If you haven’t read part 1, part 2, and part 3, please go read them before you read part 4.

Through the joys of blogging and “suggested links” I stumbled upon a 3-part home defense series from Caleb/Ahab. Here are links to his part 1, part 2, and part 3. These dovetail perfectly into where I left off in my part 3, that equipment is important, but skills and mindset are more important.

I took a fantastic training course called Street & Vehicle Tactics, from InSights Training Center. When gun people take gun classes they want to shoot guns! But this class had no shooting whatsoever. Yes there was a lot of physicality and moving about, but most of what was taught was about mindset and tactics — it was all about using your gray matter. The course talks about Priorities of Survival:

1. Awareness and preparedness
2. Tactics
3. Skill
4. Equipment

This list is in order, and notice that equipment is at the bottom of the list. This does show that equipment does matter: if you have unreliable equipment, ineffective equipment, it’s going to affect your chances of survival. What has a greater impact on your chances of survival tho are the other listed factors. In fact, there’s a level of “force multiplication” involved here. What this means is as you go up the priorities list, your chances of survival multiply. Equipment gives you the least multiplier, awareness/preparedness gives you the greatest and could even compensate for all the others. The items at the top of the priority list will take you much further than the items at the bottom, and the more/better you can have of all the items, all the better for your chances of survival.

Going back to Caleb’s articles, let’s look at parts 1 and 3. In his part 1 Caleb discusses some good first lines of defense: checking the outside of your home and setting it up defensively (trimming back bushes, well-lit, fences); minding your doors and windows (solid, locked); having an alarm system (deterrent, notification system); the utility of a purposely-trained big dog; other things such as flashlights and mobile phones. What is this? awareness and preparedness. It’s being aware of your home situation: these bushes block this ground-level window, this tree next to the house comes close to that second-story window, there’s a dark spot over by the trash cans. It’s preparing your home: let’s trim back that bush, let’s get those tree limbs trimmed back, let’s install some floodlights around the trash can area, let’s repair the fence for Fido’s sake.  

In his part 3, Caleb talks about “the plan”. He discusses thinking ahead of time about what to do in a home-invasion situation. What to do, where to go, what role each member of the household has in the event — including children, where boundaries are. What is this? This is preparedness, and tactics. He has made a plan, it was made ahead of time, it could be thought through, and practiced. He is prepared. He has discussed the tactics: he arms and hunkers down, Mrs. Caleb removes herself from the line of fire and uses the mobile phone to dial 911 and report everything. A simple plan, but the tactics are worked out head of time. 

In his part 2, Caleb does talk about equipment. While he and I have arrived at a different set of equipment, that’s the equipment that works for him, and he offers some interesting alternative suggestions. One thing I would add is to look around your home and see what could be used in a pinch. For instance, I have a Vaughan SuperBar which would make a pretty ugly weapon.

The take-home message from this part of my series? While we love tools and equipment because it’s fun, tangible, and we just like tinkering with and talking about cool gadgets, it’s really the least important part of home defense or any type of self-defense. Your mindset and mental conditioning are the most important thing, and the more you can invest there, the further you will go.

If you have not read “On a home defense tool” (part 1) I suggest you go back and read that first. After reading that, you should then read part 2, then come back and read this part 3.

While some may discount The Box O’ Truth (e.g. exactly how scientific is it), there’s still some merit in what was presented — it’s still food for thought, especially regarding things like buckshot patterning. So on the topic of ammo, not only do we want something good enough to stop the bad guys, but we also want something that minimizes risk of over-penetration especially in a home-defense situation.

The reality is, if you want it to penetrate the bad guy enough to make them stop, it’s going to have some risk of over-penetration (e.g. ability to go through common household walls). But depending on your ammo choice you can have greater or reduced issues to deal with.

So let’s see what one of the top resources has to say about choice in .223 ammo. Or from Troy & Dr. Gary Roberts. Now granted, what they write there is .223/5.56x45mm specific, but based on part 1 and part 2 of this series you can see where my bias lies. Nevertheless, let’s look at what Dr. Gary Roberts, LCDR, USNR, Stanford University Medical Center. Dr. Roberts has performed much published research into this matter and is a well-respected man in this field.

Given the widespread availability of this information for over a decade, I am shockingly surprised to read about the “overpenetration” with “high powered assault rifles”. In this day and age anyone who is spouting this BS needs to be horsewhipped… Several respected organizations have done structural wall testing, including the FBI, CHP, and IWBA. In our IWBA and CHP testing, replicas of standard construction interior walls were fabricated using two pieces of 1/2″ thick dry wall cut in 12″ x 24″ segments and mounted four inches apart using 2 x 4″ fir studs and 1.5″ dry wall screws. Five rounds of each load were first fired into bare gelatin to serve as controls. Then 5 shots of each load were shot through interior wall segments into gelatin blocks placed a set distance behind the intermediate barriers–various distances have been tested, typically ranging from 1 to 10 feet.

Generally, common service caliber JHP bullets failed to expand and had very deep, excessive penetration after passing through the interior wall, due to plugging of the hollow point. With the hollow point plugged, the bullets performed nearly identically to FMJ pistol bullets. The terminal performance of the 12 ga. 00 buckshot and slugs was not altered by passing through interior wall replicas, with penetration and deformation nearly identical with their performance in bare gelatin. Likewise, .308 rounds were not usually effected by the presence of an interior wall intermediate barrier.

With one exception, the majority of the 5.56 mm/.223 loads, including M855 62 gr “green-tip” FMJ, which were fired through interior walls demonstrated either minimal changes in terminal performance compared with bare gelatin or reduced penetration. The major exception were 55 gr M193 style FMJ projectiles which exhibited minimal fragmentation and deformation after first passing through interior wall replicas and hence penetrated deeper than in bare gel. Since all of the 5.56 mm/.223 bullets fired through the interior wall had significantly less penetration than 9 mm, .40 S&W, .45 ACP, and 12 ga. shotgun projectiles which were fired through an interior wall, stray 5.56 mm/.223 bullets seem to offer a reduced risk of injuring innocent bystanders and an inherent reduced risk of civil litigation in situations where bullets miss their intended target and enter or exit structures. As such, 5.56mm/.223 caliber weapons may be safer to use in CQB situations and crowded urban environments than service caliber handguns or 12 ga. weapons.

Obviously, it is important to keep in mind that purpose built barrier blind 5.56 mm/.223 projectiles, such as the 55 & 62 gr Federal Tactical JSP’s and the Nosler 60 gr Partition, will offer deeper penetration than fragmenting designs and may exit.
 

So as you can see, there’s something to be said for 5.56/.223 loads in a home-defense situation. And what fires those loads? Generally, rifles. And what’s generally going to be a better rifle for a home-defense situation, with corners, narrow hallways, darkened rooms? Your AR-style platform, or perhaps an “M4-gery” because it’s a bit more compact.

While ammo selection is certainly important, while your choice of hardware is certainly important, I’d argue there’s something more important: a proper warrior mindset combined with proper training/instruction and practice.

Continue to Part 4.

If you have not read the first part of On a home defense tool, you should read that first so the following has context and makes more sense.

The following comes from John Holschen. The words and such are John’s, I’ve merely reformatted for HTML.

I’d like to share a few thoughts considering defensive long guns for your consideration.

I’ll start out by saying that a shotgun is my last choice to procure for employment as a defensive long gun. This is because:

1. It is heavy.
2. It’s manual of arms is relatively complex.
3. It’s recoil is more difficult to manage for quick follow up shots (as might be required for multiple threats).
4. It’s ammunition supply is relatively limited (this is not a critical factor in a typical home defense situation but it could become one in case of large scale civil disturbance).

Many people believe these drawbacks are offset due to various factors (which I believe are largely misconceptions), such as:

1. “You don’t have to aim a shotgun just point it in the direction of the bad guy and pull the trigger.” (This is often an allusion to the fact that an untrained person will be using the shotgun.)
   • Reality – At the “across the room” distances likely to be found in most houses the shot column has not opened up significantly (especially with “Buck” sized shot.) Therefore you must aim.
   • Reality — Due to numbers 2 and 3 above, the shotgun actually requires more training for many/most people to shoot well when compared to a rifle.
   • Reality — The very people that would benefit most from additional training (those with small stature and/or less upper body strength) don’t want to train much with a shotgun because of the recoil and the weight.
2. “Just the sound/appearance of a shotgun with dissuade attackers.”
   • Reality — In many situations it will not be tactically feasible to demonstrate either the sound or appearance of your weapon prior to using it.
   • Reality — Many/most bad guys aren’t switched-on enough for the type of gun you are using to even register with them.
   • And ultimately — I’m not willing to potentially decrease my effectiveness to potentially increase my bluffing power.
3. “The shotgun is the most versatile defensive/survival weapon.”
   • Reality — Yes it is versatile; if by that you mean you could use it to hunt birds and up to deer sized game animals with the right loads. However, I suggest that people make an honest assessment of how likely it is that they will need to hunt birds with their primary defensive weapon. Also please keep in mind that versatility does have trade-offs as mentioned above. (I won’t even discuss gas rounds, bean-bag rounds, bird-bombs, Taser rounds, etc., other than to say that private citizens show not even consider these as factors in choosing their primary defensive weaponry).
4. “The shotgun is less likely to over penetrate.”
   • Reality — A 5.56 mm rifle, with the proper ammunition, penetrates less through typical household construction than does 00 Buck.

I started by stating that the shotgun was my last choice to procure as a defensive weapon for my use. IT is even lower on my list of desired weapons for my wife and (adult) daughters to use. So what do I recommend for a defensive long gun? I suppose it will come as no surprise to most of you that my suggestions are:

1. A semi-auto rifle (read AR)
2. A semi-auto rifle (read AR)
3. A semi-auto rifle (read AR)

If I absolutely could not have a semi-auto rifle I would rather have a pump-action rifle (or a lever action rifle) than a shotgun.

Just my (somewhat informed) opinions.

Again, let me state that these are merely opinions. However, they are informed opinions from people with solid backgrounds to shape those opinions. In the end, pick what is right for your situation and context, get training, practice, and be prepared.

Continue to Part 3.