Considerations For Defensive Shotgun Sales

Even before the significant boost brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent protests sweeping the country, the defensive shotgun market was far from dead. Below are some subtleties — and selling points — to keep in mind for your customers.

Why might a customer choose the scattergun over the ever-popular AR? Well, massive stopping power — for one thing. Fear (realistic or not) of rifle rounds over-penetrating and endangering loved ones in the household should a firefight take place against home invaders. Cost factors. And, for many, the fear of anti-gun legislation coming to pass (if it hasn’t in their home jurisdiction already) banning so-called “assault rifles.” (Or enacting restrictions on magazine capacity, which make such arms so advantageous to righteous defenders.)

The Most Often Missed Element

I’ve been teaching the combat shotgun to police since 1972 and to law-abiding private citizens since the early 1980s. The single biggest mistake in shotgun selection I’ve seen from both sectors is getting a full-size option for those smaller-statured defenders.

If we think about it, the home-defense shotgun and the police patrol car shotgun have something in common: each is a “pool weapon.” That is, the police shotgun is generally assigned to a single patrol vehicle and on a given three-shift day, three different officers may have to access the exact same gun — which could be even six different officers if they work two per car. Those officers may range from barely 5′ tall with proportional length arms, and scarcely 100 lbs., to large males who look and weigh more like Hulk Hogan.

Something very similar happens in the home-defense context. The home-defense gun is generally stored in one place, not carried constantly on the householder’s person. It may be accessed by a number of different people whom the family has deemed competent and authorized to use a gun in the extreme emergency of a violent home invasion. Those family members may range from a frail grandmother with arthritis to the aforementioned Hulk Hogan clone.

Historically, the police firearms instructors who selected the issue weapons and the member of the household who bought the home-defense shotgun were both big, strong alpha males who ordered the best-performing guns for them in testing, and delivered the most firepower downrange. With long stocks, they proved to be awkward — sometimes impossibly so — for smaller people expected to use them. They kicked so bad and proved so hard to shoot well with heavy anti-personnel loads the people who needed them in emergencies were hesitant to use them because they were afraid of their own defensive tools.

Thus, an important point for home-defense buyers with families: consider a shotgun that fits the smallest person authorized to use it! The short “youth stock” is easy for a smaller person with shorter arms to adapt to, and no trick for the larger user to adapt to. But a gun built for a larger person, when used by a smaller one, forces them to lean back at the shoulder to hold it up, and the recoil of a powerful shotgun load kicks them off balance. Remember when you were a little kid, fired Daddy’s 12-ga. and it knocked you flat on your butt? Yeah, like that.

Ammo & Accessories

Beware the old shibboleth of “use birdshot for home defense, it won’t go through the walls and endanger the kids but it’ll blow the heck out of the bad guys.” At very close range, tiny buckshot pellets can create a hellacious “rat-hole” wound when they strike en masse, but firing down the length of a hallway will have spread enough that none of the pellets has the power to drive deep into a big attacker standing sideways and wearing heavy clothing. (And anything able to punch deep enough into a big man’s body to neutralize him will still go through sheetrock walls.) Rifled slugs are too likely to over-penetrate, even on a center hit. Buckshot is the middle ground today’s experts recommend.

For better hit potential, consider the lighter-kicking 20-ga. shotgun for faster recoil recovery. Also look at sight options, from Aimpoint and similar red dot optics to the fast, yet precise, Advantage Tactical Pyramid Sight that attaches behind the muzzle.

Dealers, what other considerations would you add here in the wake of renewed interest in home-defense shotguns? What trends have you observed while selling them to concerned customers?
Send the SI team an email:
comments@shootingindustry.com.

Click To Read More Shooting Industry August 2020 Issue Now!