THE DEPLOYMENT OF SHOTGUNS

[SeekHer]

Submitted just as received in the e-mail to me from Suarez International

THE DEPLOYMENT OF SHOTGUNS

In working on advancing the shotgun curriculum we have come across two camps.

One camp, having learned the chaotic lessons from force on force and real gunfights believes in using the spread of the pattern to get hits, even partial hits, under circumstances where a single projectile and standard marksmanship methods would not yield a hit in time. They would like to hit with every pellet and will seek to do so, but also accept that some pellets MAY miss in some situations.

The other camp, following the teachings of the modern technique school, mostly police-inspired, denies the utility of the spreading pattern being an asset and seek instead to mechanically constrict it as tight as possible, adding rifle ghost rings and seeking fist sized patterns as far as possible. Based on square range drills, every pellet must hit according to them.

I am firmly in the first camp.

While I would love to live in the perfect world of always being in control of all combat circumstances, I know very well that outside the laboratory (shooting range) this is simply not possible. I would point out that nobody can guarantee their shots every single time 24/7/365. Sorry....not in a real gunfight guys. And to those who are still unconvinced, I would mess up the situation a little more and turn it into a two way range. While you are lining up your sights on the bad guy at close range....he is also trying to do the same. The initiative is not solely yours, and his shots are coming your way.

Can you afford to stand still and line up your sights perfectly to “guarantee” you do not miss with anything? Can you do so without being hit? Will he stand still to allow it? Will you accept hitting him with only half your pattern to save your life?

Consider also that just as we prioritize close range gunfighting with the pistol, we should also optimize it with the shotgun. Way too much effort has been placed on trying to reach out with the shotgun. We have realized that optimizing the pistol for close range gunfighting makes far more sense than optimizing it to hit at 100 yards. Yet we are still discussing reach with the shotgun which is never something it was intended for outside of shooting schools. I will bet that, just like the pistol, the vast majority of shotgun gunfights occur well inside the close range gunfight envelop. While reaching out there with a shotgun is an interesting exercise, it is a foolish choice for such duty.

Another issue to those who think they can control every single shot fired. What about over penetration? Anything you shoot into a man can traverse through and go on “downrange”. I shot a bad guy once with a shotgun and later realized a couple of the pellets traversed him completely (and he was a big boy).. They didn’t hit anything of concern on the other side, but they did traverse. Are we worrying about things we have very little control over??. While there are things we can do to stack the odds of hitting, and things we can do to minimize collateral damage, once you press the trigger it is a risk anyway you slice it. You either take the risk or you allow the adversary to have his will.

Will you hold your fire, when you must shoot to stay alive, for fear of missing or over penetrating? The usual response is that you will then hit someone else unintentionally and you will go to prison forever and a day. That is not exactly accurate. I doubt that you will go to prison if you shoot at a man who was illegally shooting at you, and miss, hitting someone else. In police gunfights the hit ratio is what...50%? And those shots are intended to hit! Yet those errant shots rarely hit the proverbial nuns and orphans that always seem to be hanging around modern technique ranges. I am not advocating spraying the landscape in the hopes of hitting something, or that missing is OK or desirable, simply that in a real fight it may be inevitable. To design weapons and fighting systems around what is simply not possible to repeat outside of the laboratory is ill-advised.

Unless I am shown something to contradict it, my take on the shotgun is that its application falls between the pistol and the rifle. To choose it in preference of the rifle is foolish as the rifle is far more versatile over many more environments than the shotgun. I would take a Kalashnikov rifle for example, over a shotgun for most situations I can imagine, and a pistol for the other situations where a rifle would not fit. The shotgun does have its place.

I think it is best used in close quarters – fast moving – dynamic events, specially in low light, rapidly developing situations where the use of a single projectile weapon and traditional marksmanship methods would be unlikely to yield a timely hit. The main advantage of the shotgun over other weapons being its ammunition (buckshot) and the natural spread of the shot pattern which may be used to devastate a man if all the pellets impact, and at minimum, yield a partial hit under circumstances where a single bullet would miss, or not be fired in time. I know the arguments about being able to also hit fast with a rifle, but I have taken some shots with a shotgun and hit, that I could not duplicate with a rifle...and I like rifles!

S.I. students, unfettered by the need to shoot a rifle a “certain way”, find that up close they can in fact shoot a rifle as fast as most people can shoot a shotgun. Meaning the weapon comes into the shoulder - we see what we need to see - and we fire. At the AK class we were shooting at speeds usually not seen with rifles.

Now I am going to use a term - Impact Zone. This refers to the size of the projectile I am trying to hit with.

The difference is that if I am sending just one 7 millimeter impact zone per press, and for whatever reason its orientation on target is compromised ( I am moving, he is moving, my mount was not perfect, etc.) it may miss. However, if under the same circumstances, I am sending a handspan sized impact zone per shot (consisting of 9-12 7 millimeter mini-impact zones), my chances of hitting re increased with the increased size of the impact zone...if only partially. And I can keep repeating that for five to seven tries.

In fact, with a semi auto, using S.I. methods, we can put five shots out from a rifle totalling five impact zones of 7mm (roughly the size of buckshot and compared in size diameter to a bullet). All the same while and in the same time frame we can also send five impact zones, each comprised of 9 7mm pellets. (9x7x5) That is a total of 315 7mm mini impact zones. Just through sheer math, my chances of hitting are better.

The reason I am getting into this and think it is important, and a mistake to ignore it, was one shotgun fight I was in where things were moving very quickly. I fired twice. The first pattern hit with two pellets and slowed things down to where I was able to hit again with another partial pattern. The bad guy had a Glock 21 and there is no way in God’s universe I would have been able to hit him with anything else. Nor would I have been able to hit him if the gun had been choked up to provide those pretty range patterns. The spread at 7 yards created a situation where I was able to put him down.

Now having some slugs available if the shotgun must be pressed into longer range service is another issue.

What Say You??

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Gabe Suarez