Double Barreled Shotguns for Home Defense.

I route on the range today so bear with gunfire you hear in the background today once again we're talking about shotguns but specifically double-barreled shotguns and even more specifically their role as a home defense firearm now when I say that immediately people ask why why would you choose a double in a world of autoloaders or pumps like this one that with standards can hold seven plus one why would you shoot a two shot double-barrel well there's several reasons you might choose one but quite often it's not so much that you chose a double as much as the situation chose it for you let me see if I can explain that first is economics doubles today can be quite expensive but traditionally they've been quite a bit less expensive than pumps or Auto loaders and a lot of people bought them for that reason and a lot of people still have them for that reason or because they inherited them or something like that quite often you would choose a double just as a matter of economics side note to that there's a lot of people that tout themselves as experts or instructors or whatever and anytime they want to give you advice it always starts with first you should spend thousands of dollars the reality is not everyone can afford thousand-dollar guns and one of the cornerstones of my approach to almost everything is the notion that you don't have to have the latest greatest highest tech thing to get the job done and so a double if that's what you have because economics dictated that don't despair it can be highly effective the other reason that the gun may be chosen for you is your local gun laws but here in the u.s. gun laws can vary greatly from one state or province to another from one County or Shire to another from one municipality to another gun laws can vary a great deal for those of us who've been around guns for a long time we know that those gun laws were put in place for our protection by wise and altruistic politicians but to the uninitiated gun laws can seem ineffective arbitrary sometimes downright nonsensical let me see if I can illustrate that point here in the United States there's places where it's perfectly legal to own a firearm like this but you're prohibited from owning a dog and bigger than this one while in some places in the world like let's say Ireland a gun like this is about the highest tech gun you're allowed to have but you can have a dog like this and in case you're curious it weighs nine stone see what I mean so sometimes the double might be chosen for you by the laws of wherever you live and if that's the case again don't despair a double can be quite effective so let's put some of these guns through their paces and see if we can shed some light on just how good a double can be so can a double-barrel shotgun be effective looks pretty effective to me one of the biggest advantages of a pump is that it holds a lot more rough let's try that with a double and see how it compares well the pump makes pretty short work of this 6 plate drill obviously with the double that's going to be a little slower but one of the big advantages of a double is how simple it is to operate at least for the first two rounds all you have to do is take the safety off pull one trigger and then the other in fact some doubles only have one trigger you just pull it twice this can be a big advantage if you have several people in your home that you think all might have to use this gun at one time or another and because it's so simple it can be a very easy gun to operate the real downside is when it comes to trying to reload a double in a hurry that can be very technique sensitive and to be perfectly honest it's a technique I have not practiced that much but let's see how well I can do on this 6 plate drill with the double obviously not near as fast as the pump but I bet it was a little faster than you thought it would be so a double can have some advantages and some disadvantages the primary disadvantage being a slower rate of fire although reloading that can be faster than might think and I'll tell you if you really put some effort into practicing it pretty much anybody can do it faster than I can but what other advantages if any are there to a double there are a few let me show you a couple this Stoeger coach gun has 20-inch barrels this Mossberg 500 has a 20-inch barrel and it's been equipped with an aftermarket stock to make it shorter than it was originally but still even though the barrel length is the same it's quite a bit longer than the double this Springfield Armory double has 18-inch barrels this winchester 97 has an 18 inch barrel and a stock that's a lot shorter than this again the overall length of the double is just quite a bit less now is that difference really enough to make a difference that depends on you another advantage when you're talking about the overall length of a double is but because it's overall shorter people a very short stature like the lady that owns this particular gun can shoot a double a whole lot easier then she can reach her short little Tyrannosaur arms out there to work this pump another thing a double can do is because it has two barrels you can have two different types of ammo and you can select which one you want to fire generally speaking I'm going to tell you that's probably something you don't want to do but if that works for your situation it's an option until you and speaking of different types of ammo a lot of people want to shoot slugs through their shotgun again generally speaking for home defense that's not really the type of projectile you want but that's what some people want to shoot and shooting slugs through a double has a couple of very serious concerns let me show you what I mean when it comes to shooting slugs thing you gotta realize that most shotguns do not have adjustable sights they just have a B when it comes to shooting a pump or an auto loader and slugs most of the time the slugs will hit somewhere pretty close to where the bead is oriented now let's take this Mossberg 500 with slugs we'll go back 25 yards and we'll shoot this target and see how close to the center we hit so how did we do well they hold a fairly good group but you can see they're a little high from the point of aim and that's just something I have to overcome with my particular shotgun so you got to know we're slugs head out of your shotgun but how will that compare to a double barrel let's find out now the thing with the double barrel is you've got one bead and two barrels and if you shoot birdshot or buckshot those two barrels will hit pretty much in the same place in most guns but most double barrels are not regulated to shoot slugs and so your two barrels may not hit in the same place so let's go back 25 yards we'll slowed with slugs and we'll shoot our right barrel at our right target our left Marilyn our left target now let's see what kind of groups we get so how did we do well first of all these are the impacts these other two are just where the wads hit but as you can see the right barrel in the left barrel do not hit in the same place with this particular Rossi coach gun my left barrels dead on but not all guns will be like that you'd have to pattern your own individual gun but the main thing here is to remember that in a double shooting slugs the right and the left don't always hit in the same place in fact they rarely do now remember we're shooting at 25 yards in a real home defense situation five yards would be more typical and so this far off at 25 at five wouldn't make the least bit of difference all that having been said you got to remember though that slugs are probably not what you want in a home defense situation mainly due to their tendency for great over penetration but what can you use that would hit like a slug be a single projectile like a slug and not over penetrate so much let me show you something now this is a conventional 12-gauge slug is just one big bullet what I'm doing right now is making this shot shell into a slug or what sometimes called a cut shell and all you do is cut the shell all the way through the plastic down here just above the brass and you have to cut it to where you've severed almost the entire shell you have to keep just a little intact so the shell doesn't fall apart the result will be that when you shoot this the entirety of the front part of the shell will come out and it will fly through the air as one projectile very similar to what a Glaser safety slug does but when it hits instead of having terrible over penetration like a slug does the shot will disperse and when you're done what you'll actually extract from your gun will be something like this so what we've got here is two targets and two cinder blocks now we'll shoot the one on your left with a conventional slug and after the slug goes through our intended target we'll see how much over penetration damage we get to our cinder block well shoot the one on your right with the cut shell and after it goes through that we'll see how much over penetration damage we get to this cinder block so how did we do well both of our soda jugs thoroughly destroyed but the conventional slug also put a big hole in this cinder block as where the cut shell didn't hardly make a mark on this cinder block so you can see that with the cut shell you get the singular projectile effect but without the tendency for over penetration now we've seen it with our double-barreled shotgun slugs can shoot accurately well how accurately will these cut shells shoot let's go back 25 yards and we'll still shoot our left barrel but we'll shoot our right hand target and see what kind of accuracy we get now keep in mind they may not hit in the same place the conventional slugs did but let's see how good a group we well how'd we do particularly not worth a damn now you see there's some pellet impacts to wear one of those cut shells came apart a little bit in flight but the others didn't even hit the target they were so far off they didn't hit anything so let's go back to about seven yards and we'll shoot one more and see if we can at least keep it on the target from 7 yards well after looking at this target a little more closely we saw that at 25 yards one of them actually did make the edge of it but still the accuracy of those was extremely poor however as you can see at 7 yards the accuracy album does just fine so cut shells can be extremely effective if they're shot at pretty close ranges keep that in mind now there's a couple of caveats that come with cut shells one don't use them in pumps or autoloaders they're notorious for malfunctioning they may be dangerous also so I'm told there are places in the world where conventional shotgun slugs are illegal if so you may be violating your local laws by creating a cut shell and in fact making a slug type projectile so before you go making such things check with your solicitor and make sure you're not violating your local laws so if we shed any light on the value of a double-barrel as a home defense gun well they do have some advantages economically legally and in their compactness and their simplicity they can give you advantages over pumps or autoloaders the big disadvantage they have is of course their lack of magazine capacity and their lack of rate of fire which we have shown you can in fact reload and keep shooting a double-barrel faster than you may have thought and the fact that they only hold two shots you know most of the time in a home defense scenario using only one or two shots with a shotgun will get the job done I do presentations like this occasionally and occasionally all say something like two shots is usually enough and when I do there's always somebody that takes umbrage to that and asks the question well in what scenario with two shots me enough and the answer is the scenarios that take place in real life not in Halo or Call of Duty or Super Mario Brothers or whatever other game you're playing check news stories police reports any one of the many different news things you can see on YouTube and you will see it's very common that in a home defense situation where a shotgun is the gun in question one or two shots does defuse the situation not always certainly but then you could argue that there are times that thirty shots doesn't defuse the situation another thing about double barrels as compared to pumps or Auto loaders is there are people that have this idea that with a gun like this you can work the slide and that has this overwhelming psychological effect and that will deter criminals pretty much anybody that knows anything will tell you that's not true that just doesn't work the idea that you're going to show somebody a firearm that you think is overwhelmingly impressive in its appearance and that will dissuade them from doing a bad thing most of the time just doesn't work any exception to that might be perhaps if you had a flamethrower or something like that but that having been said I'd have to say that if that phenomena were to occur if there were ever a gun that the appearance of which would dissuade people the double-barreled shotgun is probably that gun so bottom line to the whole thing is if your situation has dictated that a double-barrel is what you have don't despair it's probably going to be plenty and there can be no debate of the statement that it sure beats the hell out of nothing so as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching double barrels as a home defense gun video

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 618,522

Keywords:

Id: Prziwvjq46g

Length: 17min 15sec (1035 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2016