roundabouts of spread.  Clearly, some spread is good.

But, equally clearly, too much spread is bad.  For bird shooters, too much spread can mean that the distance between each pellet becomes so great that a bird can fly through the gaps unharmed.  In a home defense situation, it can mean that instead of landing nine balls on your target, or eight, or seven, you might end up with only one or two reaching the target, and the others all flying harmlessly off somewhere else (or – even worse – going harmfully off, through other rooms in your house/apartment and risking anyone else there, and continuing on into your neighbor’s house/apartment, risking anyone there too).

These issues are recognized in the transition from your shotgun’s B zone to its C zone, discussed below.

The Type of Round being Shot

If you’re firing bird shot through your shotgun, then the first thing you should do is replace it with buckshot!  You’re not seeking to defend yourself against vicious attacking birds.  You’re seeking to defend yourself against vicious attacking people.  If you are firing birdshot, it becomes ineffective pretty much at the end of your shotgun’s A zone (see below).

If you’re firing buck shot, it is a good solution all the way out to the end of your shotgun’s B zone.

And if you are firing solid rifled slugs, you’re in good shape – and your adversary is risking transitioning to becoming in very bad shape – all the way out to the end of your shotgun’s C zone.

And now for the part you’ve been waiting for – an explanation of these three zones.

The Three Shotgun Distance/Range Zones

A shotgun’s pattern/effect/spread is typically described in terms of three different sets of ranges or zones.

Note that these zones are only loosely defined, and also vary greatly depending both on the shotgun you are using and the ammunition you are running through it.  But understanding this three zone concept is a key part of understanding your shotgun and how best to use it, because the three different zones require different tactics and – ideally – different types of shot shell load (or slug) too.

Shotgun A Zone

The A zone starts from the muzzle and typically stretches out 5 – 7 yards.  This zone is defined as being where the individual pellets or balls travel closely together, with very little spread.

Because there is so little spread, when you are shooting your shotgun at a target in its A zone, you need to aim and shoot it as carefully as you would a rifle or a pistol.

We never recommend you use birdshot in a shotgun – birdshot is, as its name clearly expresses – designed for shooting birds, not for home defense.  But within the A zone, your shotgun is likely to delivery a tightly compressed pattern of birdshot that is only slightly less solid in effect than being hit with a single shotgun slug, and so if you have nothing else, you could use birdshot within your gun’s A zone.

Shotgun B Zone

Your shotgun’s B zone starts from the end of the A zone and typically extends out to about 20 – 25 yards (assuming a cylinder bore on your barrel).  It is hard to say exactly where the A and B zones transition, but it is easier to determine where the B zone ends.

The B zone ends at the point where the spread of balls is greater than the size of the target you are aiming at.  In a self-defense situation, you’ll be aiming for the center of the thoracic cavity (the chest, if you prefer a simpler term).

Remember we said you need to aim your shotgun very carefully while shooting in the closer A zone?  Unfortunately, you ‘re going to want to aim your shotgun very carefully in the B zone, too.  Although the spread of shot is increasing, so is the distance, so just a ‘smidgen’ off in your aiming will have greater effect in where all the shot lands downrange.

Even at the end of your B zone – say 20 yards/60 feet – you’ve only got a spread pattern that is maybe 12″ in diameter.  In other words, your pellets will spread in a pattern extending out about 6″ to the left, right, above and below your aiming point.  That means that best case scenario, you can only be 6″ off in your aim if you want to get sufficient of your shot pellets on target.  And at 20 yards away, 6″ isn’t much leeway for your aiming.

Shotgun C Zone

So what happens at the end of your shotgun’s B zone?  Yes, of course, that is where the C zone starts.  The C zone is the area where you are best advised to stop shooting buckshot and switch to solid slugs.

The C zone starts at the end of the B zone, which you’ll recall from the preceding paragraph is where the individual balls of buckshot are starting to spread out so that not all of them are landing on the target.  Just as with the transition from the A to B zone, this is a fairly vague sort of distance.  It also can’t be stressed too much that the distance can vary enormously depending on your shotgun, its barrel and the loads you are firing – the same gun might have a 15 yard B to C zone transition with one type of ammo and a 25 yard transition with a different type.

The C zone extends from this point of transition out to about 100 yards.  Somewhere beyond 50 yards, and probably not much further than 100 yards, your ability to get a reasonably accurate hit from a slug is going to diminish to the point where it is no longer worth taking the shot.

We should also add that, in a self-defense situation, there are very few scenarios where you would be validly shooting at people 100 yards away anyway!

For those people who have been waiting for the point where the shotgun’s mythical ‘no need to aim’ super-powers take over, we have more bad news.  So far we’ve analyzed that you need to do careful aimed shooting in the shotgun’s A zone and also in its B zone.  Guess what?  Now that we’re in the shotgun’s C zone, and we’ve switched from multi-pellet shotshells to single round slugs, the shotgun no longer offers any spread or related benefits at all.  Quite the opposite.  You now find yourself firing single slugs from a shotgun with perhaps only the most basic and rudimentary of sights.  You’ll still have to aim very carefully.

The Fallacy of Shotgun Patterns/Spreads

Many people think that it is a very good thing that a shotgun spreads its pellets or balls out over a broad area.  They see the benefit, but don’t consider the two trade-offs associated with the benefit.

The benefit is, of course, that a spread of shot means that your odds of scoring at least a partial hit on your target improve.  If a pistol or rifle bullet misses its target by even a single inch, it has no effect whatsoever on the target (other than perhaps a psychological one, and even that is far from certain – in the adrenalin maxed out situation of an exchange of gunfire, your adversary quite likely won’t even notice shots going close by him).

The reasoning goes that ‘half a loaf is better than none’ – it is better to get some amount of a shotgun load onto your target than it is to miss it entirely.  There’s some truth in this.

But what about the remainder of the buckshot you fired?  Where is that going?  Is there something behind the target or near to the target that could be damaged/destroyed?  Remember that 00 buck will readily penetrate six pieces of sheet rock – that’s enough to go through probably every other room in your house/apartment and still be dangerous when it flies on out into the open ground outside.

And while getting half your load onto your target is good and better than not hitting it at all, it is also not as good as getting all your load onto the target.

Consider also that as the spread of the shot expands, so too does the distance to the target.  So while the shot is more spread out at say 20 yards compared to at 10 yards, the target is also twice as far away and therefore twice as small (or ‘hard to hit’).  The growing size of the spread does little more than only partially compensate for the shrinking size of the target.

There’s another factor too.  Most shotguns have very basic sights on them, making it harder to accurately aim them in the first place.

As you’ve seen in the preceding analysis of tactics for engagements in a shotgun’s A, B and C zones, you need accurate aimed fire at all distances and in all situations.

The bottom line is that a shotgun is not a magical cure-all solution.  Most of all, it won’t compensate for lack of training and poor accuracy on your part.  You still need to practice with it and get competent at using it.

Summary – So What is the Effective Range of a Shotgun

Now that you’ve read the entire article, let’s compress it into a single sentence.  The practical/effective range of your home defense type shotgun, with 00 buckshot, is about 20 yards.  If you’re confronting adversaries further away, switch to a rifle, or – failing that – use solid rifled slugs in your shotgun.

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