Often as a patrol cop, after someone was the victim of a burglary or an assault, they would ask what my suggestion was for a good home defense weapon. Now that I work in a gun store, and with the huge influx of first time gun buyers, I am getting asked that question even more often.
Keith and I took some of the most common options to the range and ran them through a shoot house, and afterward we talked about our thoughts on each of main options; shotgun, handgun or rifle (including AR pistols). We came to the same conclusion as to what we believe to be the best option.
For those of you who prefer to watch instead of read, scroll down to the video. While this article is going to be a bit more in depth, the video is short and sweet and comes to the same conclusion.
Shotguns
Typically, people who have not done much research come into the gun store looking for a 12 gauge pump shotgun, because that is what they have always heard is the best gun for home defense. It is a common theme and I think it comes from both movies, and from talking to the old Fudds* that work in some of the gun stores.
Heck, even Joe Biden a few years ago touted the double barrel shotgun as the ideal home defense gun, but then Joe Biden is a moron and also suggested that you take that home defense shotgun outside and shoot it into the air twice to scare off the bad guys. Not only is that illegal to do in most cases, but you also just emptied your home defense gun as a double barrel shotgun only holds two rounds, and now the bad guys know where you are.
Shotguns are a useful weapon and depending on the shells you put in it, can be a devastating weapon. There are a ton of new shotgun brands on the market, and they start at about $300, although I cannot vouch for their durability or reliability. The two most common go-to guns in the pump action 12 GA world are the Remington 870 and the Mossberg 500 family. While the Mossbergs are difficult to find right now, the Remingtons are damn near impossible since Remington went bankrupt.
Shotguns, while devastating weapons, have some pretty big down sides to them. They carry a very limited ammo supply. Most standard pump shotguns have a magazine capacity of as low as two and as high as five. Some combat shotguns will hold up to seven or eight. If you keep your shotgun with one in the chamber, you can add another round to that capacity, but then you will not be able to rack the shotgun making that signature sound that many people hope will scare off the intruder. Also, shotguns are not easy to reload unless you practice with them, and most shotguns have no provision for carrying spare shells, at least not from the factory.
Aside from the limited capacity, shotguns are long. The shortest barrel you will find on a shotgun is 18″ and then you add receiver length and the stock, and your overall length is right around three feet. A long gun is not easy to walk around your house and look for intruders. They require training and practice for clearing corners.
Additionally, most shotguns do not come from the factory with any way to attach a flashlight. Having a light is important because you need to identify a person as a threat before you shoot. You don’t want to mistake one of your family members, or a drunk neighbor who accidentally went into your house instead of theirs, as an intruder and shoot them.
The last downside for a shotgun is ammo selection. Most people are going to recommend 00 Buck (pronounced double ought buck). It is indeed a devastating load and highly effective at stopping a person. Each shell contains eight .32 caliber lead balls. Every trigger pull sends eight bullets down range, which means you need to worry about where all eight of those balls is going for each trigger pull. A miss on your target can very easily be a hit on someone down range that you are trying to protect.
To sum this up, and to piss off all the shotgun lovers out there, a shotgun is a valuable tool in certain circumstances, but as a home defense tool, they are limited, and definitely not my preferred choice.
Handguns
Handguns are very useful personal defense weapons and can serve many roles, including both home defense and concealed carry. There are a lot of really good handguns on the market, and there are some complete pieces of junk. My suggestion when choosing your first handgun is to, if you can afford it, even if it is a stretch, stick to something from one of the major manufacturers like Glock, Sig Sauer, CZ, Smith & Wesson, FN or Springfield Armory. Most of the guns I just listed are going to fall somewhere between $450-900. Avoid really cheap guns, especially if this is going to be your only gun that you might have to someday rely on to save your life. Before you purchase the gun, make sure you can comfortably operate all the controls and can adequately, and hopefully comfortably hold the gun in one hand. If you can’t for some reason hold it in one hand, or if you cannot rack the slide because of grip strength issues, that is not the gun for you.
Caliber of the handgun is an important decision as well, but because of the depth of that discussion, it deserves its own section which follows a few paragraphs from here, after the general handgun discussion.
As far as home defense with a handgun, there are again pros and cons to consider. On the pro side of the argument, they are compact and much easier navigate your home while holding one than any of the other options. They can be easily operated with one hand which means you can open and close doors or operate light switches while holding the gun and being able to use it. Modern guns have an accessory rail under the forward end of the barrel, ahead of the trigger, from which you can mount a flashlight. Some handguns also come with a way to mount a red dot optic on them, but currently that option is limited.
On the negative side, handguns have limited capacity when compared to some options, and while good defensive handgun ammo is leaps and bounds better than it was 30 years ago, it still lacks lethality when comparted to a rifle or a shotgun. That said, handguns, especially 9mm, will punch right through interior walls in your home so you have to be cognizant of that. When stuff gets ugly and the shooting starts, your body will do all sorts of stuff to you that makes shooting accurately difficult, and you are most likely going to miss a few times.
Without a red dot optic on the handgun, they are difficult to aim with both eyes open, which if you are in a home defense scenario, you are going to want both of your eyes open. If you are going to go with a handgun, I highly recommend one on which you can affix an optic. Lastly, in comparison to a rifle or a shotgun, it is comparatively easy for someone who gets their hand on your gun to either get it away from you or to cause it to malfunction.
Handgun Caliber
Caliber selection is important, as is the type of gun. A lot of the Fudds out there think that handgun evolution peaked with the 1911, and will say something about how the .45ACP round is the best man stopper on the planet. I own a couple 1911s, as well as a couple Sig P220s, all chambered in .45ACP, and I love them, but they are most definitely not my go-to handgun.
While .45ACP has always been a good man stopping bullet, even with military ball ammo, 9mm has come a very long way in the last 20 years. A good, modern 9mm defensive round performs as good if not better than a modern .45ACP defensive round.
Back in 2013, I wrote a piece in which I looked at the three most common handgun calibers and looked at the two most common ammo choices for law enforcement at the time. At that time, I had just switched from carrying a .45 every day on duty to a 9mm, and the reasons for that switch are all laid out in the article. It is worth noting, that article was actually used by at least one CA law enforcement agency (LEA) in deciding to switch from .40S&W to 9mm. Also, since that piece was written, the FBI switched back to 9mm as have a great many LEA’s across the nation.
With everything else equal, the .45 is marginally more effective than a 9mm, as is the .40, but in the real world, nothing else is equal. Pick any size handgun and in the three different calibers, 9mm will always hold more bullets. In the case of a 1911 vs a similarly sized Glock 17, you are talking 8+1 vs 17+1, which is more than twice as much. No one who has ever been in a gunfight has ever said “Gee, I wish I had less ammo on me.” If you are going to pick a handgun for your defensive gun, I highly recommend picking something in 9mm.
AR-15 Family Rifles and Pistols
AR based rifles are the third category of firearm we are going to discuss. Also included with rifles are AR based pistols, either with or without a brace, which are shorter and handier in close quarters than a full length rifle. There are lots of rifle options, but we are specifically looking at ARs because of the caliber.
The caliber that most ARs can be found in is 5.56mm. Some older guns will be chambered in .223 Remington (Rem), and some newer guns might feature a .223 Wylde barrel. All of those can run standard .223 Rem ammo, and both the 5.56 and .223 Wylde guns can run .223 Rem or 5.56 ammo. The only thing you want to avoid is running 5.56 ammo in a .223 Rem gun. The pressures from the 5.56 ammo exceed the ratings of a .223 Rem barrel. When choosing ammo for home defense, we recommend avoiding “M855″ or “green tips.” Most other standard 5.56 or .223 Rem loads will work good in the home.
The reason we say to avoid the green tips is that they have a steel core and will greatly over-penetrate walls in most homes. Just like the discussion above in the handgun and shotguns sections, you have to be concerned about where missed shots are going to go.
Any bullet impacting sheetrock walls at a near 90 degree angle are going to punch right through, unless they hit a stud or something else buried in the wall. However, at shallower angles, like shooting down a hallway and hitting one of the walls, 5.56 bullets tend to break up and not penetrate as far as a 9mm round does. That fact is one of the leading reasons that most SWAT teams in the United States have ditched their 9mm submachine guns, like the venerable MP-5, and gone to short barreled ARs. Additionally, all things equal, 5.56 ammo fired from a barrel that is at least 10″ long is more devastating on the target than a 9mm or other handgun round, not to mention the fact that 5.56 ammo will defeat most soft body armor in case your attacker put on a vest.
Some of the pros to an AR pistol, or even a 16″ barreled rifle, is that the design of the gun allows for easy attachment of lights, sights, and red dot optics and more. A sling can be left attached to the gun when it is stored and thus when you grab the gun in the time of need, you already have a way to maintain possession of it should you need to use both of your hands.
Not only is it easier for you to maintain possession of the longer gun should your attacker somehow get their hands on it, but it is much more difficult for them to disable the gun preventing you from shooting it while struggling over it.
The standard capacity magazine for an AR rifle or pistol is 30 rounds, unless you are trapped behind enemy lines in a commie state like CA. That is far more bullets than nearly any handgun, and again, having more bullets in a gunfight is better than fewer. Also, an AR rifle or pistol is going to have a significantly longer effective range than a handgun or a shotgun. This means that not only can your AR be used inside your home, but if somehow the gunfight moves outside and the distances open up, you stand a better of hitting your target chance with an AR.
And lastly, with training, it is easier to accurately and rapidly hit a target with an AR than it is with a pistol. While a shotgun might hit that target, if a precision shot is needed, like say a head shot on someone holding one of your family members hostage, the shotgun is not you’re your friend, but a rifle is.
On the cons list for an AR pistol or rifle is that they are not as easy to maneuver around your home with when compared to a handgun, although they do beat the shotgun out for that. When picking your gun, think about where you will be using it, and that will help you decide between an AR pistol or rifle. If you have a lot of tight confines in your home, go short, but in 5.56, not shorter than 10.5″.
In terms of cost, they are the most expensive option we are considering. With that said, you can get a good quality AR from a major manufacturer that will last and serve you very well for just over $1000.
Finally, the AR when compared to the handgun is not as dual-purpose firearm. Where your handgun can function both as a home defense gun and a carry gun, an AR, even an AR pistol, is not exactly a concealed carry gun.
Pistol Caliber Carbine (PCC)
This category is going to include AR pistols and rifles that are chambered in a pistol caliber, such as 9mm. Another popular PCC is the Ruger PC Carbine. This category, for the purpose of this article, also includes braced pistols based on submachine guns. Examples of that include the HK MP-5 and the clones of it, the CZ Scorpion, B&TAPC9, the GP Stribog, the PSA AK-V, and many other similar guns.
The pros list is going to be the same as the AR list above, save the caliber arguments. Since these guns are mostly chambered in 9mm, these will have the same issues, positive and negative, that a 9mm handgun has. You can mount lights and optics on them, and the standard magazine capacity is higher. You can attach a sling to them and they offer greater accuracy than a regular pistol.
The cons for this category of gun are again, same as the AR. They are longer than a pistol and thus navigating around the home is not going to be as easy. Caliber wise, they pose a greater issue when it comes to over-penetration of walls at shallow angles. They are not cheap, with the least expensive option starting right at $800 and going up to well over $3500. Lastly, they cannot pull double duty as a concealed carry firearm, at least not without a backpack or some other method for concealing it.
The Winner of Best Home Defense Gun Is…
In the realm of a home defense guns, Keith and I both agree; for us the choice is easy, a short barreled AR pistol is the winner. In both of our cases, we also have handguns nearby, and both of us, if time allows, are going to toss on our SHTF gun belt that not only has a holstered handgun, but also spare ammo for both the pistol and the AR.
However, if you are going to have only one gun, you will have to make the decision of which is the winner for yourself. I hope this article and related video have provided you with information that you find valuable to help make that decision. To those purchasing their very first gun, welcome to the world of gun ownership, and congratulations on making the decision to take your personal safety into your own hands instead of relying on someone else.
As always, please remember to get training on the proper use of your new gun, and then continue to train and practice. Training is what will get you through that situation which most of us hope to avoid, and that is having to use your gun to defend your life.
* Fudd is a derogatory term for certain gun owners. The name comes from the cartoon character Elmer Fudd. Typically, Fudds think handgun evolution peaked with the 1911 pistol, and they think the only rifle worth owning has a wood stock and is used for hunting.
