Why we prep
Here's another reason why you – and your friends and family – should prep:
Guns are icky: NY Daily News writer gets temporary PTSD from the horrors of shooting an AR
There isn't much point in piling on the Delta male reporter mentioned, since above-linked article does such a good job of it. And there really isn't any good reason to try to Greek-alphabetize President Obama in regards to the whole AR-15 hammer-of-doom, autonomous-baby-killer smoke screen, mainly because his goals have nothing to do with the personal safety of the herd members.
But facts are facts. Click on the table at right to see for yourself.
It's pretty obvious that before we start banning rifles, we need to clear-cut the forests, because of the hideous potential for unregistered "home-grown" billy clubs and bats. Or better yet, let's have a total arms confiscation (not arms as in firearms, but arms as in "with hands and fingers attached"), because according to the FBI you're nearly two and a half times more likely to get punched or kicked to death than you are to be killed by ALL rifles.
The Potomac Lords and Ladies are concerned about their safety, not yours. It's up to you to keep your family and community safe.
And that's one of the reasons we prep.
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil ... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon." – Terry Pratchett
Of the three main categories of firearms that should be considered by any new prepper, the shotgun is potentially the most useful and at the same time the most misunderstood.
In terms of utility, the shotgun is king. The "bullets" (pellets or shot) which exit the barrel can be as fine as poppy seeds or as large as the interior diameter of the barrel itself. The careful selection of a shotshell based on shot size and powder load allows the user to cleanly take a pigeon in flight or drop a grizzly bear.
In terms of combat effectiveness, use of the shotgun in World War I by American troops caused the German government to file a diplomatic protest against their use and a threat to execute any soldier found in possession of one.
To paraphrase Dr. Marcus Brody from "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Bible speaks of the shotgun leveling mountains and laying waste in entire regions. A prepper that carries a shotgun before it ... is invincible."
"Holy smoke Pat! So why did you tell me in an earlier column to buy this lousy handgun first? I want me a shotgun right now!"
Well hold on there, buckeroo. A shot gun is a great tool – true. But it has its limitations and there isn't a class of firearm with a more misunderstood and often over-inflated reputation. Most of those misunderstandings come from – where else – Hollywood. The myths about shotguns are legion. And to effectively use one, the new prepper needs to know the facts.
So let's start out with a short history lesson.
The New World Encyclopedia defines a shot gun as " ... a firearm, usually with a smooth bore (as opposed to a rifled bore), and designed to fire a charge of spherical pellets, usually called a 'shot.'"
That's a pretty good definition as far as it goes. From the same source, the first recorded use of the term "shotgun" occurred in 1776. The inventor of the shotgun isn't known, probably (I suspect) because it wasn't invented so much as it evolved from earlier smooth-bore weapons like the musket and blunderbuss.
However it came about, we can get a clue that it took a separate track from the evolution of other firearms, like handguns and rifles, because it has an entirely different (and more ancient) way of describing both weapon size and power.
Handguns and rifles are ofen described by the diameter of the bullet that fits the weapon. That .357 revolver I recommended in an earlier column uses bullets that are .357 inches in diameter. An AR-15-style rifle is usually chambered for .223 caliber ammunition (.223 inches in diameter), or, as the heathen Europeans of NATO would put it – 5.56 mm. (All you gun nuts out there – I know – let's save that argument until later when I get to rifle selection, okay?)
But the shot gun is sized in a totally weird and therefore British sort of way: the gauge.
The most common shotgun is a 12-gauge (12ga.). Why? It's a mystery. But shotguns aren't measured by using the diameter of the bullet (and therefore the diameter of the barrel interior). Instead, a shot gun barrel diameter is determined by the weight of the shot (in lead) that can fit the barrel. (Oh my head!)
Here's how it goes: To determine the gauge of a shotgun barrel, you need to figure out how many round "shots" you can make out of a pound of lead that will just fit within the diameter of the barrel. So in the case of a 12ga. shotgun, you can make 12 shots from a pound of lead. A 20ga. shotgun is sized to 20 shots per pound of lead. In modern translation, a 12ga. barrel has an interior diameter of .729 inches.
Over the years, shotguns have become relatively standardized. While you can still find all kinds of gauges, the most common (and therefore, from the prepper outlook on weapon acquisition, the best) is the 12ga. shotgun. Other commonly available gauges are the 20-gauge and (just to mess things up) the .410-gauge shotguns.
So we got this gauge thing down. But that's not the end of your choices. Shotguns also come in three other variations: the break-action, pump and semi-auto styles. (There are also fully auto shotguns, which I won't cover in this series of articles.) We'll get to those options next week and start laying out which combinations are the best for the prepper.
Additionally, I'll be telling many of you that a lot of what you know about shotguns is totally wrong. Do I have a great job or what?
Until then, be safe and get prepared.
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