Tab Clearing...

• Wingo: The short-lived indoor shotgun wingshooting game.


• Training Terminology: Flash Sight Picture, Hammer, and Controlled Pair.


• Hipster Tactical reviews the Daewoo DP51.

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Bad Info Drives Out Good

Greg Ellifritz put up an informative post on social media regarding the (in)efficacy of birdshot in a home defense role recently.

It was shared widely on the internet with predictable results, as the legions of shambling mouth-breathers tried to set Greg straight.

He's had about enough of that.

"I got my first shotgun instructor certification in 1999. I’ve been teaching shotgun skills longer than some of these commentators have been alive. I carried a shotgun every day in a 25-year police career and used those shotguns to convince some very bad men to submit to arrest. I’ve seen, treated, and investigated gunshot wounds from birdshot, buckshot, and slugs. I’ve killed lots of critters with shotguns in the hunting fields. I’ve attended countless shotgun ballistic gelatin shooting demonstrations and autopsies of victims killed with shotgun pellets. I’ve written 162 different articles on using the shotgun for self defense as well as producing the largest firearms stopping power research study in the last two decades.

I might know a thing or two about what shotgun pellets do to human bodies.

But when I try to share that knowledge with the general public, I get shit upon from the anonymous population of uneducated internet trolls who gain self esteem from insulting other people."

Bad info drives out good. I definitely know the feeling, as it's why I rarely discuss gun stuff in GenPop-accessible places myself these days.

Save the birdshot for birds.

Shotgun Rocks

I thought this photo was interesting.

Rifled Foster-type slugs from a semiauto 12ga with some sort of inexpensive folding backup irons, either Magpuls or a knockoff, mounted atop it. Notice the smoke from the muzzle brake and the not-yet-ejected spent shell still traveling rearward visible in the ejection port.

Between the brake, the gas operation, and the inline nature of the stock, the recoil is driving the gun straight to the rear with virtually zero muzzle climb. However, the inertia is also causing the rear folding BUIS to flop rearwards.

QotD: Tactical Talisman Edition

Gorillafritz dropping clue bombs regarding a classic bit of derpy gun counter lore:

Does that mean you should choose a shotgun for home defense because it has a built in potential deterrent mechanism? No. I don’t think that’s the right answer. A criminal who flees at the sound of a racking shotgun will also likely flee when you yell out to him that you’ve called the police. He would likely flee at the sight of ANY gun being pointed at him as well. There’s nothing magical about the shotgun.

You should RTWT.

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"Tubular Repeating Claymore" or nah?

What's the best buckshot loading for home defense?

I used to favor one that "gave a bit of spread", but have since changed my mind and am an advocate of Federal FliteControl, specifically the LE133 00 load, which basically acts like a .72 caliber Glaser Safety Slug at any realistic inside-the-home distances. 

In the course of a conversation with Tom Givens, all-around smart dude Greg Ellifritz came around to the same viewpoint.

Because of the shorter ranges encountered in a home defense scenario, I’ve historically believed that a wider pattern spread would be beneficial because of the greater chance of hitting a moving target. I don’t need a 40-yard capability in a shotgun when the longest shot I can physically take in my house is a measured 12 yards. Why not open the pattern size up a little bit to increase the odds of getting a hit?

Tom convinced me that this thinking was erroneous. He was, of course, correct. Let’s talk about why a tighter pattern is better, even for short range home defense.

Go read the whole thing and see what you think.

Splattergun

Tim Chandler of 360 Performance Shooting making a shorty Remington 870 sing using good technique. Run a shotgun right, you can do it all day, fast and accurately, without getting beat up.

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Purity Spiral

I recycled this old blog post for yuks at pistol-forum:

Examine your wardrobe.

Award yourself one point for any garment that meets any of the following criteria:

• Military surplus
• Has MOLLE loops
• Non-hunting-oriented camo (double points for Multicam, triple for Kryptek)
• Any gun- or gun-related company branding other than Beretta or Browning
• Made by: Arc'teryx, Kitanica, Propper, 5.11, Blackhawk, et al
• Has gun-specific features like mag pouches or holster compartments
• Has epaulets 

Tally up the total number. This is your score. It is important that it be displayed prominently in online interactions because everyone with a lower score is a Fudd and everybody with a higher score is a Tactard. You must fight with them to the death.

Some people were confused about the exemption for Browning and Beretta apparel.

Basically, I gave Browning and Beretta a pass because both lend their logos to lines of branded outdoor wear for the sort of folks who own ballistic golf clubs.

A Browning or Beretta logo'ed fleece vest picked up as an impulse buy at Cabela's while one is purchasing a Citori or Silver Pigeon is therefore exempt from the scoring penalties assessed against one of those idiotic GLOCK-logo "Not A Pepper Spray Kind Of Girl"* shirts.

*You should be a pepper spray kind of girl. Or a pepper spray kind of dude. Whichever. Here's a reminder that POM makes good spray and an excellent stocking stuffer!

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Filthy Shotgun

So, once upon a time... this was at Montague Gunsmithing in Knoxville, so that'd make it 2001 ...guy comes in with a zip-up vinyl long gun case, saying he needed a cleaning.

As he's unzipping the case, he explains that he'd just sold the dive bar he'd owned for decades and was retiring, and this was the shotgun he'd kept under the bar "just in case" for all those years.

And he pulls out a very early postwar Belgian Sweet Sixteen, like a Grade 2 or 3, that's crusted with twenty years of Coca-Cola syrup, Tom Collins mix, and dust bunnies.

It was one of the three or four saddest sights of all my years in the gun business. It takes a lot to rattle Shannon Jennings, and even he was a little shook at the appearance of the poor thing.

It looked nothing like this Model 11, other than the general outline.

Splattergun...

USPSA GM and 1911-shooting star Tim Herron slid into the shotgun clinic that the guys from 360 Performance Shooting were putting on, which was a solid four hour block of primo instruction on the tubular repeating claymore.

I keep saying it, but how can you tell a good teacher? They're always learning...

Herron has strong t-shirt game...

Science Fiction Storm

Putting together a 1301:

It had been intended for another movie, but got overtaken by events. It was cool to see it onscreen finally, even if it had lost its Aridus Industries QD-C by then. Still had the same dot and weapon-mounted light though. (Accessories are often chosen by what's gonna look cool on screen or which company was the most eager for product placement. It's the movies, not real life.)

Anyhow, you might have seen it if you watch sci-fi shoot-em-ups...

Around the blogs...

• Bobbi and the Big Dish


• We are diminished.


• Remington 870

"Hipster Shotgun"?

I was today years old when I became a BoomerFudd...

"The Kalashnikov group, which produces the AK-47 assault rifle, has unveiled its hipster 'gadget gun' aimed at Gen Z customers who can't bear to be without tech. 

The semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun, dubbed the 'MP-155 Ultima', has a built-in HD video camera and computer to teach its users how to shoot. 

The futuristic weapon, with a stylish composite body and an external display, can record your every move and transmit the information to your smartphone via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth."

Deflecting...

Louis Awerbuck had an interesting "final exam" for his firearms classes, a time pressure enhanced shooting drill on a target he called his "South African Computer" (Louis was a vocally proud Luddite).

Louis dispensing wisdom, this time on mechanical offset.

Said target consisted of a clothed torso mannequin target, surrounded by several other clothed torso mannequin targets, all of which were on hinged, pivoting arms so that Louis could control their bobbing gyrations by tugging on lines. Students went through this in pairs and, at the "go" signal, there was a very limited amount of time for one student to step off at an angle and the other to stay on the start line, and one or the other to neutralize the moving "Bad Guy" in the middle of the bobbing, weaving crowd of "No Shoot" targets with a single shot.

During that first handgun class back in 2009, one of the students took their shot, the baseball cap on the "Bad Guy" went flying, and the range was called cold. On going downrange, the head of the "Bad Guy" target was unmarred, although when the baseball cap was picked up off the berm, there was a distinct divot in the bill of the cap from the student's .45ACP pistol bullet.

"Heeer's a cloo for you," said Louis in his broad accent, and proceeded to relate the tale of the same sort of incident...in a shotgun class...with a 12ga slug.

Yes, the brim of a ball cap can divert a 12ga slug or a .45ACP pistol bullet enough to turn a hit into a miss.

A twig...or a furring strip...can do the same with a rifle bullet.

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магистрат носорог

TOZ-81 Mars prototype Soviet revolver developed for Soviet cosmonauts as a survival weapon pic.twitter.com/dtmGozwGkt

— Soviet Visuals (@sovietvisuals) October 1, 2020

So, among the internet flotsam that's bobbed past my vantage point recently was a picture of a failed proposal for a Soviet-era cosmonaut survival pistol, the TOZ-81...

It's a top-break bullpup .410 shotgun revolver that fires from the bottom chamber. It's like a Voltron of goofy internet gun dork obsessions. 

This gun is all ate up with "why"?

 So, that purveyor of branded lifestyle merch and booker of Erik Prince speaking engagements, Blackwater Worldwide, is in the gun biz, too, and one of their latest offerings featured some head-scratchers.

Meet the Sentry 12, a manually-operated, box magazine fed 12 gauge shotgun.

Box magazine fed shotguns are all the rage now, despite the fact that the shotgun as deployed in a domestic LE or home defense role is unlikely to be shot dry and speed loaded, or that getting fat, blunt12ga shells to feed reliably from a magazine is an iffy thing at best, or that even a five round 12ga magazine is a brick and eight- or ten-round ones are cartoonishly cumbersome. All that aside, some people just gotta have a mag-fed gauge, and I guess it'd be a shame to let them keep their money, so here we are.

But why doesn't it have a stock with an adjustable length of pull? It seems like that would be a no-brainer. Let's see what the press release says...

"The Sentry 12 is designed to be an ideal shotgun for law enforcement, addressing the need for re-configurations in rapidly changing situations. Typically law enforcement maintains color coded shotguns for lethal and less than lethal rounds that represents a higher cost to the department and tax payers. By offering a reliable magazine fed solution, law enforcement now have the option to purchase a platform that has colored coded magazines at a significant reduction in cost."

Oh my God, that is a terrible idea.

Depending on picking the right color magazine to make a firearm lethal or less lethal is profoundly dumb, completely leaving aside the fact that dropping the magazine without properly clearing the chamber is the most common safety mishap there is with magazine-fed firearms.

There's a reason that Simunition guns, for example, are completely incapable of chambering live ammunition, and if you want to know why, just ask that librarian in Florida...except you can't because she's dead because some ignorant chucklehead thought he could just use a regular gun as a non-lethal weapon by swapping ammo.

City attorneys and taxpayers are happy when departments that elect to use 12ga for less lethal go ahead and get rid of all the other gauges except maybe a couple breachers. They get worried when buckshot and beanbags are in the same county, let alone the same cruiser trunk.

This is bad and wrong and whoever wrote that copy should feel bad.

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A Different Flavor of Panic

The firearms industry is currently in the throes of a second wave of panic buying. The first was kicked off by the early days of the 'Rona, when people decided that an extra AR15 and a case or three of ammo was necessary to defend their stash of hand sanitizer and toilet paper.

The second wave was kicked off during the protests and riots following the killing of George Floyd. It still seems to be going strong and at this point it's highly unlikely that supplies will return to anything like normal before it's time for the Great American Quadrennial Election Year Gun-Buying Freakout.

This current panic has a different flavor to it than most, though. Available evidence shows that there are a large number of first-time buyers looking for something to defend home and hearth, rather than existing gun hobbyists adding a twelfth or thirteenth AR15 to an existing collection.

Exhibit A would be that, while budget AR15's have disappeared from dealer shelves, there's no real shortage of lowers, lower receiver parts kits, or completed uppers at most of the vendors I've checked. You may not be able to buy a Ruger AR-556 or Smith M&P15 at your local gun store right now, but you can go to Palmetto State Armory or CDNN and buy the parts to build all the ARs you want.

That was not the case during the '08 or '13 panics, where stripped lowers were rationed and you couldn't find a LRPK or BCG for love nor money.

What this tells me is that the current wave of buyers is not largely made up of hobbyists fearing bans, but non-gun-owners wanting to buy a firearm for home defense. Those people don't know about buying a Poverty Pony lower from CDNN and a blem upper from PSA and rolling their own; they just know about going to the gun store and buying a gun.

The other signal is that the quintessential American Normie Home Defense Long Gun, the 12 gauge pump action, is selling like hotcakes and sometimes at crazy prices...

If you're looking at those prices and thinking "Hey, I've got that old Fuddblaster 28" Wingmaster I bought when I thought I might take up bird hunting. I should put a shorter barrel on that thing and Gunbroker it!" then I've got bad news for you, because it looks like you weren't the only person with that idea...

This reminds me that I need to change the batteries in the light on my own 870...
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Making the Gauge Better

True story: I've been an unabashed Magpul fangirl since back when all they made were...well, Magpuls. Every product they released seemed super clever, well-engineered, and was obviously designed by end-users. (It didn't hurt that their design aesthetic, both industrial- and graphic- was just tight.)

When the SGA first dropped, my heart sank a little. "Well, that's it. They've jumped the shark. A plastic shotgun stock? Well, I guess everyone's entitled to make one goofy product..."

Then I tried one. Now I won't use an 870 without it. I was wronger than dammit. It's got all the favorable attributes of a pistol grip stock and none of the drawbacks of one.

Toilet Paper Status: Protected.

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Rules of Engagement

There's an article up at SI right now to which I feel the need to offer a counterpoint.

It opens thusly:

"Precious few of the tactical-training courses I’ve taken devoted any amount of time to the art of stealth while defending the home. That’s mostly because being quiet and hiding doesn’t do much for participants who paid to shoot hundreds of rounds downrange while moving, reloading, diving for cover and yelling “Clear!” as they pie a room and take out a cardboard army of bad guys (not that there’s anything wrong with that)."

The entire article is about the need for stealth with one's home defense shotgun, and not making any noise as one moves about one's domicile while looking for intruders.

I'm going to totally avoid discussing the advisability of actively clearing one's house in search of a bad guy, as well as whether a long gun is the right firearm to use while doing so, and focus on the "stealth/don't give away your position" thing that is such a recurring subject in general home-defense advice.

To very loosely paraphrase a big city major crimes detective of my acquaintance who has investigated more than a few of these sorts of incidents, most of the time someone is in your house, it's because they think you aren't. (I mean, unless you live the sort of life where you have targeted assassination squads after you, and I'm afraid that that sort of thing is way, way outside of my lane.)

Lying silently in wait in the dark for someone to shoot is often a recipe for a Negative Outcome.

Alternatively, you could ask "Who's there?"

Even if it is a bad guy and not a family member, pet, or drunk neighbor, ensconcing oneself in a safe position, dialing 911, and loudly announcing that you have a gun and have called the cops is likely to save money for carpet cleaning bills and legal fees.

A friend quipped "What, and no advice to drag the body inside?", which was funny, but...y’know what? I got to thinking about that, and this is more pernicious than that.

“Jes’ drag ‘em inna house” is something that most non-dumb people who have watched some TV police procedurals can suss out for themselves as bad advice. It trips the BS detectors of all but the most clueless.

But this? This feels right exactly because it sounds like how ‘bad guy in the house’ scenarios play out in Hollywood. The bad guy is never a tweaker who’s after a watch and some jewelry and who bolts when they realize the homeowner is there and armed. (It’s also never the homeowner’s husband home a day early from a business trip.) It’s always some elite killer team or serial murderer who’s there specifically to get the homeowner. And why wouldn’t you want to hide and ambush those guys?

Darryl Bolke preaching the gospel of the gauge at Tac-Con '18. No running, diving, or cardboard armies of bad guys involved.

UPDATE: A clarification has been posted, which I am reproducing below.

"Editor’s Note: This column, running in the April 2019 Shooting Illustrated as “Stealthy Scatterguns,” spurred a few comments from readers who seem to have skimmed over the larger point of the article. At no point does this article suggest or intimate that homeowners ought to seek out criminals inside a home. At no point does this article suggest that homeowners ought to sneak up and shoot potential criminals unaware. At no point does the article say that stealth attacks are preferable to calling the police and holing up in a defensive position. It doesn’t say these things, because homeowners ought to call the police and retreat to a designated safe room. However, there are time when stealth and investigation remain prudent.

Unknown noises are a fact of life, and not every unknown noise will (or should) drive people to immediately retreat to a safe room while dialing 911. Law-enforcement officers will not be happy arriving to a suspected home invasion only to find that your storage bins in the garage fell over, particularly if this happens on a regular basis.

Additionally, even if a homeowner suspects a burglary or home invasion is taking place, children and other family members may be in other parts of the home. Getting children to a safe location is paramount before settling into a defensible location and announcing you are armed. Anyone who’s gathering information about an unknown noise or getting family to a safe spot inside the home would do well to move quietly.

We regret leaving room for incorrect inferences to be made, and that is entirely the fault of the editors."

Local readers...

Tomorrow evening is another "Introductory Self-Defense Shotgun" class at Indy Arms Company, the last one of the year.

These two- and four-hour evening and weekend classes are a real boon for people who can't scare up a free weekend and the dough for a hotel room and a two-day class.

What gun for Bigfoot?

There's been a discussion elsewhere on social media (as opposed to my blog, which is antisocial media) regarding the old shotgun vs. carbine for home defense question.

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.