First let’s start with my old post on Shotgun Ballistics. Go read it over if you haven’t or don’t remember what we covered, I’m not going to re-has much from that one.
In the last post I got set off by Jeff Quinn who’s a super nice guy who knows his guns. Now its Roy Huntington who I’ve also met and is a super nice guy who owns his guns.
But again Roy’s talking about using bird shot defensively in shotguns.
My big issue with this video is Roy shows a paper target getting chewed up by birdshot, and looking at it as if that’s relevant data. This WOULD be relevant if your attacker is made of paper and cardboard. They aren’t, they’re made of flesh and blood, and the stuff that incapacitates a target is deep inside the body. A great way to think about it is to think about burn victims or people in motorcycle accidents with road rash. The damage to the surface tissue is severe, and these wounds are not always survivable, but the danger is with things like infection, not with immediate incapacitation. This is the basis for the FBI Performance Standards. The FBI recommends officers to use ammo that penetrates calibrated ballistics gelatin consistently between 12 and 14″ More penetration than that you run the risk of the round not delivering all its ballistic energy to the target, less than that, the wound may be lethal, but not cause an incapacitating injury.
OK let’s look at some data from the great Brass Fetcher. First Shotguns!
The buckshot loads are easily getting the 14″ of penetration, while the birdshot loads aren’t even halfway there.
Look at the “Diminutive” 9x19mm! Those loads all look fine, with a few being a little on the light side. When you look at .380 Auto, and .32 ACP things get a little clearer.
Now the aforementioned “Rathole” effect does have SOME legitimacy, as the birdshot pellets will not be spread far enough to all hit unique locations in a home defense scenario which should be inside of 15 yards. Still you need to start looking at probability and how much gambling you want to do with your life. Birdshot pellets are small, and any individual isn’t going to likely stop an attacker, even when you factor in dozens of hits, you’re still multiplying by a very small number. Still if two pellets hit one-after-another then there is a good chance the 2nd pellet will compound the wound channel of the first. There’s even a probability of a third round hitting the EXACT same spot when we’re dealing with shot clouds so dense. Still its optimistic to assume 3 hits on one point will amount to 3 times the wound channel, even then we’re JUST getting into the FBI minimum. Further the chance that this event will ALSO happen in a location over a vital organ or vascular structure is really getting into a LOT more probability than I’d personally put my life on the line for.
I will re-post the Box O Truth penetration test and this quote:
But doesn’t 00 Buck penetrate too much in interior walls to be a “safe” load in a home?
Yes, it does penetrate a lot. But any load that is going to be effective will need to penetrate walls to have enough power to penetrate bad guys. If our only concern was to be sure we didn’t penetrate walls, we would use BB guns. However, BB guns will not stop bad guys.
When it comes to finding ammo that WILL meet the FBI 12″ standard for wound penetration but WON’T penetrate conventional building materials, it just doesn’t exist. I wish it did, but frankly it doesn’t.
We just need to heed Rule #4 if we ever need to defend our lives. Be sure of your target and what lies beyond it.
When it comes to shotgun loads, it really doesn’t need to be that picky. If you use #4 buckshot or if you use #000, you need to be able to get those pellets onto your target and then be able to follow up with more shots if needed. Just don’t make the mistake that birdshot is a good idea for home defense. You may still end up killing your attacker….but not necessarily BEFORE they end up doing whatever horrible thing they had planned for you.
Be safe out there!
