are patrol carbines and tazers phasing out shotguns in law enforcement?

I would say yes. Not much a shotgun will do for Police work that a Carbine can't. One advantage of the Carbines is the fact that over penetration in buildings isn't as much as a risk and they can pierce body armor.

I would say yes. Not much a shotgun will do for Police work that a Carbine can't. One advantage of the Carbines is the fact that over penetration in buildings isn't as much as a risk and they can pierce body armor.

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What? If a shotgun is using buckshot it will have less penetration than a patrol rifle.



My department, which is moderately large still mainly has shotguns and only a few have patrol rifles (which I believe to be a mistake). I think patrol rifles are the better option but it's good to have a mixture of both.
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Buckshot and handgun bullets tend to penatrate structures more than high velocity rifles firing expanding bullets.

This is because at the velocities a rifle bullet travels at means the bullet has no chance of surviving the sort of disruption it sees striking something substantial. They just disintegrate.

See mythbusters bullets and water for more.

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I think a lot of departments are getting worried about seeing armor on bad guys.

They are still used for breaching...

My old manufacturing company was workin with taser to develop a shotgun taser cartridge. Not sure if it made it past development stage or not

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My old manufacturing company was workin with taser to develop a shotgun taser cartridge. Not sure if it made it past development stage or not

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It did. I believe it's called the Xrep. My department is said to be the first to ever use it. It was used twice in different incidents and didn't work. I'm not sure if thick winter jackets prevented it from working though or if it just did not work.

...tazers phase out shotguns with bean bag rounds ...

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Any clue on how many departments actually own, train with, issue, or ever deploy bean-bag rounds? I don't think it's very many. Tasers appear on the duty belts of nearly every officer. Beanbag rounds are extremely special-purpose items.

My old department added patrol rifles years ago and everyone liked them. The Shotgun ended up being confined to less lethal in the patrol cars about 11 years ago. Personally I think this also made qualification time a bit easier. SRT still had the breaching rounds but patrol got rid of its shot shells.

This seemed to work well for us.

Yes. In my "little town", the cruisers have M4-config semi-autos (I think and I hope they're not full-auto) between the driver and front passenger seat.

The carbine is a more versatile weapon than the shotgun, with far less recoil. I'd prefer a shotgun if I was doing a dynamic entry (with Gecko right next to me, of course! ), but for most anything else, carbine.

If a shotgun is using buckshot it will have less penetration than a patrol rifle.

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Depends on the ammo. A 55-gr HP does not necessarily penetrate far in gel.

Do u think patrol rifles are needed or are they more for piece of mind

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99 days out of 100, they're just for peace of mind. ('Piece' of mind? Yuck! )

Then one day there's someone with a REALLY bad idea, or who's tenuous thread of sanity just snapped, and the ability to place a compelling shot at 50+ yards becomes critical.

Whether most officers train well enough to be able to take that shot, I don't know.

But remember, a large part of an officer's toolset is his/her physical presence -- what you might call intimidation factor. A lot fewer lives are lost when a hostile person sees that overwhelming force is present and that continuing a fight can only end badly.

The carbine is, in part, for a Black Swan event. If there is an extreme and intensive critical incident, it may be needed.

The characteristics of such, as we see today, are better handled by carbines than shotguns.

Sam1911 said:

Any clue on how many departments actually own, train with, issue, or ever deploy bean-bag rounds? I don't think it's very many. Tasers appear on the duty belts of nearly every officer. Beanbag rounds are extremely special-purpose items.

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No, but last summer the Portland PD attempted to use a dedicated beanbagger.. it was painted/annodized a different color (blue I think).. anyway, "they" accidentally buckshot a soul with multiple rounds at close range. He lived.

The carbine can get more rounds down range faster and further. As far a the wide birth of the shotgun goes, it's limited to under 100 yards, after that, it's not likelly one or two pellets are going to do much.Maybe for CQB or breeching a door they are more useful, but as an all around weapon I would rather have a hundred rounds of 556 on my person.
Especially if you have to make an accurate shot from distance.
I guess both would be best.

Yikes. I was going to suggest that most less-lethal shotguns are set up like Simunitions guns to only be used with less lethal ammo...but I guess sometimes they aren't.

Last time i saw a bean bag round other than the "steve mcqueen" movie, "hunter", was in the ATF show "like cops", on TV

We use shotguns and rifles in my department. Some officers choose to carry a shotgun, some carry a rifle. A shotgun is a devastatingly effective weapon, but I carry the rifle since I consider it to be more versatile.

A Taser is merely a sometimes-effective less lethal force option, and has no bearing on any reasonable discussion of firearms choices for law enforcement.

The writing on the wall about shotguns was pretty clear more than 20 years ago. I was the guy in charge of training on a 100 man department down here in paradise for three years in the late eighties/early nineties era and was sad to see it coming.... In short with more and more officers of "lesser stature" (females for any former marines....) along with greater numbers of ordinary police recruits without the slightest weapons background, shotguns became less and less attractive overall for police managers.... Some of that may have changed with the great numbers of combat veterans for police work... but the trend before 9-11 was clearly away from shotguns.

As a guy who preferred the shotgun over anything else in close quarter confrontations (under fifty meters, even better in less than 25 meters conflicts..) I disagree with the trend but it's just a natural evolution, I'm afraid. Out in open country, away from urban environments the patrol rifle is clearly superior - but that's not where my career was at all. I believe a competent shotgunner actually reduces the actual use of force in confrontations with armed or possibly armed individuals... since that was my experience (and I always brought a shotgun to the party without fail...).

By the way, every time I see one of those "tactical shotguns" I just try not to laugh. A competent 'gunner with a simple Wingmaster Police model without any mag extension or fancy sights is a terrible opponent and usually more than a match for any two offenders...

Welcome to the age of the reduced load. No pun intended, of course.

I attended my former department's firearms qualification last year for my LEOSA certification. After the qualification, one of the instructors showed the result of a test he conducted on several sheets of wallboard, placed a few inches behind one another. The issued 9mm, 00 Buck and slugs penetrated several layers of the wall board. The 223 only penetrated a couple of layers, it's energy quickly being dumped. They still issue shotguns, along with the AR's, but after that little demonstration, I soon got rid of my personal shotgun, and got an AR. Not saying it's best, but works for me.

Do u think patrol rifles are needed or are they more for peace of mind

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After that big shoot out in Hollywood with those bank robbers wearing body armor, Police started issuing Carbines considering how the Police were running to gunshops to get rifles to even the odds.

Ever car in our fleet has a shotgun in a rack. Every patrol officer has a Tazer on their belt. Our bean bag guns are just a standard 870 with an orange stock and special rounds. I check out a bean bag gun at the beginning of every shift. Myself and many officers also have personal ARs in the car.

Our swat team has used the shotgun Tazer rounds in the past. I believe they are sometimes, but not always, effective, much like the handheld variety.

A lot of people think carbines are overkill or are for mass shooting scenarios. I've had several people say "you are a cop, not in the army!" Almost once a month we have some crazy person shooting a handgun in their house or front yard. These people are literally crazy. A lot of them probably don't mean harm, they just don't know what is going on. Your best bet in that situation is find cover and stay at a distance. A carbine allows you to stay 75 yards away, call in someone to negotiate, and still be ready to end the threat if necessary. If someone can get close while still behind cover, the bean bag rounds can effectively end the threat as well, but we never use it without lethal cover set up in case the rounds are ineffective.

All that said, I can't think of a time when I would reach for a standard shotgun.