JimmerJammerMrK
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Common? No. Possible? Yes.
I don't quite understand using a rifle for home defense
- Thread starter ShooterMcGavin
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When I was reading shotgun/rifle HD articles and discussions recently, I went out in my garage to try and move with my ban-era 16" AR w/ A3-style handle sights. I couldn't do it. I couldn't even conceive of using it as a home-defense weapon without loads of training. It's very difficult to keep a good weld/sight picture while turning and walking.
Maybe if I had a fitted telescoping stock (this one has a fake) w/ cheek-rest and some kind of red-dot or ACOG it would be easier. Sights on a riser would probably help as well.
Maybe if I had a fitted telescoping stock (this one has a fake) w/ cheek-rest and some kind of red-dot or ACOG it would be easier. Sights on a riser would probably help as well.
coyote_jr
member
Correia I agree with you, I would grab my rifle first. I was just pointing out that you used the wrong word. Relativey, not inherently.
glockman19
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I have the pistol/revolver to get to the shotgun and the shotgun to get to the rifle.
HD Pistols/Revolvers; 9mm, .38, .44, .357, .45 all with Federal Hydra Shok or Speer Gold Dot's.
12 gauge #4 shot
Rifle; 16" AR-15 M4 w/EOTech 512 American Eagle 45, 50, 55 grain JHP.
My longest hallway is 60' or 20 yards.
HD Pistols/Revolvers; 9mm, .38, .44, .357, .45 all with Federal Hydra Shok or Speer Gold Dot's.
12 gauge #4 shot
Rifle; 16" AR-15 M4 w/EOTech 512 American Eagle 45, 50, 55 grain JHP.
My longest hallway is 60' or 20 yards.
06
Member
----"When stress kicks in, you will react faster with what you are most familiar with"----- Very true words. It is estimated that you need to do 200 repetitions before it becomes "engraved" in your mind. An example: a policeman and bad guy were in an elevator. Cop recognized him and tried to arrest him. Bad guy pulled his pistol-cop did also-both emptied their mags and NEVER hit each other-inside an elevator! Stress will mess up your coordination and ability to use your fingers-under harsh duress you cannot even pick up a pencil. I know we all say that is horse puckey but just repeating what an instructor told me. As for HD, I keep a 45 close by, a tactical scatter gun near the door and rifles available. For HD it is recommended to use #4 shot. Good penetration at close range and six times the shot of OO. I am of the old school and use OO and slugs. An ounce of lead will knock anyone down even if wearing armor. wc
Cosmoline
Member
With a long barrel at close range, point shooting becomes entirely more reasonable. I used to go out in the woods with a Mosin and fire at trees from my hip. With a little practice it's easy inside of 15 yards. The long barrel is a perfectly viable way of sighting in a pinch, though I don't see why you couldn't bring it up to your shoulder inside. If you bring it to the shoulder, you also don't really need to use fine iron sights. A good size aperture or ghost ring is more than sufficient. Keeping a perfect weld or perfect stance is not necessary at all. I get the sense you're trying to use a competition style off hand stance, but there's no point to that at the distances we're talking about. A more informal and relaxed stance is better.
Common enough that I've not had a CCW class yet, with an ER worker in it that had not seen a small caliber pistol wound of that exact type. And I live in a relatively calm state. We don't have nearly as many shootings as in other places.
bdjansen
You can't believe a moderator said what? That pistols poke holes and don't blow up bones? (not that being a moderator means anything, since I'm not moderating in this thread at all).
I never said a small caliber pistol can't penetrate the skull. I've seen that lots of times, and I've got a pile of dead cows with skulls way thicker than humans that I've killed myself, mostly with .38 Special and .22LR. Sure, they'll poke a hole in a skull, sometimes. Depending on range, and angle mostly. Glancing at all, and you they tend to track around the skull under the flesh.
Ask Odd Job, he's putting together a book of X-ray photos. Pistol bullets tend to damage bones, break them, but you don't get bone fragments flying off and causing secondary wound paths like you do with rifle rounds.
Pistols are low velocity. What kind of massive energy dump are you getting out of them? Where is your giant cavity? When I kill a deer with a .45, where is the couple inches of pulped tissue like when you shoot them with a rifle? When you stop somebody with a handgun, you're stopping them by destroying organs, blood pressure loss, central nervous disruption, of structural breakage. This stuff ain't voodoo.
Huge amount of energy compared to what? The original poster asked about rifles for HD, and my answer was because they're better than handguns. I don't underestimate a handgun at all. I'm a handgun instructor. I'm pretty darn familiar with what they can do. But you need to realize the limitations of your weapon system, and that is that comparably to everything else, handguns suck.
That's why I teach my students to shoot until the threat ceases. Whether that is 1 shot or 10. I don't care. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
milo, I would recommend taking a carbine class, and shooting some 3gun. Honestly, it is much easier to get hits with a long gun at close range than a handgun once you know how. Seriously, it is a huge advantage once you know how to do it.
Even with rifle sights, at extreme close range, you learn what kind of flash sight picture you need just using the front sight post, and you'll still outshoot 99% of the pistol shooters out there at close range. And yes, telescoping stocks do help, because you want it tucked in close, not bladed off like you would for traditional rifle marksmanship.
woof
Member
I can see shooting someone in the back as they are running away from me. Say I am on the deck and my wife is 100 feet to 200 feet away from me in our horse pasture and a zombie is running toward her with a big knife while she is screaming. Glad to have a rifle with which I know I can hit zombie and not wife (or horse).
Nolo
Member
Huge amount of energy? Maybe if you're using a .500 S&W for HD.
A .45 ACP, the largest truly popular handgun round (outside .44 Mag, which I'd never use for a HD pistol), puts out only about 400 ft-lbs of energy on a good day. Let me compare that to an oft-derided wimpy rifle round, the .223:
.45 ACP - 230 grains at 900 f/s = ~400 ft-lbs of energy
.223 Remington - 55 grains at 3200 f/s = ~1250 ft-lbs of energy.
That's more than three times the energy of the .45 ACP! And it's only half the energy of a .308!
So-called "rabbit shooters" in the rifle world completely dominate anything pistols can produce.
Huge amount of energy? Compared to a paper airplane, maybe.
Heck, the .22 WMR produces only about 20 ft-lbs energy less than 9mm Parabellum.
Jorg Nysgerrig
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You may want clarify that a .22 WMR rifle produces only about 20 ft-lbs less energy than 9mm pistol.
uzimon
Member
Remember The Koresh Vids?
if i was in a shtf situation, like a hurricane scenario, and i KNEW i was the only guy around, and didn't have to worry about over-penetration, shoot right thru the walls, ceilings and floors with my ak.
if i lived out in the boonies, no houses for miles (thru the trees too) same thing.
just lay down a line of fire right thru.
but as it is, its gonna have to be a good ol 9, maybe shottie
if i was in a shtf situation, like a hurricane scenario, and i KNEW i was the only guy around, and didn't have to worry about over-penetration, shoot right thru the walls, ceilings and floors with my ak.
if i lived out in the boonies, no houses for miles (thru the trees too) same thing.
just lay down a line of fire right thru.
but as it is, its gonna have to be a good ol 9, maybe shottie
benEzra
Moderator Emeritus
Milo z, try it again, but hold the rifle an inch or two lower, so that you are looking over the rear sight. No cheek weld; keep your head up. Use the entire front post for coarse aiming, or the front sight only for finer aiming. With practice, it is easy to shoot better/faster with the front sight only inside 15-20 yards than you can with a pistol. Or, get a red dot.
Cosmoline
Member
Some don't seem to.
Ala Dan
Member in memoriam
Hey, if a rifle is all you got; it sure beats having nothing~! 
bdjansen
Member
Did you read the PDF's? Did you read how many ft/lbs it takes to "blow up" a bone? And we're talking about the strongest bone in the human body!
The more energy, the more damage. Of course a rifle does more then a handgun. But to discount the amount of energy a handgun produces.....
My wife works on the bone trauma floor of the number one trauma hospital in the northwest. If you get shot in Alaska and live, you come to Harborview. And there is a good chance she might take care of you.
She had somebody who got shot with a shotgun in the leg a while ago. Shattered his bone. They were able to put him back together with a few surgeries and he didn't even lose the leg. What they can do in medicine is amazing. Does that mean a shotgun is not a good defense weapon?
Do you think all those victims from Virginia Tech are glad they were only shot with a 9mm and .22? I mean, why didn't a few people jump the small Asian guy with such weak guns?
Why is the .223 a rabbit shooter? The military is using this round. Isn't this what people have in their AR15s?
According to Brassfetcher's website "The .44 Magnum is a handgun cartridge that offers terminal ballistics in the neighborhood of small rifles and actually exceeds the terminal effectiveness of an M-16, when fired from a 4" or longer barrel handgun."
You don't think 400 ft/lbs is a lot of energy?
If you read the PDFs I posted you will the femur bone that was completely destroyed at 50 ft/lbs. Just because a long gun produces more energy does not mean handguns are lacking.
Bartholomew Roberts
Member
Well besides agreeing with what Correia said, I can relate my own experience with new shooters. I generally bring three weapons for them to shoot - a Glock 26, a Remington 870 and an AR15. Set up an IDPA target at about 7-10yds and give them a tiny bit of time stress and the results are pretty consistent - new shooters do the best with the AR15 in terms of fast, accurate hits where it counts.*
*Although you do need to explain the height over bore issue to them or they will shoot low. Occasionally, you may need to explain it repeatedly.
*Although you do need to explain the height over bore issue to them or they will shoot low. Occasionally, you may need to explain it repeatedly.
Cosmoline
Member
Not in the grand scheme of things. A person's barefisted punch can exceed 100 ft. lbs. pretty easily. A kick can do considerably more. The energy alone is enough to break a bone and can certainly kill if directed down a hole that distrupts key tissue leading to blood loss or CNS disruption. But it's still not in the same league as a rifle bullet's force. With the right bullet an impact over 2,000 ft. lbs. can easily be delivered from a long gun's projectile. It's enough force not simply to punch a hole and break bones, but to deform surrounding tissue. If the projectile expands and yaws, the damage increases as it moves through the body. With a handgun, expansion tends to act like a brake on the bullet. With a rifle, you just look at the exit wound's size to see the contrast. Inside, with a modern HP or SP hunting round, the flesh isn't just punched it's ripped up and liquified. There are far more opportunities for blood loss.
Thankfully, long gun hits are far less common than handguns. Even experienced trauma specialists at Harborview and the like don't see full fledge rifle hits very often. When they do happen, they're usually DOA. I remember one of the Dallas surgeons who dealt with JFK's wounds mentioning how few surgeons there had ever seen anything like his injuries because most of the gunshots they treated were handgun related. And of course if it had been anybody but the President they probably would have sent him straight to the basement. Soldiers experience rifle strikes in combat of course, but generally with Hague approved FMJ's that minimize the inherent killing power of the projectile.
To be quite honest, I imagine some should if they don't. Some of the people where executed which I don't think we can compare shot placement wise with a defensive shooting. But that aside 32 people died and 25 people did live that day. For as long as it took them to receive medical attention, I think 25 surviving victims says alot.
Regarding the pistols are weak thing, perhaps this is a decent analogy. None of us want to get in a wreck with another car, they're unpleasant. Usually they're survivable and we're a little beat up after. We especially don't want to get into a wreck with a semi or a train though. While the car has power, its isn't near what the other options are.
No not really. I don't remember the math, but if I recall correctly, isn't the foot pounds of energy of a 9mm about the same as a 1 pound weight dropped from 7 feet, and a .45 the same weight dropped from 11 feet?
Until you get to that velocity threshold that you see in rifle cartridges, then it is all about poking a hole.
And I never said that a pistol bullet couldn't break a bone, just that it was less likely to devestate a bone like a rifle. Most of the pistol hits on bone that I'm aware of, if the bone breaks, then there is minimal fragmentation. Wheras the rifle tends to really muff it up, and sends fragments on other paths through tissue, which causes more bleeding.
I'm not exactly sure what you're arguing, or what you're trying to prove with those PDFs. Yes, handguns can kill you. Handguns can punch skulls, and break bones. No disagreement.
But they still suck in comparison to a rifle or a shotgun.
So, since we're free to choose what we arm ourselves with, why pick the weakest, most limited, and hardest to hit with weapon?
I'm not saying that handguns can't kill you, or do the job. That's pretty stupid, so quit assigning beliefs to me that I don't have. I teach about 50-100 people a month how to carry handguns, so that would be a touch hypocritical.
Huh? What does that have to do with anything. Thanks for the Strawman, but given a choice, I would take the shotgun, every single time.
And once again, killing people is irrelevant. It is about stopping them right now. That's the goal. Shotgun beats pistol. I could care less that he lived, or that his leg was saved. If he was the bad guy attacking me, all I care about is that he quit doing whatever it was he was doing that caused me to want to shoot him in the first place.
Do you argue with kids a lot? Let's stick with reality.
Can handguns kill you? Yes, they can kill the hell out of you. But by using your false analogy, which is frankly just plain annoying and borderline insulting, we should all arm ourselves with .22 LR handguns.
Since we're lawful gun owners interested in defending ourselves, and not on executing kids, let's arm ourselves with more effective weapons.
And if that scumbag Cho had been armed with a rifle caliber weapon semi-auto, then the body count would have been higher, and the killed to injured ratio would have been far worse.
Since your wife is a doctor, ask her how many people have come into the ER on their own power after being shot in the torso with a rifle or shotgun, then ask her how many people have done the same with handgun wounds.
Odds are they've NEVER had somebody come in with a rifle wound to their center of mass (at anything under 50 meters) EVER, unless it was a vauge periphery hit through something like the love handle. If it was anywhere through the ribs, and they could still operate, then it is one for the record books.
This happens with standard pistol calibers EVERY DAY.
Once again, doesn't mean handguns can't kill. Been there. Done that. No kidding. We're not stupid.
But I can kill somebody with a pen. Doesn't mean that should be my first choice to defend myself with. Maximize what you've got. The situation is probably going to suck anyway. Shooting people in your house usually does, so why not bring the most gun you can control? One with high capacity, good ergonomics, practical accuracy, low recoil, (and when loaded with proper ammo) reasonable penetration?
bdjansen
Member
And what is the grand scheme of things? Should I say that rifles suck because they can't pierce the side of a tank? We are talking about damage done to a human body. How much damage has to be done to be an impressive amount of energy?
The human body is very fragile. How badly do you have to destroy it to be impressed?
100 ft/lbs from that punch is a lot too. I'd like to see how many people can take that and still stand. So a 45 "only" does 4 times that and does it internally, damaging the surrounding tissue for 12 inches. The bullet expands to insure that all the energy is transferred to the target and none is wasted by passing out of the target. Sure your .223 does more damage to the surrounding tissue but it's not an end all solution. A .223 or a 45 in the middle of the chest will result in the same dead person. A .223 or a 45 in the leg will result in the same broken leg.
A .223 or a 45 will both hit the side of a person's arm and allow the attack to continue. So maybe hand grenades should be used for HD now?
Just because a rifle does more damage doesn't mean that a handgun doesn't do a lot too. Is my Honda slow just because a race car is faster? I can't race with my Honda but it does just fine in the grand scheme of things, driving 60 on the highway.
JimmerJammerMrK
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I don't doubt your experiences. I just want you to know that while I mostly agree with your point, this piece of anecdotal evidence is nearly worthless without published statistics, and does little to bolster your argument.
In the end, I agree with you. I'd take a long gun any day over a pistol for HD.
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SoCalShooter
Member
I have to agree with Correria on this one. A person with a rifle at close range will usually be more accurate than a person with a pistol. Pistols are not easy to master and to be an excellent pistol marksman takes a lot of practice. I would say overall I have found it significantly easier to shoot a rifle than a pistol. All three are great just depends on what type of threat you think you will encounter.
bdjansen
Member
But handgun and rifle cartridges overlap. 44 mag vs .223? There is a steady progression of bullets all the way up. At what point is your cutoff? How do you really decide what sucks? You can't just lump handguns in one pile and rifles in another. You need some science to back it up.
And that is what the PDF's are for. The PDF's show how little it takes to do a lot of damage to the fragile human body. They show it takes far less then the amount of energy in even the 22lr.
I too would take a shotgun to the fight. I would always take the biggest gun.
My problem is when people dismiss handguns like they are airsoft guns. They are very powerful weapons. They do a ton of damage to the human body. But when you say they "suck," you do people who are reading this and maybe take to heart what you say (being a moderator) a disservice. You give off the impression that a handgun's energy is trivial and that is not true.
I concur that yes indeed you can miss with a shotgun.
I will admit to grabbing a shotgun to deal with a nasty big coon in the tree right next to the living room window. A coon just sitting around in the daylight hours = trouble, rabies, whatever. I shot the coon when I was no more than 20 feet away, and blew big chunk out of the fat branch he was sitting on. Sure, I was 4 inches low, wouldn't have mattered in pretty much any other situation. But I did miss, it can happen easy.
I will admit to grabbing a shotgun to deal with a nasty big coon in the tree right next to the living room window. A coon just sitting around in the daylight hours = trouble, rabies, whatever. I shot the coon when I was no more than 20 feet away, and blew big chunk out of the fat branch he was sitting on. Sure, I was 4 inches low, wouldn't have mattered in pretty much any other situation. But I did miss, it can happen easy.
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