.410 Shotgun for Home Defense.

I route here on the ranch today once again are talking about shotguns as a home defense gun today specifically 410 bore shotguns and the first thing I want to say is that a lot of people have asked to see a presentation on this subject and it is because of donations to the patreon account that I've finally been able to get a 410 shotgun and do it also in the near future I'll be able to obtain the 10 millimeter in 357 sig so many people have asked about so thank you everybody found the subject of home defense shotguns shotguns have been the mainstay of lien defense guns for many many decades it's only been recently that it's become trendy for people to say that they're inadequate to the task or that they suck for home defense this is why I have a presentation entitled shotguns don't suck for home defense I've also got one entitled birdshot in your home defense shotgun and then just an introduction to shotguns and because those are already out there I don't want to rehash a lot of the things that I've said it before so I'm going to give you the short version of a few things now in talking about the 410 bore as a home defense gun is it adequate to the task well the question really is why wouldn't it be let me show you some shot shells this is a 12-gauge 2 in 3/4 inch shell and if loaded properly I take it as axiomatic that it is sufficient for home defense this is a 20 gauge two and three-quarter inch shell and I stressed loaded properly it is absolutely adequate for home defense a 410 becomes questionable because it is a lot skinnier than the other 2 4 point 4 1 0 bore if you put a gauge number on it according to what I read it be 67 games it's got a lot less powder and shot than the other two even though this one is a three inch Magnum and it's a little longer the others it's still not nearly as much powder and shot now today I'm going to compare the 12-gauge tuinstra quarter-inch to the 410 3 inch Magnum because most of your personal protection ammunition for 410 is in 3 inch Magnum and I consider the 12-gauge 2 and 3/4 inch to be more common than the three or three and a half inch Magnum versions in home defense guns and generally speaking quite often better idea now the real question is two things is the 12-gauge really meant powerful in the 410 well that's a lot bigger and it holds more pellets this 410 shell has 5 pellets of triplet buck not triplet buck is just 36 caliber he made spheres this 12-gauge shell has 8 pellets well 8 is certainly more than 5 but is it really more powerful now what I mean is is they're really more velocity behind these pellets coming out of the 12-gauge round then there is coming out of the 410 is it pellet propel it more powerful and even if it is is the 410 powerful enough well let's shoot these two side-by-side and see if we can shed any light on this now the shotguns I'm going to use today is this Mossberg model 500 12-gauge with a 20 inch barrel and this Mossberg model 510 in 410 bore with an 18 and a half inch barrel so there's a little difference in the barrel lengths but I think it's close enough we can get a good feel for the comparative velocity now normally you see me shoot the chronograph from seven yards but due to the nature of shot shells I'm gonna shoot it from four yards this time and we'll start with the 12-gauge and I'm loaded with federal two and three-quarter inch triple OTT buck eight pellet 13:02 1288 $12.99 12:51 now let's see how that compares to the 410 now for the 410 I've got federal 410 three inch Magnum Tripp alot bucks five pellets nine hundred and sixty nine hundred and sixty nine hundred and sixty six nine hundred and fifty now let's go crunch the numbers sad we do well with the 12-gauge event a mean velocity one thousand two hundred and eighty five feet per second with a 410 we get nine hundred and fifty nine let's run it off to 960 that means the 12-gauge gave us a mean velocity of three hundred and twenty five feet per second more now granted the 410 does have a barrel that's an inch and a half shorter and that might give us a little less velocity but certainly doesn't account for three hundred and twenty-five feet per second less the 12-gauge is a lot more powerful and has more pellets now more pellets obviously means more holes in what you're shooting at but that's not all of the story there's also something we call hit probability now let me show you what I mean part of having greater pellet count is what we call the hit probability as your pattern goes downrange it spreads out and as the pattern gets fairly big more pellets will give you a denser pattern and a greater chance of hitting something so what I'm gonna do is go back 35 yards and I'll shoot the target on your left or the 12 gauge of your plot buck eight pellet and the target on your right with the 410 more triple op buck five pellet now it would stand to reason that with more pellets there'll be more impacts on this target but remember the 410 is coming out of a much smaller bore and it's gonna have a whole lot tighter pattern when it starts out so let's see if the higher pellet count of the 12-gauge does us any good so with our 12-gauge on our silhouette we have 11 impacts and with a 410 we only have 7 so I'd say the higher pellet count definitely did us some good however this is at 35 yards and unless your name happens to be Bill Gates or Paul Allen you probably don't have any 35 yard distances inside your house let's try this same drill it a little more realistic distance now I'll shoot the target on your left with the 12-gauge and the target on your right with a 410 but from a distance of 5 yards and there you have it that's all eight pellets in the center of that target one big hit that didn't go through that's the shotgun with the 410 that's all 5 pellets in the red center of that target the one hit that's high is again the shot Cup which brings up the debate can the shot cup or wide in a shot shell do any real damage in this case neither one even went through the paper now it would get hurt if you got hit by it but I think it's not really relevant next to getting hit with 5 pellets of buckshot also you'll hear people to talk about how the degree of choke in a shotgun barrel will affect the pattern spread it absolutely does but the short distances of typical home defense shootings it doesn't really make any difference this gun has an improved cylinder bore barrel and eight pellets are still in the center but as far as comparing the 12-gauge to the 410 we can say that at typical home defense distances eight pellets versus five did not make any difference at all in hit probability so we see it 35 yards granted an excessive distance when you're talking about in defense the 12-gauge with eight pellets per shell puts more hits on target than the 410 with five pellets per shell even though the 410 I was using has a modified choke it has more choke than the improved cylinder bore the 12-gauge I was using in this case that just does not Trump pellet count now speaking of pellet count can you get 410 ammo with more pellets yes here's some 410 ammo that is number four buckshot it has nine pellets but compared to 12-gauge here's some 12-gauge two and three-quarter inch number four buckshot with 34 pellets there's also some even by with 27 so no matter how you slice it the twelve gauges pellet count is going to give you greater hits at long distances now at the much more realistic distance of five yards we see it doesn't matter what your pellet count or your choke is it's going to be such a tight pattern that as far as hit probability goes it won't really make any difference but you certainly could argue that hitting the intended target with eight pellets triple a buck is going to be more effective than hitting the target with five pellets that sounds logical especially when those pellets are propelled out of the 12-gauge at 325 feet per second greater than they are out of the 410 well right about now is when someone's gonna argue if you're gonna use a 410 why not just use the tourist judge revolver well there's a couple of things there first the very short barrel out of the judge revolvers will at close distances give you a little bit greater spread but not enough so to enhance your hit probability while at distances like 35 yards those pellets have spread out so much that very few of them will hit the intended target there's also the matter of out of the very short barrel the judge has you lose a lot of velocity now I tried to cronograph it but the patterns that you get with buckshot out of the judge does not give you a really good reading in the chronograph but here's a box of 4/10 three inch Magnum triple lock buck that's advertised to be used in a handgun and it's got an advertised velocity of 775 feet per second printed on the box and in previous demonstrations we've seen that the advertised velocity on the box is quite often optimistic you're probably going to get less than the 775 so with our 12-gauge propelling triplet buck at 12 85 and the 410 shotgun at 960 when you go down 200 feet per second less than that you're really robbing yourself of a lot of power now people would argue that you could use the judge revolver loaded with slugs or conventional 45 cold ammunition you could do that you certainly can't load your portends shotgun with 45 cold ammunition that's not a good idea at all but if you're going to load your revolver with 45 Colding then just get a conventional revolver and use conventional ammunition and go with that so are there any really good reasons that someone would select a 410 shotgun for home defense yes a couple of them let me show you one of the advantages the 410 can give you is a lot less recoil now I'll shoot both and we'll see if you can perceive any difference in the recoil a lot less recoil even though the 410 is a much lighter much smaller gun and the advantage of it being much smaller is that you can use it in tight spaces like inside your house and the advantage of a much lighter much smaller gun is also that it can be used by a much lighter much smaller person as effective as the 12-gauge not by any measure but is it effective enough looks okay to me now let's try something else now here's the definitive test for our 410 shotgun the meet target now for those who haven't seen it it's a pork steak to simulate a pectoral muscle followed by pork ribs our watermelon lung tissue more pork ribs on the back we'll cover it with our leather jacket skin a lining of the leather jacket will act as rudimentary clothing we've got our fleece bullet stop behind it and we'll shoot it from 7 yards with our federal 410 3 inch Magnum triplet buck 5 pellet let's see what happens so how'd we do well at 7 yards those buckshot pellets did not spread out at all they just made one big hole through our pork steak one hole through our ribs hit a rib and broke it one big hole in our watermelon chewed up the inside of the watermelon a little bit then one hole out the ribs on the back went through to the 15th layer of fleece where I found all five pellets together now by contrast when we shoot the meat target with 9-millimeter 40 Smith & Wesson or 45 acp hollow points those bullets are almost always stopped by the first layer of fleece and this buckshot went through to the 15th so it seems like we have a good seneschal for overpenetration and really no spread in the shot pattern and moderate damage so let's set up another meet target and shoot it again and see what happens now we've got a new meet target setup and I'll shoot it with another round of the federal 410 three inch Magnum Tripp a lot about five pellet but this time I'll shoot from ten yards and we'll see if we can get that pattern to spread out a little bit and see what happens so how do we do well at 10 yards the pattern spread out just a little bit so when we hit our pork steak on the front chewed it up a little in the ribs where they hit the ribs broke them and you can see how the pattern is spread out just a little bit more on the watermelon so the interior of the watermelon is chewed up quite a bit more now the ribs on the back you see three exit holes because three of the pellets are still really close together and then two more spread out a little bit but the biggest difference is in shooting at 10 yards instead of seven allowing that pattern to spread out just a little meant that all of five of the projectiles were stopped by the leather jacket skin on the back or the first layer of fleece so we get more damage and less penetration unfortunately ten yards is probably a lot farther than you've really shoot in a home defense situation seven is more realistic and four or five is more realistic than that now you may have seen our presentation on birdshot in your home defense shotgun and a heavy load of birdshot and something like 12-gauge can do a lot of damage at close range but what will it do out of a 410 well I'm gonna go back five yards and I'm gonna shoot this with federal four ten three inch Magnum eleven sixteenths ounce of number six led birdshot let's see what happens well for as tight as the buckshot pattern was at seven yards the birdshot pattern at five yards is by comparison huge and although it peppered our pork steak pectoral really well most of the pellets were stopped in the ribs a lot of them are just stuck in the rind of the watermelon and you go through and there's a few that got in there and I'm seeing a few that got through almost to the back but none actually went out the back of the watermelon so for as effective as the for 10bux shot can be I'd say the birdshot is questionable at best so what's the take away of everything we've seen today well the 410 does have some advantages significantly less recoil than the bigger guns and depending on which model of 410 shotgun you buy you can get a gun that's very short light and maneuverable but the big question is is it powerful enough to be a viable home defense shotgun well although I'm aware of a couple of cases where people have murdered each other with 410 shotguns that were loaded with birdshot I'm gonna say the birdshot was not sufficient but I was impressed by the performance of the triple lot buckshot against the meat target that had a lot of penetration and did a significant amount of damage but is it powerful enough to be used as your home defense shotgun nobody can decide that for you except you now there's one other thing I want to add to today's presentation I owned Mossberg shotguns have shot a lot of them over the years and had a lot of success with them but I do not want today's presentation to be inferred as an endorsement of the Mossberg model 510 410 shotgun I'm really kind of disappointed in it I found that the action is rough and when it goes to loading it it's really awkward to get those 410 shells into the tube not only that even though I've taken the plug out of this tube this guns capacity with the 3-inch ammunition is only two plus one and granted in a home defense shooting where the gun in question is a shotgun the most common number of rounds to be fired is one or two so three should be sufficient but I was still kind of disappointed when I'm accustomed to dealing with Mossberg that have a capacity of six plus one when it comes to three-inch magnum ammunition so as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the 410 shotgun video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 1,778,675

Rating: 4.9098177 out of 5

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Id: BQD77feU-rY

Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2017