[Jeff Higgins]

Wow, thomas682, I will have to say that is pretty darn impressive for buckshot at 40 yards. Believe me, I have shot a lot of this stuff at patterning boards from a variety of shotguns and have never seen such performance. It is certainly not the norm. Not in my own tests, nor in any others I have seen until your post. Would you let us know what gun these were shot out of, and what if anything, was done to achieve this performance? What is a "wad wizard supreme" and a "wad wizard swat 12"? I see the load written at the bottom is Federal Premium 12 gauge 2 3/4" 00 with 9 pellets.

There is one other critical aspect your pattern board test does not address. Penetration. Try this (I have): get some ballistic gellatin - you can order dry stuff to mix up from ads in many gun mags. Set up a block at 40 yards and "dress" it in heavy winter clothing. Yeah, I know it's hot in New Orleans right now, but we want something that works all year. Put a tee-shirt, flannel shirt, maybe a vest, and finally a heavy lined winter coat, like wool or something over it. Not some fluffy down thing, but an overcoat of some kind. Now shoot it with your 00 buck load. I'll bet you a beer none of the pellets make it into the gellatin. The heavy winter clothing will stop them at that range. Yes, if you were inside that clothing it would hurt like hell, but it sure would not incapacitate you in any way.

While you are at it, try the same thing with some of today's highly touted hollow point ammunition. Believe it or not, much of it will not penetrate that kind of clothing at that range either. Amazing but true. I have conducted these tests myself, as have many others.

The most reliable ammunition, under any and all conditions, will always be FMJ in the autos and hard-cast semi-wadcutters in revolvers or revolver caliber lever guns. No pretty mushrooms or open flower blossum hollow points for the photo ads used to sell bullets, but rather day-to-day reliable performance under a variety of conditions. This would include reliable penetration at ranges a shotgun cannot match. Again, if even medium ranges are anticipated, a shotgun with buck shot is the wrong tool.

HardDrive, I couldn't agree more about the range vs. self defense question. Pretty hard to convince a jury that you were defending yourself if they are accross the street, much less further away than that. The original question here, though, kind of indicated we were talking about a New Orleans type of situation. That is far different than normal day-to-day defensive needs, as I stated earlier. In our normal lives, self defense at home or away is properly handled with a handgun. When legally carrying, there is no other option. For home use, for reasons already outlined, any longarm is more unwieldly than a handgun.