Dave,
Guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I disagree that the average gun owner even has that sort of competence with his or her weapon. I posit out of the 70 (?) million gun owners, most are the "buy the gun and stick it in the closet" or "buy the gun, shoot a few rounds during hunting season (the bulk of those scant rounds to sight in) and stick it in the closet" type.
All you have to do is to truck down to your local public range and see how the four rules of safety hold up. If those people can't get the safety rules straight, how are they competent to use a gun in a defensive situation?
This has happened to me more than once and I've really cut down on my range time at public ranges. Had one guy point a SIG P228 directly at me and my buddies (from about 3 yards away), in the course of him "showing us how they gripped handguns in the Navy". We got the "don't worry, it's not loaded" excuse.
And I remember one Jeff Cooper Commentary where he (or one of his Gunsite grads) saw an individual with a very nice Weatherby rifle "sighting in" at the range. The guy didn't have any iron sights or a scope on his rifle!
Thus, for those persons, every advantage (in equipment or otherwise) is useful. They desperately need some sort of training but they're not going to get it. Those of them which are out on the skeet fields and practicing regularly are few indeed. I belong to a private club with over 1,300 members. I go to the range on weekends and some weekdays and it's like I'm in a ghost town.
And even for those with training and competence, you wonder why those persons prefer Scattergun Tech guns with the extended magazine tubes and Sidesaddles -- if they're so competent and trained, why do they use those equipment crutches? Same reason as the rest of us (trained or not) -- in a defensive situation, we'll all take whatever advantages we can get. And there's no good reason to limit those advantages, which is exactly what Remington is doing to you and me.
I'm sure we're cluttering up the topic here so since I don't see an e-mail address for you, just drop me a line at the addresses above. Otherwise, I think it's "agree to disagree" time and further discussion is moot.
It has been a long and arduous track with my dad. When I was growing up, he (and my mom) were rather anti-gun. I thought that was strange, since he had served in wartime and my mom had mandatory military training as well. So I didn't have any guns while growing up, only a few air rifles. Only recently (now that I'm almost ten years out of high school) has he warmed up to the idea of having a gun so he expressed an interest in buying a gun -- and so I bought him one. We do need to go shooting more often, that is true.
Justin