Full auto Submachine gun vs shotgun

S

Super-Dave

New member
I am curious about when a shotgun would be a better choice than a full auto submachine gun. I see swat teams all the time with some members with shotguns and others with submachine guns. I know the shotgun can be used for breaching but this is a more recent phenomenon.

Supposing a swat teams enters a building looking to clean out a bunch of armed dangerous thugs. If they knew in advance that the thugs did not have body armor. When would it be better for them to use shotguns or full auto submachineguns?

I know most swat teams have abandoned the 9mm, .40 submachine guns for the Ar-15 carbine due to over penetration issues. But even for them under what scenarios are you better off with the shotgun?
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Does this make sense?
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Yes. 5.56 FMJ bullets will disintegrate upon impact with just about anything, lowering the chances of collateral damage. Excerpt from a recent Rifle Shooter article:

"It is a surprise to many people that the round that works best for going through walls is the 9mm. With relatively higher velocities, the .223 bullets generally break up upon impact, even when hitting a thin sheet of drywall. The resulting small fragments quickly lose their energy. Bullet selection plays a part in this, but even the toughest FMJ bullet tends to virtually disintegrate when it hits wood or drywall at 3,200 fps....

With most of the .223 ammo screaming along at more than 3,000 fps, the bullets are prone to flying apart when they impact virtually any medium. Even FMJ ammo breaks up dramatically when it hits sheetrock at these velocities."

Full text here:

http://www.rifleshootermag.com/featured_rifles/ar_patrol/
 
"Does this make sense?"

Another yes, given most ammuniton, certainly most issued to patrol officers and tactical teams. Are there options affording greatere degrees of penetration? Sure. But, I've had the oportunity to observe a MP5 magazine dump into the side of a car followed by the same from an M4 into another. (Same make and model; same target area.) It was clear that more of the 9mm rounds made it thorugh; many more, in fact.

"But even for them under what scenarios are you better off with the shotgun?"

Where close range, rapid, clsoe enough accuracy is called for and third parties aren't in close enough proximity to the subject beingshot at to be a concern.

Very similar criteria, by the way, for when you might flip the lever to burst on an M4.
 
The 5.56 does not stabilize for a distance out of the barrel. During this unstabilized flight, the bullet will apparently upset and not overpenetrate bodies and/or other objects struck. After the bullet stabilizes, however, it will drill a nice hole in all sorts of things. I have no personal experience with this, but I do recall speaking with a member of a local SWAT team who shot a pit bull at close range with a M4 and the bullet stayed in the dog.

Back to the OP, advantages of a shotgun over a subgun for entries can depend on the ammo. With buckshot, you can put 9-12 pellets (and wound channels) on target at one time out to moderate ranges, which is hard to do with even a good subgun like an HK. All subguns climb, so unless you are really close, you are limited to bursts of 3-4 shots to keep on target, as opposed to the shotgun which delivers all pellets with one recoil impulse. With slug loads, you can penetrate most soft body armor at moderate ranges, which a subgun will not do (I know it gets bantered around that slugs won't go through the vest and will injure through blunt trauma, but I have seen a vest, IIA or III, penetrated through both sides in a test by a local PD).

Subguns, however can go from a multi-round weapon to a precision weapon out to moderate distances simply by going to semi-auto, and the ones that fire from a closed bolt are usually very accurate, with obvious SWAT applications. Tough to trust a close head shot to a shotgun.
 
JollyRoger

The 5.56 does not stabilize for a distance out of the barrel. During this unstabilized flight, the bullet will apparently upset and not overpenetrate bodies and/or other objects struck.
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Where did you come up with that one, that one gets the ding ding ding ding ding ding we have a winner over here award...........

I can assure you a 5.56mm projectile is very much stabilized by the rifiling from bore exit upto taget impact.........
 
12 ga slugs work well to bust locks and hinges. SMGs don't
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ISC,

It is true that SMG's are not practical for breaching applications. However, a standard 12 ga slug used for breaching locks and hinges can be very dangerous for the operator and team members due to mass fragmentation of an exploding slug when impacting upon metal locks and hinges. A breacher wielding a shotgun carries a breaching round called "Hatton". It is a fast disintegration material similar to filling material a dentist would use to patch your teeth.
 
With most of the .223 ammo screaming along at more than 3,000 fps, the bullets are prone to flying apart when they impact virtually any medium. Even FMJ ammo breaks up dramatically when it hits sheetrock at these velocities."
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So.....I might be better off using my PLR-16 for HD than my USP45C?
 
My machine gun use is limited, having fired a tommygun and a Mac-10 in Vegas and a worthless CAR-15. My shotgun experience is substantially greater than that. If you need to clear a room, I'll take the machine gun. One caveat though, you need to practice. The Mac-10 is a handful, the tommygun not so much so. Once you get the hang of them, they'll spit more lead than a shotgun. Figure for the Mac-10, 20 rds a second.
 
A bullet that is unstable does not get more stable as it flies, stability deteriorates. I also find it hard to believe that a 9mm with outdo a 5.56mm on penetration. Look at vest ratings, 5.56mm resistance is 2 levels above 9mm.
 
I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the 5.56 DOES stabilize in flight, about 50 feet out, IIRC. It has to do with the geometry of the bullet, long and thin with a very small radius relative to length, and the fact that no bullet ever centers perfectly with the center of the bullet lined up with the center axis of the bore. That's why they need stabilization in the first place. The difference with the 5.56 as opposed to others is like the difference between a spinning football and a long spinning steel rod: the rod wobbles for a bit, then damps down as the rotational forces take hold.

Anyway, that is what the guys from our firearms unit, who want to eliminate subguns and shotguns in favor of M4's for everything, told me. Actual shootings seem to bear this out: within 50 feet the bullets stay in what they hit, further out they can drill a steel plate.

I'd be happy to entertain alternate explanations, though, for entertainment value if nothing else.
 
On the SMG vs shotgun, I will tell this one on myself. When I first got a Thompson, I had the same discussion with a friend who had an Auto 5. So we set up five silhouette targets at a range of, I would guess, seven yards, in a line about a foot apart - bad guys ganging up on us.

I put a 50 round drum in the Thompson and made like Al Capone, just like in the movies. The "trench broom" and all that stuff.

Then he upped with the Auto 5, and rattled off 5 rounds of 00 Buck.

The result? I had gotten one (1) shot in the edge of the first target. Period. No need to change targets. He put 9 slugs into each target and did it faster than I had fired 50 .45 rounds.

Later, I learned to use the Thompson better, but that little session proved to me that there is nothing about a subgun that will make holes magically appear in a target.

Jim
 
JollyRoger

Well then, the guys on you units firearms team needs some learning. Where did they get that "information" from?

They have it backwards. The projectile de-stabilizes after impact. When M855 ball is fired into flesh it will in 2-5" of penetration begin to tumble as I call it, guys who like big words will say yaw. At a velocity of 2700 fps or faster M855 ball will seperate at the point between the steel and lead core, causing fragmentation. The fragmentation velocity is gone at about 90 meters of travel and will still tumble in flesh but will not reliably fragment. When it hits flesh and tumbles and does not break apart it still makes for a nasty wound.

Even when I used M955 ball that has a hardened tungsten core that still has a air pocket will still tumble in flesh in 2-5" of penetration but will not fragment due to the hardness of the core. It worked spectacular up close when we had to shoot through cars that would destroty the M855 projectile. The M955 penetrated, and still "worked" with wicked reliability.............

I would like to talk to your firearms unit guys, they have it all backwards. I can give first hand experience on how the 5.56 works from contact to just over 200 meters.
 
Okay, Boris Bush, I don't want to keep hijacking this thread, so this will be my last post on the subject. A quick search turned up some authority to back me up regarding stabilization at distance, see below. I do not dispute that the 5.56 tumbles on impact up close, in fact that was what I was saying, at least in part. Anyway, this guy puts it a lot more scientific than I can, seeing as how this was background for his patent application.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6973879/description.html

In addition to the tendency of the M855 and the M193 projectiles to breakup at short ranges upon entry into the target such projectiles have limited lethality or incapacitation effects at longer ranges due to the high Sg or gyroscopic stability factor as a result of the mass moments of inertia of the high-density core filler material and the low length to diameter ratio. Projectiles such as the M855 or the M193 if they do not break up upon entry into the target as represented by 10% Ordnance gelatin they will typically turn over once (yaw 180 degrees) and continue to move through the target base first.
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Best I can do right now.
 
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