{"id":4663,"date":"2016-03-10T17:31:10","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T22:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.luckygunner.com\/lounge\/?p=4663"},"modified":"2021-07-30T10:15:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T14:15:51","slug":"practical-drills-home-defense-shotgun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.luckygunner.com\/lounge\/practical-drills-home-defense-shotgun\/","title":{"rendered":"Practical Drills for the Home Defense Shotgun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shotgun-banner-12\"<\/a><\/p>

If you plan\u00a0to depend on a shotgun as a home defense tool, you need to practice with it. That should probably go without saying, but the myth is still alive and well that the shotgun is some kind of magic wand that sprays death whenever you point it in the general direction of a bad guy.\u00a0<\/span>But as anyone who has trained at all with a defensive shotgun knows, you can<\/em> miss, even at close range. Not only that, but it takes some effort to learn how to manipulate a shotgun smoothly and confidently, especially if it\u2019s a pump action. Just like any self-defense tool, the ideal goal is to able to run the shotgun well without having to put any conscious thought into it, and to get to that point, we have to practice.<\/span><\/p>

But here\u2019s where you might run into a challenge — compared to training with a handgun or a carbine, there just aren\u2019t as many resources available for working with the shotgun in a home defense context. It\u2019s harder to find training classes, drills, and books, so even if you want to put in the work to improve your shotgun skills, figuring out where to start is not always straightforward.<\/span><\/p>

If you start digging around for information using the shotgun for self-defense, you’ll likely see the\u00a0influence of training centered around law enforcement needs\u00a0and 3-gun competition. There is plenty\u00a0we can\u00a0learn from both of those contexts, but there is also a lot of information that’s not\u00a0really relevant for the average person for home defense. We\u00a0need to weed some of that stuff out if we want to get to the material that\u2019s going to actually help us use a shotgun to defend against a home invasion.<\/span><\/p>

I like to keep shotgun training pretty simple. I don’t worry much about skills like rapid\u00a0slug changeovers. They\u2019re fun to do, but for most of us, totally unnecessary. I also don’t bother with\u00a0competition style reload techniques because, like most people,\u00a0I\u00a0don\u2019t keep a belt with shell caddies next to my bed at night. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing these skills if you’re a\u00a0multi-gun competitor\u00a0or if your job involves breaking down doors, but when the primary goal is to become proficient with the shotgun for defense of the home, for the majority of us, our time is better spent working on\u00a0other skills.<\/span><\/p>

In the video below, I outline four simple drills that focus on the fundamental skills for running a home defense shotgun.<\/p>

Practical Drills for the Home Defense Shotgun<\/strong><\/h3>