Copyright © 2002 by DTI Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
So, there you are. You are facing four gang members across the street. They are armed with knives and pistols which they are brandishing in a reckless and threatening manner. In fact, they are shouting threats as they point their weapons at you. They apparently think you may have something they want. The range is forty meters. They know, as do you, that the police aren’t coming and that no one is going to help you. This is no fantasy. It has actually happened to perfectly ordinary people, and it happens all too often.
They are all standing together, and it looks as if a vicious physical attack is imminent. They start to move toward you, continuing to point their weapons in your direction. You draw your pistol and issue several verbal commands for them to stay away, but your warnings are contemptuously ignored. You are very apprehensive, not only for your own safety but for that of other family members in the house.
Option One: You draw your pistol and bring it up on target (the biggest one) and start firing. If you have been adequately trained by us or other competent instructors, you will probably be successful in hitting the first one your front sight finds, but, before firing, you will have to allow them to come within range. Moreover, even at twenty-five meters (maximum pistol range under these circumstances), and even if you are very proficient, you are still going to have to slow way down on the trigger in order to assure a first-round hit. It can be done, but it’s not a cinch. If you panic and shoot too fast, you’ll lapse into the deadly “rhythm of missing.” Once that happens, accurate shooting is unimaginable, and victory is inevitably lost. Self control is the key.
We’ll say you are successful and hit the first one! He staggers, curses you, but remains on his feet. Unfortunately, it is difficult for you to be sure whether he is fatally wounded, slightly wounded, or merely startled and not wounded at all. His surprised accomplices, seeing what has just happened, dive for cover. By the time you recover and reset your trigger, the easy targets are all gone. You, of course, move to cover also. Now we have one (hopefully) wounded attacker and three others who have not been wounded and are now behind cover and prepared to return fire. What follows will be a protracted gun battle. You may prevail, but the skirmish will be drawn out, and they may get reinforcements. You probably won’t.
Unfortunately, merely scattering a group of attackers does not automatically solve your problem. In fact, it often makes matters worse. Pistols are suitable for typical personal defense in what we call a “domestic defensive situation,” where your opponent is usually a single pathetic unorganized punk. However, as you can see, when pitted against well- armed ordered and determined attackers, you may quickly and unhappily realize just how limited handguns actually are.
Option Two: Same situation, but this time you are armed with an autoloading or pump shotgun and are holding it in what we call the “depressed/ready position.” There is already a round (00 buckshot) chambered. The magazine tube is fully charged, and the manual safety is already off. The attackers once more have not been impressed with your verbal commands nor with the presentation of the shotgun nor with the characteristic sound associated with a round being chambered. They obviously think you’re bluffing1. They couldn’t be more wrong!
You quickly bring the weapon to eye level, but, knowing the range limitations of buckshot, you again prudently wait until they come within effective range. When they cross the twenty-five-meter line, you put the front sight on the biggest one and press the trigger. The hoodlum is struck in the upper torso by your buckshot pattern. All nine pellets impact in his trunk. Once again, he staggers, but this time he drops to the ground quickly with multiple fatal wounds. He loses consciousness in a few seconds (much faster than is typical with handgun wounds). His startled companions lunge for the nearest utility pole. You do the same, but not before you recover and get off one more, deadly shot. Several of your buckshot pellets strike a second suspect, seriously injuring him.
Once again, you now find yourself in a protracted gun battle, but this time the gang of felons has been more decisively weakened than was the case with the handgun. You are still alive and able to defend yourself, but the gang, though unnerved and grievously damaged, is nonetheless still capable of additional offensive action. This time, you were able to get a second thug as he was starting to move, because, at that range, the recovery time with your shotgun is shorter than is the case with a pistol. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that you will get all of them in the initial engagement.
Buckshot from a shotgun offers no real range advantage over bullets from a pistol. The legitimate usefulness of both pistols and shotguns (loaded with buckshot) seldom extends beyond twenty-five meters.
In order to put people down quickly, all nine (00 buckshot) pellets need to hit the target simultaneously. At twenty-five meters and beyond, the pellets from most shotguns have spread apart to the point where some of them will miss a standing person, even if the bulk of them hit. A hit by even one 00 buckshot pellet will smart, to be sure, but it is best if all hit at once.
Buckshot smaller than 00 has an even lesser maximum effective range and is less effective when it hits. The advantage of using 00 buckshot, and the reason I have it in my shotgun right now, is that it is incredibly lethal, far more lethal than any pistol round and even many rifle rounds. People struck with buckshot in nearly any part of the torso go down quickly and rarely get up. Trauma surgeons describe most buckshot wounds to the torso as “non-survivable.”
If your shotgun were loaded exclusively with slugs, the situation may have improved slightly, because slugs can be accurately fired at human targets out to eighty meters, sometimes even further. Shotgun slugs are also very lethal, but they have a recovery-time problem. Slugs are heavy, and the recoil is such that it takes time to bring the front sight back on the target after discharge. Big people find this easier than small people, but everyone finds it challenging to one degree or another.
A further problem is practice. In order to become proficient in shooting slugs from a shotgun, one must practice continuously. That means you are going to have to shoot a lot of slugs. Many people are not going to do that, because the recoil is disagreeable for all, punishing for many.
Most shotguns have smooth bores, but some now feature rifled barrels, which, in some cases, can extend the useful range of slugs out to two hundred meters! Rifling in shotgun barrels is, however, much more benign than that found in barrels of military rifles. The twist rate of shotgun barrel rifling is typically one full turn in thirty-five inches, one third of the twist rate typically found in military rifle barrels. Unfortunately, rifled shotgun barrels are not usable with buckshot, because they sling the pellets in a circle, leaving the center of the pattern vacant. Rifled-barrel shotguns are obviously suitable for use with slugs exclusively.
Option Three: Same situation, but this time you are armed with an autoloading rifle in medium caliber, 5.56mm x 45 (223 Remington) or 7.62mm x 39, Soviet. You may even be armed with an autoloading rifle in heavy caliber, 7.62mm x 51 (308 Winchester). The weapon is in the depressed/ready position and once again, the bad guys are not impressed with anything you’ve done so far and continue to move toward you, threatening and pointing their weapons in your direction. As in the previous scenarios, they think you’re bluffing. They couldn’t be more wrong!
When you decide to fire this time, you do not wait for them to come into pistol or shotgun range. You bring the weapon up to eye level as you push off the manual safety, simultaneously locking onto the first target. He is forty meters distant. You press the trigger without delay. He is hit dead-center and goes down like a rock! Using a rifle, you recover in the blink of an eye, lock onto the second target, reset the trigger, and fire immediately. The second thug also drops like a rock; the same with the third and fourth.
It happens so fast, the astonished criminals all have fatal wounds before they can effectively seek cover or are able to get close enough to you to pose a crucial threat with their pistols. In the span of five and one half seconds, you have inflicted four lethal wounds before any of the gangsters fully realized what was happening or could return fire effectively. The third bad guy was wearing soft body armor, but to no avail. The rifle bullet goes right through it and still delivers a fatal wound. They all go down straightaway. None of them gets up. They are all dead before they ever knew what hit them.
This time, there was no protracted gun battle. The fight was over before the losers knew there was one! What made the difference was the rifle’s ability to effectively engage targets at extended ranges, quick recovery time, expeditious and deadly-accurate sighting system, and the high-energy, high-velocity projectiles. In my experience in Vietnam, I saw many hundreds of people hit with M-16 rounds (5.56x45). I also saw dozens of people hit with M-60 machine gun (7.62x51) rounds. In all cases I observed, upon being struck, the people went right down, right now! I never saw any of them get back up. You will not get that kind of terminal effect from any pistol.
You need to understand that, when you are attacked, the assault is taking place for two reasons: (1) The attackers believe they have something to gain, and (2) You are where the attackers want you to be. Criminals typically stalk their victims until the victim enters the place where they are weakest, then the stalk gives way to the attack. The bad guys wouldn’t be pressing the attack if you were not where they wanted you to be.
Thus, just getting to a place where the attackers do not want you (such as a strong, covered position) may well end the affair then and there. Anyone can be successfully attacked, provided the attackers are willing to pay the price. You therefore need to make the price so high, that no sane attacker will press the issue.
What is described above is the kind of situation where a courageous and well-trained person with a good rifle or shotgun will smoothly do what he or she could not do nearly as well or easily with a pistol. This, I hope you agree, is the kind of situation for which we all ought to be prepared.
And, it is with the intention of at least partially preparing you, the reader, to effectively deal with the likes of the forgoing scenario, the most desperate and compelling of personal security circumstances, that this book has been written. I hope you find it informative and worthwhile, but understand that, informative as this book may be, you still need to supplement it with competent hands-on training. You need to come to one of our courses!
Emphasis throughout this book is on defensive confrontational shooting in a domestic environment, not military shooting in a war environment. We are not going to talk about setting up ambushes or shooting people who are posing no threat to us.
The emphasis here is on defensive longarm handling and shooting skills, designed to enable you to live with and handle guns safely and preserve your own life and the lives of friends and family members in your charge, in the face of an imminent, substantive and felonious physical threat by a criminal or criminals. In your life as a gun owner and gun carrier, you will talk with far more people than you will shoot. Good confrontational skills and posturing are therefore as important as good shooting and tactical skills.
Remember, a superior gunman is best defined as one who regularly uses his superior judgement and communication skills, so he doesn’t find himself in situations which require the use of his superior gun and tactical skills!
Copyright © 2002 by DTI Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.