Both a 5.56mm carbine and a good repeating shotgun are fantastic home defense long guns that will absolutely wreck a bad guy's day at across-the-living-room ranges. Back about 2003 I sold my home defense gauge and went to the carbine and have only recently been flirting with going back to the shotgun. There are posts here from when I was a dozen years younger and a dozen years dumber on the topic and I guess it's one I should revisit.
Anyway I made the statement that if I knew one or two dudes were about to come through my front door, there was no gun I own that I'd rather have in my hands than my 870 stuffed full of buckshot. One commenter asked if I'd still prefer a shotgun in the case of "four dudes, one with an AR?", with a still from this ASP video:
Well, yes, even then.
These are the scenarios that get used to justify all kinds of esoteric gear purchases or training classes (although the former far more often than the latter, sadly.)
Time for some Real Talk:
- Carbine, shotgun, pistol-caliber-carbine, paw-paw's lever-action deer gun...all of those are perfectly adequate to mess up a bad guy from a bunkered-in safe position in your house, but you ain't answering the door with any of them.
- The best way to avoid a home invasion by multiple suspects with long guns is to not be in the unlicensed pharmaceutical distribution business. Of course, sometimes people buy a house or rent an apartment whose previous occupant was, and I suppose that rip crews get addresses wrong even more often than SWAT teams, so it's not a foolproof solution.
- I have a whole bunch of ARs and cool go-fast gear because I think it's neat and I occasionally like to LARP in a carbine class, not because I think I'm gonna suit up in a plate carrier and NODs to defend myself from Joe Crackhead trying to kick in the front door. Its real-world use scenarios are pretty limited, but real handy inside those limits.
- The best defense against typical crime remains immediate and ferocious resistance, preferably of the armed sort. Resource predators are unlikely to advance through a wall of lead for the chance at getting a wallet and a mediocre TV set.
