Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| Member |
hudr asked the right questions. And the pump shotgun makes great deal of sense for newbies. Practice with cheap low brass with easy recoil for kids and chix. Buckshot loads for short range defense. Rifle sights and slugs make for a 50 to 75 yard rifle. Buy used and use the money saved for ammo for practice. For handguns, I tell newbies to invest in a K/L Frame S&W or GP100. End of Earth: 2 Miles Upper Peninsula: 4 Miles | |||
|
Member |
Agreed. Do SOME practice with a GP100 until you're not afraid of it and you don't point it the hell all around and at everyone around you, and you might make out OK. A semi pistol or rifle ? Hell no. Too much is going on and to manipulate for a non-gun person. Revolvers rule in this regard. Even more so than a shotgun, even with pumps, as some pumps can be short-shucked, you can forget to shuck in the heat of the moment, etc. But a revolver is simple, point and pull. That's it. Everything else for a non-gun person is asking for trouble under stress let alone cutting those guys loose on a public gun range unsupervised. When was the last time you felt comfortable with a non-gun person handling an AR on your line of fire at the range ? Lover of the US Constitution Wile E. Coyote School of DIY Disaster | |||
|
Happily Retired |
You pretty much have to have the AR. After that a Mossberg pump with buckshot and then a reliable .45, preferably Colt. He didn't mention concealed carry which is why I went with the .45. .....never marry a woman who is mean to your waitress. | |||
|
Objectively Reasonable |
The speed with which we can take a trainee from "Never held an 870 before, never shot a long gun before, and in many cases never shot ANYTHING before last week" to "Scary confident, fast, and accurate" astonishes me every time. I grew up with pump action guns so I'm biased, and concede that there are things a AR-15 can do that my 870 can't. But the learning curve on a pump-action shotgun can be so short, so easily maintained, and so cheap to feed that I'm in the Remington 870 / Mossberg 590 / etc camp also. The benefits outweigh the disadvantages for that application, IMHO. | |||
|
Member |
The only problem is aiming. In a stressful situation, someone who has shot a couple hundred rounds, lifetime, through a revolver doesn't have great odds of actually putting rounds on target, even across a room. A long gun is MUCH easier to actually hit something with. I don't get the public range comment. Any gun can be pointed in an unsafe direction and in my experience handguns are both easier to turn in an unsafe direction and less obvious to everyone near the unsafe gun handling. | |||
|
| Member |
You're right on both points, I can concede to that. As long as we remember that shotguns patterns at short range need to be aimed as well as a pistol, the thing about point in the general direction and the wide pattern will take out the bad guy is a crock of shit. You can miss quite nicely with buckshot at close ranges, more so for a moving target. Ask any trap shooter or competitive shotgunner. Lover of the US Constitution Wile E. Coyote School of DIY Disaster | |||
|
| Member |
It depends on the layout of the house. For most normal houses I prefer a pistol. An AR is way too easy to grab by the barrel or forearm and push out of the way when going through a doorway with it IMO. | |||
|
| Member |
For sure - at inside-the-house distances, depending on the shotgun and ammo and range (and ignoring the goofy exotic stuff out there), the spread of shot will be somewhere between nothing and the MAYBE size of a dinner plate. | |||
|
| Savor the limelight |
Interesting that some folks think you don't need training with a shotgun, but you do with an AR-15. I put an aimpoint on my S&W M&P 15-22 and had my then 4 year old son hitting an 8" steel plate 4 out of 5 shots at 30 yards. I held the rifle up and told him to pull the trigger when he saw the dot on the target. I'm not sure he could have lined up iron sights with a target and done better. Training will be necessary regardless of his choice of firearms. | |||
|
The cake is a lie! |
Give a non gun guy a 12GA, he may not want to pick it up again after shooting a few rounds. | |||
|
| You're going to feel a little pressure... |
https://www.basspro.com/shop/e...get-loads-shotshells Buy them a few boxes of those. 980fps, 1oz #8 shot. Best training load ever. Bruce "The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. 'Make it evil,' he'd been told. 'Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with." -Douglas Adams “It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to try to enslave a people that wants to remain free." -Niccolo Machiavelli The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. -Mencken | |||
|
| Member |
Read a great article years ago from a former Delta member - said best home defense gun is an AR - period. Two of his points were try pumping a shotgun with one arm, after your other one was shot, and there’s no recoil. I think his last name was Lamb - I’d have to check. MDS Found article ... https://www.americanrifleman.o...-one-experts-opinion | |||
|
אַרְיֵה |
I don't think it's that "you don't need training with a shotgun," but given the relative simplicity of a shotgun vs. an AR type rifle, a newcomer can probably come up to speed with fewer training hours on a shotgun. הרחפת שלי מלאה בצלופחים | |||
|
| "The deals you miss don’t hurt you”-B.D. Raney Sr. |
This. My GF is a three time world champion SASS shooter. Put a single action Ruger, a lever action rifle, or a shotgun in her hands and watch her go. But have her pick up an Ar style rifle? “Platform unfamiliarity”, anyone? Shooting it is ZERO problem. She can out shoot me with boring regularity. But when it comes to reloads and malfunction drills....it takes training. | |||
|
quarter MOA visionary |
You mean to start, right?  | |||
|
| Member |
Just make sure they know birdshot is for birds and practice, not self-defense! There are also "managed recoil" or "reduced recoil" buckshot and slug loads. I think Remington makes a reduced recoil 00 buck load that is pretty well regarded. | |||
|
| Member |
agree have a .357 GP-100 I got in 1988. will never part with it. and another vote for a 12ga if the guy is 'sturdy' (modern-day pajama-boys need not apply - might as well get them a .22LR or nothing) there are very good low recoil buckshot rounds available nowadays I love ARs but a lot of people who recommend them are military / LE (or ex- )who have months / years of training and experience with them. of course you can go back and forth on this forever - what if .... point / counter-point any chance you could get him to the range and show him a few different guns? a revolver / a basic semi auto ie a Glock / a 12 ga / an AR ? -------------------------- Proverbs 27:17 - As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. | |||
|
| Member |
I think "platform familiarity" is probably a better descriptor of the problem than a shotgun being simpler than an AR. Most people who have any familiarity at all with guns have probably shot a shotgun. I was thinking about it, and from a controls standpoint, I don't think a pump shotgun is actually any simpler - it's just we've all used them so long we don't even think about it. A pump shotgun has a trigger, safety, pump, slide release, and fixed magazine with loading gate. An AR has a trigger, safety, charging handle, bolt release, and removable magazine and magazine release. | |||
|
| Muzzle flash aficionado  |
For simplicity one cannot do better than a good DA revolver, preferably in at least .38 or .357 Magnum (latter is better). It is virtually guaranteed that it will fire every time the trigger is pulled, and there is no preparatory activity required--literally point and shoot. Now--getting a hit on the target is an issue, and with a large caliber repeat shots, especially, but at close ranges (inside a room) it should be possible to train enough to achieve body hits with any weapon. flashguy Texan by choice, not accident of birth | |||
|
| Savor the limelight |
True. To someone unfamiliar with firearms, an AR is no more complicated than most semi-automatic handguns. It might have two more steps than a pump shotgun. It definitely has less recoil and as such putting follow up rounds on target should be easier. It will also be easier to put in long practice sessions in at the range. I don't think twice about 30 rounds with an AR, but 30 rounds of 1" slugs from a 590 is a different story. | |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata | Page 1 2 3 4 |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
© SIGforum 2025