Is there a way to make birdshot useful for defense?

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Deus Machina said:
I'm growing less and less convinced in the twelve-inch minimum for most personal defense at home ranges.
At least in my case. There is no place in my home I can shoot from over 7 yards.
I'm more a believer in volume of wound. Smaller holes need to penetrate deeper to achieve that and assure something important gets hit.
In my situation, there's plenty within six inches of the surface if you have enough holes. In my apartment, birdshot would suffice, or turn a limb useless.
That doesn't mean I'd load it up instead of 00 or even #4, if I had the choice.
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You misunderstand how penetration and gel measurements work.

6" of penetration in bare ballistics gel is NOT equal to 6" of penetration into an attacker. Skin is a lot tougher than the other squishy tissue/organs and counts for, from what I recall, several (as much as 4) inches bare gel penetration. Then there is the variability in clothing and do you really think you are guaranteed to shoot your attacker as if they are a paper target standing upright at the same level as your firearm, shoulders squared off facing you, with nothing in front of their chest where you land the perfect shot?

In the real world you might be shooting through heavy clothing, through an arm or arms extended in front of the body, at an angle that means through an arm or arms or lengthwise through the torso to hit something vital.

230RN said:
Somehow I get the impression that you're thinking of individual pellets, without considering the effects of a whole mass of pellets striking at once... even over a (say) 6" diameter circle. Almost instantaneously.
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At what distance does your shotgun produce a 6" diameter pattern??
 
Vern Humphrey said:
I recommend making up a test "wall" of sheetrock and 2X4s and seeing how much 00 Buck will penetrate -- it will go through several walls!
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And a slug will go through several more, and maybe several more again.

So, exactly as I said

"For most people a major advantage of buckshot is less dramatic interior wall penetration than slugs"
 
Warp nailed it.

It's generally considered that human skin equals 3-4" of gel penetration. Heavy clothing can cut another 3-4" of gel penetration off the total too.
 
230RN said:
Somehow I get the impression that you're thinking of individual pellets, without considering the effects of a whole mass of pellets striking at once... even over a (say) 6" diameter circle. Almost instantaneously.

Eleven hundred foot-pounds (conservative) is eleven hundred foot pounds and doesn't get any less by talking about individual pellets. Let alone the effect of successive teeny little pellets impacting from further back in the shot string.

I also suspect some folks here are arguing just to keep the argument going.

Full stop. End of transmission. Control-Z. 73. :evil: :D

With all good humor and all due respect,

Terry, 230RN
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And you'd be right on that point. Pellets behave in tissue like individual projectiles. They don't gain moral support from being near another pellet. Penetration is determined primarily by sectional density (shot size) and, to a lesser extent, by velocity. For projectiles that do not expand or fragment, additional velocity tends to result in deeper penetration. In that regard, a closer shot results in marginally deeper penetration. This isn't speculation, though. There is not a single gel test out there that shows any shot size smaller than BB getting to 12" and even at that size, only a few pellets are able to get to that depth, with the majority falling short.
 
Deus Machina said:
I'm growing less and less convinced in the twelve-inch minimum for most personal defense at home ranges.
At least in my case. There is no place in my home I can shoot from over 7 yards.
I'm more a believer in volume of wound. Smaller holes need to penetrate deeper to achieve that and assure something important gets hit.
In my situation, there's plenty within six inches of the surface if you have enough holes. In my apartment, birdshot would suffice, or turn a limb useless.
That doesn't mean I'd load it up instead of 00 or even #4, if I had the choice.
Click to expand...


That's because you're probably thinking of the thickness of a man's torso and imagining that a shot that penetrates 8" would get all the way through an average torso. You're right, insofar as that statement goes, but that requires that your "attacker" is standing motionless with his arms at his sides, facing you. That's called "murder" in most jurisdictions. Now imagine your attacker is holding a weapon in front of him and your shot has to traverse six inches of tissue, lengthwise, in his arm before even reaching his torso. Now imagine that he is angled away from you, attacking a family member, or that you have been knocked to the floor in the fight, or that he is crouched behind furniture. Now also consider that skin is tougher than muscle and organs and generally accounts for about 2" or so of penetration in gelatin. Once you understand that bullets fired in actual fights often have to traverse intervening obstacles and limbs before striking the torso at an oblique angle, you start to see why 12" is a bare minimum and 14" - 16" inches is even better.
 
And a slug will go through several more, and maybe several more again.

So, exactly as I said

"For most people a major advantage of buckshot is less dramatic interior wall penetration than slugs"
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My point is, "less" is not a quantifiable amount. Try an actual penetration test before assuming how much or little a charge of buckshot will penetrate.

My experience is, buckshot will penetrate at least to the outer wall of the average house, so be aware of the location of other family members when you set up your safe room.
 
Vern Humphrey said:
My point is, "less" is not a quantifiable amount. Try an actual penetration test before assuming how much or little a charge of buckshot will penetrate.

My experience is, buckshot will penetrate at least to the outer wall of the average house, so be aware of the location of other family members when you set up your safe room.
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Less is less.

And it is quantifiable. Have you heard of the box o truth?

Are you seriously arguing that buckshot will penetrate walls to the same degree as slugs??
 
Nope. I'm saying you should KNOW the penetration of the weapon and ammo you use, and plan accordingly.

"There is no excuse for having a parapet that is not bullet proof, seeing as the means to prove it are so readily at hand."

Sir Ernest Swinton, in The Defense of Duffer's Drift
 
Vern Humphrey said:
Nope. I'm saying you should KNOW the penetration of the weapon and ammo you use, and plan accordingly.

"There is no excuse for having a parapet that is not bullet proof, seeing as the means to prove it are so readily at hand."

Sir Ernest Swinton, in The Defense of Duffer's Drift
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You can plan all you want, and you can know all there is to know about the penetration of your firearm and ammo, that doesn't make a 12 gauge with slugs a good idea for home defense in an apartment or in many homes.

So.

As I said.

"For most people a major advantage of buckshot is less dramatic interior wall penetration than slugs"
 
And paraphrasing what I said, "Run a penetration test before assuming that means buckshot will not penetrate enough to be dangerous to people you don't want to hurt."
 
Vern Humphrey said:
And paraphrasing what I said, "Run a penetration test before assuming that means buckshot will not penetrate enough to be dangerous to people you don't want to hurt."
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I never, in any way, at all, whatsoever, stated or implied anything of the sort.

In fact, if you read my sentence

"For most people a major advantage of buckshot is less dramatic interior wall penetration than slugs"


You will see it refers to wall penetration with buckshot as "dramatic", simply less so than slugs. I, in fact, implied the exact opposite of what you are straw manning me with

BTW: a lot of people cannot do their own tests. Not everybody has a place they can bring pieces of wall to set up and shoot. That is why we have resources like the box o truth I already mentioned.
 
Reality Check,

In 1992 I was chosen for a jury in a murder trial. Without going into too many specifics;
one 12 ga round of 8 chill birdshot to the chest
one round of the same to the head
distance of discharge 8'
Mossberg pump short barrel
Two holes between 3 and 5" wide and 2"+ deep
death from shock and bleed out
over 100 photos crime scene and autopsy

All 12 jurors Murder 1

Bird shot can kill
I will never serve on another jury

blindhari
 
I would use it in a heartbeat.

I guess the rabbit that I shot in two at 15 feet doesn't count nor the cedar trees that I cut down for Christmas trees. You can say what you want, but I don't want to catch a load in my middle. Even if it is Number 8's. Oh, I forgot to mention the doe that was hit by a car. A guy blew it's head wide open from 10 feet, sending gray matter everywhere with a load of low brass 6's.
 
Did that rabbit weigh 250 lbs and shoot back at you from behind a hard obstacle?

If you walk up to a man lying on the ground like that deer and place the barrel of your shotgun the base of his skull, I Have no doubt that #8 shot would do the trick. Might be hard to convince a jury that he was a threat, though.
 
I had a friened who was a medical examiner in Newport News, VA. He told about a man who was shot through the heart with a load of birdshot. It completely destroyed his heart -- and after being shot, he walked a block and sat down on his front step and died.

Despite that, if I rely on a shotgun for self-defense, I'll go with buckshot or slugs.
 
In my home defense scenarios an 870 is available but My CC .45 sits on my nightstand and a larger .45 is in a biometric gun safe in a fall back position. I practice with all three and move in all axes when doing so, changing weapons when the slide locks back. I practice with target loads but have #4 and 00 loaded at home.
 
Again, even at contact distance, birdshot does not penetrate adequately.
Click to expand...

This is not the case. At close ranges the shot enters as one "package" and can cause significant wounds inside the body. I've seen one close range birdshot wound with a rat-hole entrance on the flank. Pellets went as far as the lung and the bladder. The guy was alive upon arrival at the hospital but too many abdominal organs were damaged and he died post-op.

However it doesn't mean birdshot is a good choice for home defense.
 
Pellets penetrate individually. If the case that you saw involved deeper penetration, it is because larger pellets and/or higher velocity was involved. Pellets are not encouraged to penetrate more deeply by being near their friends.
 
Sorry but you are plain wrong. Can you explain to me how the shotcup was also embedded in the patient's abdomen?
 
I'll explain it to you then: the mass of pellets entering the patient in one area has cleared a path for the shotcup. Pellets at the back of the "package" didn't have to contend with any skin or clothing resistance and had to contend with less tissue resistance than the pellets up front.

By the way I suggest you lose the lippy attitude. You might learn something if you put in the effort to listen.
 
These topics are always funny. It seems you can never agree enough unless you totally sell out on what you know is true.
It's a fact that birdshot will kill but when we state that it is not the gold standard and that buckshot and slugs stand superior it's heresy. Do proponents of birdshot really believe they are armed with suitable ammunition?
What on earth are the reasons and how do you suppose it is equal or superior?


Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk
 
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