Pawpaw wrote:Rugerboy50 wrote:Plus you just point in the general direction and pull the trigger. The spread will cover more ground
A shotgun is not the "scattergun" that everyone seems to think. That is a Hollywood myth.
When you get a chance, try firing buckshot at paper targets 10 to 20 feet away. You sould find a spread of only 6 - 12", depending on the ammo, barrel length, and a couple of other variables. 10 to 20 feet would be about normal in-home distance.
Yeppers. Out of a typical 12-guage defensive shotgun's 18.5" cylinder barrel, the baseline formula for the spread of double-ought buckshot is two centimeters for every meter in distance traveled. That's about 0.8" for every 3.3 feet. At 20 feet, that's less about a 5" spread. Definitely handy, but comes nowhere near not having to aim. Reduced-recoil loads spread less and produce patterns that are more dense.
Generally speaking, the smaller the shot size, the faster it spreads...but also the less effective it is as a threat-stopper. Under most circumstances, 00-buck is defensively effective out to 30, maybe 35 yards; #4 shot out to 15 yards, maybe a little farther.
And if over-penetration is a concern, shot spread probably is, too. If you go for smaller shot and larger spread it's going to be both less likely to penetrate deep enough to stop the threat, and it's going to become a less-than-good idea if you need to take a reasonably accurate shot anywhere near a family member or other innocent.
I've known some guys who think that opting for a rifled shotgun barrel will improve the accuracy situation. It will if you're shooting appropriate slugs, but accuracy--and certainly effectiveness--is suspect if shooting multiple pellets. The problem is that, as the pellets are compressed and fired down the bore, they catch the grooves and landings of the rifling and start to spin. But converse to the way you want a single object--a rifle bullet or a shotgun slug--spinning, what happens is that, upon exiting the barrel, the pellets start to expand in a fairly even, circular pattern.
Not what you want with a cluster of pellets. The advantage of a shot shell is the inches-wide area at the point-of-aim where you get a random but contained pattern of hits. With a rifled bore, what you end up with is a circular pattern of hits...with none of the hits at the point-of-aim: they're all around the POA in a nice circle. Not desirable.
So Pawpaw has it right. Scatterguns, today, are mostly movie props...and of course we all know that any shotgun blast in the movies throws the bad guy off his feet and five feet backward.
A corollary: The above is a big reason I, personally, never recommend shotguns that have pistol grips only. They look cool, but you simply can't make an accurate shot with them using standard 12-guage 00-buck. At under 10 feet, they are maneuverable and highly effective with point-shooting, but much beyond that it becomes difficult to even think about accurate shots. The shotgun is stable if you hold the grip tight to the body, but lift it up to try to get a decent sight picture and controlling the thing after the shot introduces a whole new set of problems. Hold it too close to your face in attempting good sight alignment and you may receive a slightly revised nose. Don't ask me how I know this. I was very young.
Cubbyjb - Don't sell your father short. There are a lot of 63+ men on this forum who can outshoot those half their age. 
Just what I was thinking.
