Justin
Moderator Emeritus
And don't give me this spiel about real world experience. In my entire time on the internet I have seen tons and tons of claims about "real world experience." You can prove absolutely *nothing* on the internet.
Proof can be offered, and certainly has been. As a for instance, I know Zak Smith in real life, I've shot with him, picked his brain about various shooting-related topics, and seen how he's placed at 3gun matches both locally and nationally. He has a high level of real-world experience, and an ability to analyze those experiences and pass that knowledge on to others in ways that are thoughtful and well-informed.
I have seven years of service in three services combined and that proves ... what? about my opinion here?
If your experience in the service gives you insight into a related topic, then it's likely that your opinion on a that related topic is worth more consideration than the opinion of, say, a fourteen year old who's only experience with the service is playing Medal of Honor 2.
Arguing from authority works when you have authority to back it up. Online, this doesn't exist, other than arbitrarily assigned authority as a moderator.
Please feel free to point out posts where I've claimed that I'm an authority on a topic simply because I'm a moderator on an internet forum.
I have a certain level of experience with shotguns; semi-auto, pump, and yes, even PGO. I've drawn certain conclusions from those experiences, some of which are documented online with video.
People are free to read my posts on the topic, and either take it or leave it as they see fit. Sometimes people will disagree with my conclusions, and that's perfectly fine.
But is it really so much to ask that if you're going to disagree with me, that you take some effort to prove your point?
Please ... please. Stop jumping down people's throats. There is a metric (dung)-ton of weapons out there that work for a whole lot of different people in different situations. Because it doesn't work as a race gun ideally doesn't diminish this as a weapon.
I compete with a somewhat, but not outlandishly modified Benelli. It's hardly a "race gun" by any popular definition of the term. There's certainly nothing about it that would render it inadequate for defensive use.
If the entire point of practically-oriented shooting competition is to run firearms under stressful situations that somewhat approximate defensive or martial usage, and if PGO shotguns were useful in those situations, it's very likely you'd see them show up at 3gun matches. But you don't. Nor do you see defensive trainers advocating that people use them.
Because in that case you'd have to jump down every single action shooters throat, too, since after all a double action is indeed the better revolver.
That would be true if we worked from the assumption that all competitive shooters are competing for the exact same reasons. They aren't. Cowboy action shooters compete in that game for reasons that are quite different from 3gun shooters, who compete in that game for reasons that are quite different from Bullseye shooters, etc.
Please, stop dogpilling these poor people and their fun PGO shotguns.
If someone has a PGO shotgun because they think it's a lot of fun to shoot, I don't know that I've ever criticized them. I take issue with PGO shotguns and their advocates when it comes to claims that PGO shotguns are an ideal tool for self defense, when this is clearly unso for any number of reasons that have already been pointed out.