Remember you can always hire someone to deal with drywall problems very easily. Patches can be dealt with in 3-5 days easy. Dealing with a victim though…. Different story. Imagine a family member traumatized for life?

Plus remember the economy is not that hot, the drywaller will be happy to come help with your problem after the fact.

Again trying to quantify:
Problem (a) intruder is in your home for any number of nefarious reasons.
Problem (b) Patching drywall holes after shooting bad guy.

If you don’t deal with problem (a) then (b) is not a concern. Your loved one may be harmed, dead, or gone.
If you do deal with problem (a) then problem (b) may only cost several hundred dollars, and usually no funeral is necessary, visiting loved one in hospital, counseling daughter, or wife, after (god forbid) some violation.

Anyone good at math can see the obvious answer.

I have a question for you. This is hypothetical and may draw some left-wing comment but it could happen.

As well as for home defense, would a 12 gauge, 9 shot, #oo buck, 20″barreled pump shotgun such as the 590 be effective enough to thwart a mob of enraged morons bent on stopping one’s car to maim or kill the occupants? Also, a group of the same coming down the street to attack or burn one’s home? If not, what would be the best weapon that is within legal ownership?

If you’re old enough to remember the Rodney King riots, you should remember on t.v. seeing a man attacked and pulled out of the cement truck he was driving by several morons who beat him senseless while attempting to bash his brains out and then danced around him for the camera as though they had made a touchdown!

Well if I can help it, something like that is not going to happen to me. I’ll come out with barrel ablazing and take a few of them with me!

Response

Hi David, the Mossberg 590 is a VERY nice defensive shotgun, with a six shot side saddle there is up to 15 rounds of SG ammuntion on and in the weapon. I highly suggest that you seek out a tactical shotgun course (they are around $100 usually) and also a handgun or CWL course.

The training will make you aware of local laws on use of force, give you some good tactics and aid in your defense if you are forced to use lethal force.

There is an increasing number of incidents of people being pulled from vehicles, in one case the passenger got out of the car to break up the attack and was stomped to death, in another case a man as beat by 15+ people for no apparent reason, at the end of the attack one of the attackers urinated on the man’s head and they left, the man unfortunately died.

Your question is hard to answer because there are so many variables, why are they attacking, are they armed, are they average citizens or well trained / drilled? Will the group turn and run if a firearm is presented and their victim suddenly isn’t so helpless? What will they do if you begin firing, run or attack?

There is also the question of how many people can you realistically engage and stop before you are overwhelmed. Ideally the presentation of the firearm would de-escalate the situation but you can’t count on this effect.

The SG has an undeniable advantage in terms of ballistic performance over a handgun in defensive situations but there are a some potential disadvantages: #1 It is a long weapon, even with a 20 inch barrel. #2 It is slow to bring into play, unlike a handgun that can ride on the hip you must retrieve the SG. #3 It has limited capacity and is not magazine fed, the side saddle is a great addition because it increases the available ammunition by 66% and if you have the firearm you have the extra ammunition.

A handgun on the belt + a SG in the truck would be a good combination.

Response
I finally had a moment to reply to your comment, I appreciate your reply and agree with most of what you said. You said “here on earth do you find a hunter in the woods in his stand with a 9mm, .40cal. or .357 sig pistol? You don’t.”

I’ve known several people who have taken deer with 9mm pistols (ill advised yes), in fact my brother took a deer with a .22 LR which has both far less energy and far less momentum than any of the mentioned pistol calibers. Is it less than ideal? Absolutely so! The handguns are also extremely underpowered for use against humans as well :). The only advantage a handgun has is it’s size which makes it convenient to carry and easy to conceal.

These loads, although they are very effective on humans

There is the problem, they aren’t very effective on humans. They have an acceptable trade off of recoil, capacity, and performance so that the average person can comfortably and accurately shoot them. There is a very good chance it will take multiple handgun hits on a human to stop him, handgun bullets act primarily by punching holes and letting blood out, even after the heart is destroyed a human has at least 15 seconds of control.

Police departments recognize handguns are underpowered, which is the why the shotgun and patrol rifle (usually AR-15) are available. Police these days are trained to continue shooting until the threat stops, because they can’t guarantee they’ve got hits on the BG or that those hits have taken effect.

The bottom line is the VAST majority of people shot with handguns, even in center of mass (over 80%) survive. Recently a man decided to draw a firearm on a tactical team in my town, he was shot over 20 times with 9mm and survived.

Handguns capable of reliably stopping humans do exist, 44 magnum for example, but the recoil is so punishing that most people can not be accurate enough with them to consider them a primary defense tool.

“A good sized human is said to be around 200 lbs. while a deer can be in access of 350 lbs”

Deer are a great analog because #1 they don’t know what a bullet is or what they are supposed to do when they get shot. They only know they are injured and react. A bullet capable of forcing a deer to stop and die will perform extremely well on a human. Some humans will lay down or pass out when shot even with very minor hits. The true bad guys will continue to fight until their body gives out, and that can be a very long period of time, they are the ones we must prepare for.

Make no mistake, America is larger than it used to be. While the average male used to be ~ 180 pounds in today’s world an AVERAGE sized male is 200 pounds or more. Recently several men invaded a home, luckily the husband and wife were able to fend them off, the main aggressor took two rounds of #00 buck in the chest before going down, he actually escalated the attack after the first hit, he was almost 400 pounds.

The average athletic / lean looking 6′0 male is around 190 pounds, a good sized male is well over 200. Burly, musular looking guys are often easily in the mid 200’s.

birdshot in those rare circumstances could prove to be a effective stopper.

Bird shot could occasionally be an effective stopper if a head shot was guaranteed which is extremely unlikely otherwise it lacks the performance to stop a BG. The thing to keep in mind is those ballistic tests that show 3-6 inches of penetration do not consider bone in all. In real world center mass shootings the rib case almost always stops the birdshot completely with no disruption to vital organs. The BG may CHOOSE to stop the attack but birdshot can not be counted on to force him to. The BG may very well kill the good guy and then go to the hospital.

Another thing to consider is the skull is notorious for deflecting handgun bullets, so it may also defect bird shot rather well due to it’s low mass.

Response

Hi Paul,

Another gun enthusiast did some testing on sheet rock, his results are available at: http://www.theboxotruth.com/

Jason

Question how about ff shot it is almost the size of #4 buck, as a possiblity? I think some test in order.