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What possible scenario would you need a rifle for defending your home? Not for the distance shots as much as for the power above and beyond the level of a pistol. Rifle cartridges can penetrate more obstacles. If what a pistol round fails to defeat is cover, then a rifle turns it into useless concealment. If intruders are attempting to beat down your solid core door in your last ditch room, it's going to be a lot easier to shoot thru it with a rifle round than waste your time waiting for them to succeed to use a pistol round or even worse, shotgun pellets.
Shooting someone through the door is some of the worst advice I've seen. You need to identify your target before taking your shot. Through the door you have less chance to ID your target and less chance to actually hit what you're aiming at.
Reading comprehension seems to be at an all time low on the forums. In the specific example at hand, the intruders are very well identified and obviously not some random passersby who blundered into your house, walked down the hallway, and left you wondering why you have a gun and frightened family behind your closed door.
Worst advice I hear on the internet is to choose low penetration ammo just because it "might" cause someone inadvertent injury. Basically, the proponents would prefer you not be armed with deadly force in handling an intruder.
If someone is beating down my bedroom door having chased me into it, they should expect defensive retrograde fire and then rounds thru the door. They already expressed total disregard for my Constitutional rights by forced entry, display of a lethal threat, and therefore they have NO rights to ANY consideration in the type of ammunition I choose. It will be commercially available 110 gn solid open tip hunting ammo in 6.8SPC.
That is designed to penetrate. So is military ammo. It isn't designed to suddenly fragment and completely lose it's energy. In fact, the whole subject of low penetration ammo is really bogus. What the liability and legal whiners would have you focus on is whether a stray round would possibly strike your neighbors. Considering the assailants aren't using it, the chances are just as likely they would hit you first by shooting thru the door where you couldn't.
Not smart.
Being Infantry and having used firing stakes in my foxhole, I understand lanes of fire and how to assess where to shoot and why. I consider it better advice to shoot, shoot early, and shoot thru whatever is in the way. Will that likely get you into a court of law? Nope. The fictitious subject of home defense doesn't statistically happen to the common homeowner unless 1) they steal drugs or money from their dealer and go into business for themselves, where they can be easily found; 2) harbor a significant other who explicitly describes their former companion as violent and aggressive; 3) vote for liberals who pass anti gun laws in Connecticut.
The first two are tops on the list of home invasion, but the way things are going, we may see a rise in incidents on the second.
Point being, if you have already chosen to fire your gun in defense of your life, I'm not second guessing that the intruders beating down my bedroom door need further identification.
Shoot thru the door.
In that regard, I see no problem with shooting thru the wall as they seek more cover, to dispense with the silly notion a stick framed home with sheet rock offers any. Further, I will shoot thru the furniture, the roof if necessary (I live in an A-frame,) even my cars if it will get me a hit on whoever is sheltering on the other side of it. I may even skip rounds under it, or down the concrete sidewalls of my basement, same as I was taught in Urban Warfare in the Infantry School and subsequent deployment training in an MP unit.
Come after me and mine, you will get rounds thru whatever is in the way. I'll take crap about the new sofa after the smoke clears. It's under warranty anyway.
And yes, the VP did say it:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/02/28/biden-advises-shooting-shotgun-through-door
But, that isn't a defense in court, is it? You make your own choice. Maybe a shotgun won't be enough, the perps got away. So much for low penetration ammo. He didn't hit anything.
In most reports where intruders are hit, the surviving perpetrators are incarcerated, and the homeowner is praised by local law enforcement. That seems to be the majority situation in the three million uses of a gun in self defense nationally. But, you never know. Live in a state or locality where stupidity is the law of the land, and things might be different. You might get sued for using lethal ammunition even tho the perps were similarly armed.
What are the odds of that? If they are that high, do you need to move, or, just give up? People in Connecticut are doing little of the first, and not much of the latter.
Since I can't count on internet advice to defend me in my home, nor any money toward my defense, I will just take the advice of professionals who trained me for 22 years. They paid me to listen, and gave me lot of practice.
I will shoot thru the door, and deal with the replacement costs later.
