Shotgun Slugs for Home Defense

for anyone interested in using a shotgun as part of their home defense plan I typically recommend loading that shotgun with buckshot a lot of people have asked about using slugs instead or maybe even a couple of slugs handy on a sidesaddle to complement the buckshot so today I'm going to take a look at the shotgun slug and whether it might have a place in the context of home defense there are a number of different types of slugs but generally speaking a shotgun slug is a shell that fires one big projectile instead of a bunch of smaller ones like birdshot or buckshot slugs are really useful if we need to extend the range of the shotgun or in situations where penetration is really important double ought buck shot is the most common type of defensive shotgun ammo and it's very effective up to about 25 yards with a tight pattern you can maybe stretch it out to 40 or 50 beyond that there are much better options a slug will extend the shotguns range to at least 75 or 100 yards in situations where a rifle would be the ideal tool but for whatever reason a shotgun is what you have instead slugs can essentially turn that shotgun into a limited range rifle so if you think of your shotgun as a self-defense tool that you might use both inside and outside your home like if you have a large property to take care of having the option to use slugs might make some sense if we need to punch through a barrier a 12-gauge slug is one of the best tools we have available this is really useful for law enforcement because they often have to fight in and around cars and a slug will penetrate right through a car body or windshield far more consistently than buckshot or a handgun or a carbine so let's bring it back to the context of personal protection for the average arm civilian the shotgun is most commonly stored in the home and its intended use is limited to essentially hallway distances unless you live in a very large house I don't think a slug offers really any advantage over buckshot in that context buckshot is made specifically for short-range encounters like these when you just stop somebody right now at very close range buckshot lets you shoot them eight or nine times with one press of the trigger we don't need that range or penetration that we get from a slug when we're inside a home and in fact that can work against us whether or not a slug hits the intended target it can travel really far and go through a lot of stuff before it stops it's a huge liability because of its potential to sail right through exterior walls and still have plenty of energy left over to kill somebody there are no magic bullets any projectile you can fire through a shotgun or rifle or pistol that can physically disabled an attacker will also penetrate through a couple of pieces of drywall or plywood there's no getting around that interior wall penetration in particular is something we have to consider with any firearm or ammunition and that's a topic for another day but the penetration of a slug is on a whole different level we're not only concerned about somebody who might be in another bedroom in the house but we could also be putting people in the whole neighborhood at risk of course buckshot also carries the risk of hitting unintended targets not as much because of over penetration but more because of the spread of the shot now I wouldn't worry too much about having to take that tactical fantasy camp type hostage shot where the bad guy is ducking behind your family member and you can only see their eyeball but it's not unheard of for an armed citizen to be faced with a threat who is already in some kind of physical altercation with a family member it might be a shot that you're confident you can make but not if you're worried about a stray pellet hitting the wrong person this is just one reason it's really important to pattern the shotgun with our intended home defense load ahead of time and all that means is that we go out to the range and we shoot at a target to see what the spread looks like at various distances that match the distances inside our home this is something you really have to do yourself because each individual shotgun barrel is a little different and no two guns are guaranteed to pattern the same way with a particular load you can probably find several loads that won't spread much at all within typical home defense distances but if you want to minimize the spread there is a little shortcut federal flight control and hornady critical defense double-aught buckshot are both made with a special wad that holds the pellets together after they exit the barrel so that was almost any gun you're getting like a single two or three inch wide hole in the target at any distance up to about ten yards now that's thirty feet if you think about the inside of your home there probably aren't many places where you'd have to take a shot that's longer than that so even without a slug that could possibly exit our house at lethal velocities the shotgun can still be used to make a precision shot at close range if necessary choosing the right buckshot load gives us the ability to quickly stop a threat in the home without endangering anybody else [Music] oops

Channel: Lucky Gunner Ammo

Views: 863,485

Rating: 4.9038558 out of 5

Keywords: shotgun, home defense, self-defense, shotgun slugs, beretta 1301, federal flite control, 00 buckshot, 12 gauge, lucky gunner

Id: 9Az3X8prhJs

Length: 5min 30sec (330 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2017