AR vs. Shotgun for Home Defense

James Rummel takes me to task for my first and second posts on whether an AR makes a good home defense firearm.

As he puts it:

In the second post, Dave devotes the very first paragraph to the issue of verpentration. After that it is rather pointedly ignored. Strange, as I think
that it is the one issue that should be discussed the most.

What I said was:

Let me start by saying that I'm not making a recommendation one way or the other. If you can intelligently explain your choice of defensive tools, then drive on with your bad self. If I decide to equip the hearth and home with an AR, I've got the fact that Uncle Sam spent a bunch of time and money teaching me how to use it, I've fought overseas with one, and there's simply no firearm that I perform better with. Apartments may not be ideal keeping AR rounds out of your neighbor's place, but according to the Box O' Truth, pistol rounds go through sheetrock pretty well too. So maybe the overpenetration concern is universal if sheetrock is all that separates you from next door. I wonder what separates townhouses from each other. Anyone
in construction have a line on this?

I'm not sure where James gets a lack of concern on my part on overpenetration liability in urban settings. I said that if you live in an apartment any round could punch through the walls. I wondered what the barriers are between townhouses, the norm in Northern Virginia. I don't have my place AR-equipped for the reasons he lays out - because I don't know what ballistically separates me from my neighbors. That's concern for overpenetration, and I asked about what separates me from shooting a neighbor. I'm not blowing the issue off.

'Cause houses come in different forms. The average NoVa townhouse was built in the late 1970's or so. If it were a slap-dash early 2000's structure there's no way I'd shoot an AR inside the house, but I don't know how much sturdier the older places are. New construction in parts of Florida is hurricane-resistant, so there's a cinderblock skeleton underneath that retro-Miami Vice adobe exterior. So go crazy down there. Here? My place? No idea.

Checking at The Box O' Truth reveals a few things. In Installment #1, we find out that pistol rounds and .223 penetrate pretty well. Here we discover that shotgun rounds penetrate to a varying degree - small shot not so much (but it doesn't do a good job of stopping a pissed off assailant) - slugs too much. 00 Buck may fit a sweet spot, who knows? In Installment #3, we find that 00 Buck penetrates 8 sheetrock boards, which is 4 walls.

As the folks at Box O' Truth put it:

But doesn't 00 Buck penetrate too much in interior walls to be a "safe" load in a home?
Yes, it does penetrate a lot. But any load that is going to be effective will need to penetrate walls to have enough power to penetrate bad guys. If our only concern was to be sure we didn't penetrate walls, we would use BB guns. However, BB guns will not stop bad guys.

And, as they said at the end of #2:

I have brick exterior on my home. I do not have to worry about any round exiting my home. The brick stopped all rounds tested.

So, we must use loads that will STOP bad guys, and this means that they will also penetrate walls. Be sure you hit the bad guy and do not shoot into walls where innocents are on the other side, because anything short of brick is really just concealment, not cover.

The guys in the comments at Snowflakes in Hell make the case for a short-barrelled and suppressed AR. Which, if you want to shoot a rifle indoors and reduce the overpenetration risk is a good way to go. So is frangible ammunition, as these guys point out. There's a spread of opinion at Uncle's place.

Bottom line:
1. What are the your exterior/dividing walls made of?
2. What bullet weight/type are you using, and through what length of barrel?
3. Will #2 punch through #1?

Calibrate your home defense rounds accordingly.

Gun Nuts Radio

Caleb and Breda discuss some politics and my post on the Harold Fish case over at Gun Nuts Radio.

Reasonable Fear, Self-Defense, and Carrying 10mm Handguns

David Hardy over at Of Arms & The Law has a post up on the Harold Fish case. I'll give you his summary:

Fish was hiking, saw another guy, waved, other guy's dogs charged him, he fired a warning shot. Then the other guy charged him, crazed look in eyes, windmilling arms and shouting threats. Fish shouted to halt and, that having no effect, shot him fatally.

Fish was prosecuted for shooting the man. The Arizona legislature tried to help him out by passing a law shifting the burden in self-defense cases, but didn't make their retroactive intent clear. They just passed a new law making it retroactive to address the Fish case, but he has already had his conviction reversed. The law will impose the burden of disproving self-defense on the prosecution (instead of putting it on the defendant to prove it) in a new trial if the governor signs it into law.

Hardy highlights the odd nature of self-defense as a legal defense:

It's rather strange, I can't offhand think of another defense where what matters is what you *think*, but not how things *are*. To prove self-defense you must prove a reasonable fear that the other guy was going to inflict death or serious bodily harm.

This is not unique to Arizona, the jurisdiction where Fish prosecuted and sentenced to ten years in prison. Virginia has a parallel requirement. This is a judgment of what you knew at the time of the use of defensive force, not what may become available for presentation at trial. So when Fish shot Grant Kuenzli, he couldn't justify his actions on the screwdriver in Kuenzli's back pocket. All he had to go on was Kuenzli's verbal threats and that Kuenzli was charging him while whirling his arms in a windmill fashion.

It turns out that Fish had good reason to be afraid. As his defense counsel points out:

Witness after witness, in pretrial motions, and under oath, provided this Court with "specific act" evidence about the character for violence of Grant Kuenzli. The decedent raped and kidnapped [Rape Victim], then threatened her son with death as well as her mother and sister while hold [Rape Victim] and her son hostage in their home. The decedent, without any warning, assaulted and strangled [strangulation victim] without provocation and without warning. [strangulation victim]'s offense was simply delivering self help materials to [Rape Victim]. The decedent was involved in numerous violent or aggressive encounters with former police officers Steve Corich, John Boylan, and Lynn Bray at Mesa Community College. They were so troubled by these actions that they contacted defense counsel after reading news accounts of Kuenzli's death. The decedent had two aggressive confrontations with Placido Garcia who, through affidavit, described his fears to the court. Stephanie Quincy was so terrified of the defendant because of bizarre and threatening behavior over the telephone that she would not meet with him face to face unless he had cleared court security. Judge Clayton Hamblin had a twenty minute encounter in his courtroom that so terrified him that he warned court staff to be beware of Kuenzli and to be cautious of him. The judge feared that the decedent might shoot him through a window connected to his courtroom. Ernie Encinas terminated the decedent from employment at the Gilbert Fire Marshall's office because of repeated violent outbursts with Mr. Encinas, with fellow employees, and with customers of the town. The fear of Kuenzli was so prevalent that the Fire Marshall changed all of their locks at all locations at the request of Kuenzli’s fellow employees because of fears that Mr. Kuenzli would return and inflict harm. A mere two weeks before his death, decedent charged Steve James with James observing the same spastic arm movements, the terrifying anger and verbiage, and the irrational behavior that was seen on May 11, 2004. These specific acts were critical to show, on occasion after occasion, that rational people could not reason with Grant Kuenzli, that he had character patterns of uncontrolled violent behavior, and that Kuenzli inflicted terror in the minds and hearts of each of these witnesses because of his unpredictable volatility and patterns of violence and aggression.

Even though Fish didn't know any of the above when the shooting took place, it appears that Kuenzli probably conveyed an earnest (and unnerving) intent to kill Fish. Problem is that none of it was admitted at trial.

The prosecution also made hay about Fish carrying a 10mm handgun loaded with hollowpoint ammunition. In an urban area, that may not be your preferred carry gun. But on a hiking trail that is probably the caliber of choice. It's enough bullet to drop most any four-legged predators you may encounter, and the hollowpoint round is a good choice both for stopping power and to prevent overpenetration. As Massad Ayoob has said at length, overpenetration and hitting an innocent on the other side can bring a lot of liability. Let's be honest, 10mm FMJ is a hot round that makes Rule Four (be sure of your target and what lies beyond it) a serious consideration. There's a good faith argument that not using hollowpoints in a 10mm is reckless. But be prepared to make that argument in court.

All of this goes to show that even when you use force in what you believe to be justified self-defense, the justice system may see things differently.