using enviroment to prevent over penetration

[darksidearmorer]

There is a lot of discussion on overpenetration lately, but i have yet to see this point brought up. when looking at how i would defend my home and where i would fight from i picked my bedroom door its at the end of the hall to my living room( see included picture). I use a winchester sxp defender with 2and3/4 unplated buckshot here is why, i want a powerfull load, that goes without saying, however i do live in a medium sized city and was concerned for my neighbors safty if i ever have to shoot. when firing from my chosen positon im firing away from my family, and if i do hit and there is overpenetration or i miss, my shot will have travel through my livingroom wall , my garage wich is full of toolboxes furniture and the outer garage wall, and finally my halfton truck.a fence and then my neighbors garage before it can harm them. using unplated lead shot i see a lot of hard objects to slow down deform and stop the shot should i miss or it goes through the bad guy. has any one else stumbled on to this solultion ? hopefully this post gives you some ideas, or inspires you to look at where your rounds will potenially go in a SD/HD situation. just curious as to what you guys think.

 

[mete]

In court it's easier to defend overpenetrating than to defend a miss !!

You have to have enough to stop a BG so the best option is to use 00 buck, reduced recoil. Easy to handle, enough to stop ,nothing excessive.

 

[darksidearmorer]

yes it is esier to defend overpenetration than a miss unfortunatly, i am human,to qoute elmer if i said i would never miss again i would never shoot again. im not worried about the recoil of my load or its effect on target hell bird shot can kill some one just as easily give the right range, i just belive in overwhelming firepower to win combat situations.

 

[C0untZer0]

The way my townhouse is laid out dictactes all of this.

My bedroom is at the top of the stairs, the kids bedroom is down the hall.

If I engage intruders as they come up the stairs - I am shooting toward an adjoining townhome. If I engage them as they come down the hall, I am shooting toward the front of my townhouse - no adjoining dwelling, but there are townhomes across the street.

I see this debate as a variation on the quest to find the magic bullet. Unfortunately, any projectile whether it be a bullet or buckshot or whatever follows the laws of physics and anything with enough mass and velocity to incapacitate a human aggressor also tends to pass right through things like drywall, plywood and aluminum siding.

Projectiles that don't penetrate through drywall, plywood and aluminum siding also tend to not penetrate an attacker deeply enough to reach vital organs and then you're relying on a psycological stop of the assailant to end the attack.

 

[darksidearmorer]

your missing the point i am using a loadwith more than enough force to get the job done i have just chosen my strong point to ensure that there is enough barriers to slow or stop the buckshot. i highly doubt unplated lead shot after going through an attacker is going to go through a wall a garage full of furniture another wall and and a half ton truck i havent compromised in my weapon or load whatsoever ive just stacked the deck as to what i know the buckshot will hit. 00buck from an 18inch barrel will certianly pass through any one of those items but not all of them stacked behind eachother.

 

[Webleymkv]

I think you're looking at this from exactly the right perspective. The best way, IMHO, to compensate for the possibility of overpentetration to to modify your tactics in such a way that they minimize the risk to innocent bystanders of an overpenetrating shot. One of the best things that you can do is to make a HD plan with your family so that everyone knows the most likely fields of fire and can position themselves elsewhere if possible.

 

[C0untZer0]

How am I missing the point?

The way most people defend their home is dictated by the layout of the home.

If you have multiple points that you can choose to defend - that's great, but that's dependent on the layout of the home. If the backdrop of the only approach of intruders to one of your choke points is a garage full of toolboxes, furniture and stuff that will stop a bullet - that's great.

Who doesn't choose to shoot away from their family?

 

[darksidearmorer]

"I see this debate as a variation on the quest to find the magic bullet. Unfortunately, any projectile whether it be a bullet or buckshot or whatever follows the laws of physics and anything with enough mass and velocity to incapacitate a human aggressor also tends to pass right through things like drywall, plywood and aluminum siding".

this is where i fail to understand you, how is a high brass 00 buck load going to have issues with anything in the above statement. you are correct i set up my HD plan with chokepoints to give me the best advantage. if i understand you correctly you either are massivley underating 12 gauge stopping power or now are agreeing with me ? not trying to argue just gaining clarification. I was wondering if anyone else applied this thought process to their situation. i know im luck to have my home layout in such a manner that i dont have to use a less powerfull weapon out of concern for overpenetration, if i understand you correctly you are not this fortunate so out of curiousity how did you solve this problem for your situation?

 

[Double Naught Spy]

when firing from my chosen positon im firing away from my family, and if i do hit and there is overpenetration or i miss, my shot will have travel through my livingroom wall , my garage wich is full of toolboxes furniture and the outer garage wall, and finally my halfton truck.a fence and then my neighbors garage before it can harm them.

What do I think? I think that you have a singular chosen position that in reality probably won't be the position you are firing from. I see you have your own sort of Maginot Line, but while the concept sounds great, the Maginot Line failed miserably.

I use a winchester sxp defender with 2and3/4 unplated buckshot here is why, i want a powerfull load, that goes without saying,

i just belive in overwhelming firepower to win combat situations.

Apparently you don't won't all that much of a powerful load. Your sxp will handle 3" and all you are using are 2 3/4" shells.

or i miss, my shot will have travel through my livingroom wall , my garage wich is full of toolboxes furniture and the outer garage wall, and finally my halfton truck.a fence and then my neighbors garage before it can harm them.

You cannot rely on swiss cheese backstops to stop your ammo safely. This is a problem folks who use forests as backstops often don't understand either.

Also, why do you assume that your neighbors will only be inside their home?

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

I think you are approaching this from the right perspective. You aren't trying to use a magic bullet to solve this problem and you are making a conscious effort to work out safe directions of fire and unsafe directions right now, so that you don't have to figure this out in a hurry later.

Having said that, I think DNS has a fair point that we often envision these scenarios going a certain way in our head (the bump in the middle of the night as we lay sleeping in our bed being a common one); but they often happen differently than we imagine.

I think the plan you have now is a good first step; but you want to keep working through different scenarios and consider different angles so that you've got a good understanding of where all the "shoot/no-shoot" zones are in your home.

You cannot rely on swiss cheese backstops to stop your ammo safely. This is a problem folks who use forests as backstops often don't understand either.

To be fair, I don't think the OP was suggesting he was going to set up an indoor range for plinking. He is trying to determine which backstop presents the least risk to others in a self-defense situation. There may be no backstop that is NRA-approved in that case; but there may be backstops that offer significantly less risk than others.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

To be fair, I don't think the OP was suggesting he was going to set up an indoor range for plinking. He is trying to determine which backstop presents the least risk to others in a self-defense situation. There may be no backstop that is NRA-approved in that case; but there may be backstops that offer significantly less risk than others.

I must have missed it. Tell me again what the choices of backstops were that he was deciding on to provide the least risk. It sounds like he isn't trying to determine which backstop presents the least risk, but is telling us his preferred field of fire and what the shot will have to pass through to harm the neighbors and he asked for out thoughts on his choices. He has already made his decision on his backstop.

He seems to be counting on the random items of his garage to provide a backstop barrier. I was simply noting that such a distribution is problematic as the gaps allow for shots to pass right through.

 

[C0untZer0]

What I meant by the magic bullet comment was it seemed like the OP's choice of load was based on all the obstacles he had in his firing zone, I might have misunderstood but I took it to mean that if he didn't have all that stuff, he'd be using a different load.

I concede that in my situation - if I miss, the shot is leaving my house.

I am coginzant that if I were to attempt to shoot intruders as they come up the stairs - if I miss I'm putting buckshot right into my nieghbor's bedroom.

If I wait until they are in the hall at the top of the stairs, if I miss the shot is going outside, that's just the way it is.

The structural realities of my residence mitigate against me taking a shot at someone coming up the stairs, but I don't totally crank my defense plans around the axle because some projectiles might make it out of my residence.


.

 

[Irish B]

Wait you mean using my Mosin with fmjs isn't the best for home defense? What about my 870 with brenneke black magic slugs? Ok I guess I'll stick to my .357 or 9mm with hollow points. When I was young there was a shooting down the street where an older man had his house broken into and for whatever reason used his German Mauser with fmjs to defend himself. There was a large exchange of fire and a stray round went into the neighboring apartment and shot a kid. That's always stuck with me. Here in Co where I live its far enough away from a neighbors house not to worry about that (unless I actually did decide to use my mosin) but im always worried about strays in that situation. Unfortunately our son lives exactly opposite on the side of the house so if someone broke into my room we'd be shooting at the bg with our sons room directly behind. That's why you always have to have a plan