The goal of this thread is to put forth and support the assertion that shotguns are not to be fielded in combat. I did not say home defense within ranges of 0-35yds, I am making the claim for combat scenarios only.
I realize this subject matter may conjure certain uncomfortable feelings in some folks, and it is not my intention to insult anyone's choice of firearm or opinion on the matter, but I think this is a good subject to raise in the spirit of learning more about firearms.
One last note: this posting geared to be a moderately technical/very technical thread, please post accordingly.
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Training and reality sometimes conflict. While the so-called “modern school” of the shotgun seeks to equip the weapon like a rifle (sights, slugs and choking), and promote its theoretical versatility due to ammunition types available, these notions are foolish. I will show you why. The shotgun comes into its niche in "expected" very close range fights, often in reduced light where the tempo of events does not favor traditional rifle marksmanship principles, and where devastating damage needs to be inflicted in as short a time as possible with minimum number of shots. An additional asset of the shotgun is that the nature of buckshot, and its pattern of impact, lends to hitting adversaries in time frames and in situations that might otherwise not allow hitting with a single projectile weapon such as a rifle. The rapidly decreasing velocity and low penetrative characteristics of the ammo tends to minimize collateral damage that may result from rifle fire. This above is what the shotgun is for, and what it has been used for since the first shotgunner picked up his smoothbore to go kill other men and it is what it will always be used for.
The current trend has been to say the shotgun is a versatile weapon. In truth, in combat and most situations it is not versatile at all. The fact that you can load it with a myriad of ammunition types is uninteresting since for shooting human adversaries there are really only two choices – buckshot or slugs. We have all heard the issue of using birdshot for home defense at some point. That may be an option for those who live in thickly populated apartments surrounded top to bottom with neighbors (but even in this scenario a fragmenting rifle projectile like M193 would be better suited for minimizing rounds entering a neighbor's apartment), or for use on the training range so target systems are better preserved. But bird shot is an extremely horrible choice for anything else and produces shallow flesh wounds even at close ranges, bird shot is designed to kill birds, not humans.
Similarly, the police issue of using less-than-lethal or gas rounds has little to do with anything outside that special purpose. Agencies that use such munitions now have specialized dedicated shotguns for them. For the private citizen gas rounds, breeching rounds, and/or less lethal rounds are typically useless. Why would you “bean bag” a man who is trying to shoot you? Even the police only use this sort of thing because of forced policy changes…and even then, only when accompanied by another officer armed with a real firearm. Few people will need to rely on door breeching rounds as I cannot think of a single self defense shooting that has required such a round. In the extreme case where you would need to breech a door, a rifle or a handgun can breech locks as effectively as a shotgun, the only reason the military uses the shotgun in Iraq/Afghanistan for breeching is due to restrictive policies intended to minimize collateral damage.
The specifics of using a shotgun in combat is problematic at best. The use of a shotgun in combat is a violation of the Hague Convention / Geneva Protocols (Convention), if you care about that sort of issue. Additionally, buckshot and slugs can be defeated by even the oldest of body armor, which is a problem as even the poorest countries equip their fighting forces with body armor (as well as a large number of criminals nowadays). Most combat shootings will be beyond 35 yards, outside of the reach of buckshot, according to the USMC M16 training manual the average infantry engagement is 120 to 230 meters --- which is well outside of the range of a shotgun. All these factors combine to tell you a shotgun is not a weapon of choice for combat duty, this is obviously why every military in the world goes to combat with rifles and only a very small handful of countries (most of them NATO members) allow shotguns on the battlefield for extremely limited roles. My biggest point of contention is the over-choking of the shotgun barrel. This is usually done in hopes of tightening the pattern’s impact at longer distances. The trade-off is that one will have in essence the same problem as if he was firing single projectiles. Rather than a fist-sized pattern impact at 15 yards, what we need is uniformity of pattern, and that does not require over-choking the barrel. It can obtained with the purchase of high quality ammunition.
Another point is the use of slugs. When Jeff Cooper began promoting the shotgun at his school in Paulden, AZ, he sought to convert the “erratic” shotgun into a weapon he understood better, the rifle. On came the ghost ring sights, in went the slugs and the chokes…even a shotgun shooting sling, all in the hope of reaching farther and hitting with greater precision…like a rifle. But no matter how you seek to equip a shotgun, it will never do as well at the mission of a rifle, as a real rifle. Eventually someone will ask the very pertinent question – “Why not just forget all of this and simply use a rifle?”
Why not indeed?!
Any attempt to make a shotgun do the rifle’s job makes for a poor rifle and a useless shotgun. Even the poorest rifleman can outshoot the best shotgunner in a rifle problem, and any off the rack shotgun can match the “modern technique” shotgun for true close range shotgun problems. So again…what is the point?
The only viable reason for this forced metamorphism would be for the poor cop whose agency has denied him the ability to have a rifle and must make do with the only long gun permitted: the shotgun. Or the similar situation of some oppressed subject living in a nation or state where rifles are prohibited, but shotguns are allowed. But I would say that those two situations are rather special cases. Unless they are the only folks interested in shotguns, we have left a great number of interested parties out of the discussion. For those with access to rifles, there is no need to so modify the shotgun trying to build a rifle. Doing so is akin to putting a Ferrari body on a Geo Metro chassis.
The natural choice in ammo for the shotgun is buckshot. Buckshot’s pattern impact allows you to hit adversaries in time frames and situations where you would probably miss with any other weapon. Rather than seeking to customize the shotgun to fulfill an impossible demand, we should focus instead on how to use it well and center the bad guy in the pattern of buckshot. Again, this allows you to hit him when you would otherwise miss. That, my friends, is what the shotgun is for. Can you do that with slugs? No.
Please feel free to post your facts, comments, opines, etc. There is more to come...
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Originally Posted by GodCountryCorps
"but the US never signed off and continued to field the weapon in the trenches.A friend that was 88M told me that the shotguns scared the hell out of the iraqis.also in vietnam many point guys carried shotguns .I talk to my uncle that was in the shit.
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